Brown Eye - First Episode

This week in sports news, nothing happened, amazingly. Nothing to report, so we don't need to spend half an hour of the news hour talking about people playing games.

– Taika Waititi handles the sports news

Now I'm all for a new flag, but we checked and I'm in the minority, because a recent poll said that 70 per cent of people want the flag kept the same . . . But where I am in the majority though is in thinking that 25 million bucks on deciding whether to decide on a new flag or not, is just a bloody waste of money.

– Host Nathan Rarere offers his opinion on the flag referendum

...Lorde with silver ferns for eyes, rugby balls for a mouth and wearing a [David] Bain sweater.

– A member of the public describes their own flag design

I'm Nathan Rarere, and that was your brown eye on the world this week.

– Host Nathan Rarere closes the first episode

Satire, I guess gives you an incredible blowtorch to be able to put things under the microscope. I think though it's important to be even-handed . . . We're not here to just have a crack at the government . . . we have to actually be able to shine the light on ourselves, most importantly —  I mean ourselves as Māori, ourselves as New Zealanders — and just understand what role we play in the whole sort of bigger scheme of things.

– Brown Eye co-creator Bailey Mackey on what the show aims to do, RNZ, 10 May 2015

I think the greatest comedy or humour actually comes out of truth . . . When you really understand something, I think that can be incredibly enlightening, and I think satire is definitely a way you can do that.

– Brown Eye co-creator Bailey Mackey. Radio New Zealand, 10 May 2015

What will set us apart will be heart. We've got a really varied range of people throwing their brain power at this show, but each of us come with heart.

– Brown Eye presenter Nathan Rarere, on the Pango Productions website

If we can make people laugh and then trick them into looking further into the subject then that's good.

– Brown Eye presenter Nathan Rarere, The NZ Herald, 15 May 2015

Now fundamentally I'm not opposed to a flag change, but I think we should wait. In world terms, New Zealand's still a very young country. Metaphorically we're just coming out of puberty; we've only got a little bit of hair on the chin right now, and sure we want to escape Mother England . . . but we make really dumb decisions. My big fear is we're going to choose the wrong flag.

– Mike King on changing the New Zealand flag, during a panel discussion with Savage