Fudge me? How do you expect the government to engage the populous? At gun point? The Shortlist of 40 was out there for around 2 months. Even Jon Oliver had a crack at the designs.
The whole thing is really down to our she'll be right attitude
How is fudge me a question?
It is what it is, people are lethargic when it comes to doing things, I doubt people expected half the designs to be identical and three quarters of them to be on the same theme.
John key clearly expressed his preference for a silver fern, there is even a drawing that he drew of the beehive with a silverfern flying overhead instead of the NZ flag. The panel might have been swayed by John Key's judgement, they may have not. They clearly haven't excersized any judgement or taste of their own.
If you're going to have a referendum then you need to have a cross section of designs to work from. If there wasn't so much similarity with the designs then I doubt people would be so worked up.
I would have expected that once the theme of the flag was decided on then they would hire people to actually do a good job of it and not make it look like confectionary packaging anyway, so things like colours would be altered and shouldn't be part of the referendum.