Radio Australia Today Editorial

A new Australian flag?

25 January 2010

This one seems to come up with the regularity of an early morning magpie call.

If you’ve seen the Australian flag, you would understand why. It is a flag that devotes a corner and its background colour to its British origins.

Have a look:

Yes, without the stars, it would be the British Blue Ensign, a permanent reminder of the fact that this country was colonised by the British back in 1788.

This emblem has been a running sore for some Aborigines, who say that the current design makes no reference at all to the country’s traditional owners, people who lived on this land for up to 70,000 years before Captain Cook took on water at Botany Bay.

Over the last thirty years a new kind of nationalism has formed, a nationalism that has suggested that we are no longer British, but something of our own. In keeping with this, various competitions have been held by private groups to come up with a new flag.

There have been hundreds of alternatives offered over the years, many of them featuring boomerangs or leaping kangaroos. Few have been willing to completely bust tradition, so most ideas have included the five stars that are on the existing flag.

Fred Rieben’s design from 2004 has been one of the most popular recent alternatives:

Some have incorporated the more bolshie elements, like the Eureka flag (which originated after the Eureka Stockade of 1854, when gold prspectors rebelled against what they saw as an unjust government. They didn’t win the physical fight, but did win the battle, with the government changing its attitude and rules towards the miners).

A poll revealed on the weekend suggests that Australians are fairly happy to leave things as they are. So what do you think?

Do you want roos and rangs, our own version of the Candian Maple leaf?

Or is a country far more than an emblem, and as such, should Australia cut the last visual tie with Britain?

- Phil Kafcaloudes