2015–16 New Zealand flag referendums have markedly low attendance. The consideration panel noted strong online engagement with over 850,000 visits to the website and 1,180,000 engagements on social media. The panel reported that feedback found the themes of freedom, history, equality, respect and family to be the most significant to New Zealanders, however it was later revealed that those themes were dwarfed by the amount of feedback critical of the flag change process. From the submitted designs they found the most common colours were white, blue, red, black, and green. The most common elements incorporated into the flag designs were the Southern Cross, silver fern,
Queen's Personal Flag for New Zealand the same basic pattern used by queen across several other realms since the 1960s: it is the escutcheon of a country's coat of arms (e.g. the arms of New Zealand) in banner form defaced with a device taken from her personal flag (a blue roundel surrounded by a garland of roses encircling a crowned letter 'E', all in gold). The flag is divided into four quadrants: The first quadrant includes depicts four stars as representative of the Southern Cross constellation, as depicted on the national flag. The second quadrant consists of a golden fleece on a red field. The third