Australian Flag Debate - Arguments Favouring Changing The Flag

Arguments Favouring Changing The Flag

The case for changing the flag has been led by the organisation known as Ausflag. The organisation has not consistently supported one design, and is opposed to the Eureka Flag, but has sponsored a number of design competitions to develop alternative flag candidates.

Supporters of changing the flag have made the following arguments:

• The flag is not distinctive because it contains the national flag of another country in a position of prominence. In particular, the flag is difficult to distinguish from a variety of flags based on the British Blue Ensign, most notably the national flag of New Zealand and the state flag of Victoria. For example, the Australian Monarchist League, during their "no" campaign for the Australian republic referendum in 1999, mistakenly displayed the New Zealand flag instead of the Australian flag on one of their pamphlets.
• It does not accurately connote Australia's status as an independent nation. The Union flag at the canton suggests Australia is a British colony or dependency. New Zealand, Fiji and Tuvalu are the only other independent nations in the world to feature the Union Flag on their national flags. Other Commonwealth countries whose flags originally depicted the Union Flag, such as Canada, have since changed them, without becoming republics. The flag's colours of red, white and blue are neither Australia's official national colours (green and gold) nor its traditional heraldic colours (blue and gold).
• In representing only Australia's British heritage, the flag is anachronistic, and does not reflect the change to a multicultural, pluralist society. In particular, the flag makes no mention of indigenous Australians, many of whom regard the Union Flag as a symbol of colonial oppression and dispossession.
• The existing flag is historically not the prime national symbol. For most of the time since Federation, it was flown alongside the British Union Flag which took precedence as the National Flag from 1924 until 1954. Until the late 1920s the Federation Flag remained more popular than the Australian flag for public and even some official events. For example, the Federation Flag was flown during the 1927 visit to Australia of the Duke and Duchess of York, the future King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. The number of points of the stars have varied since 1901, and the present blue version was not adopted as the national flag until 1954. Before then, the Union flag took precedence and confusion reigned between whether the red or blue version of the Australian flag was to be preferred, with the red often winning out.
• It is spurious to claim that Australians have "fought and died under the flag", given that during most of the wars Australians have been involved in, they have usually "fought under" various British flags or the Australian Red Ensign. Prior to 1941 only 10 per cent of military ensigns were Blue and in 1945 Red ensigns were flown along the route of the official end of war parades. The flag made in secret by the Changi prisoners-of-war was a red ensign. The coffins of Australia's war dead were draped with the Union Flag.
• Although the flag was designed by four Australians, including two teenagers, and a man from New Zealand and chosen through a public competition, the conditions of entry for the Review of Reviews competition - which was integrated into the government initiative - were highly suggestive that the winning design must include the Union Flag and Southern Cross, and final approval lay with King Edward VII and, because both the red and blue versions were considered naval ensigns, the British Admiralty.
• There are 54 countries in the Commonwealth of Nations — only five of them, including the United Kingdom, have the Union Flag in their own flag.