The Flag Debate
Notes: (i) this debate is logically distinct from the Republic debate, though you may think that there is a psychological connection in that nearly all monarchists probably prefer the present flag, and many republicans may want a new flag. However, the Head of State can certainly be changed without changing the flag, and vice versa. The brilliant flag on David Moss's Republic Issue page, which morphs from the current national flag to the Eureka stockade flag and back again, is therefore strictly misplaced on that page, though he has defended it to me as a general symbol of political change.
(ii) this may not be strictly a "constitutional" issue because the Constitution does not mention the national flag - but the constitutions of many other countries do (eg France, Title 1, Art 2), and perhaps ours ought to.
The Main Protagonists
versus
- Ausflag, who would like anything without the Union "Jack"* in the corner.
The problem for Ausflag is that they haven't come up with any design yet that grabs the imagination as the obvious alternative (like the maple leaf for Canada or the silver fern flag for New Zealand). They have run competitions in 1986, 1993 and 1998, and after choosing different winners the first two times they settled for a top 10 or 20 in 1998. They have also picked two different flags as the subjects of promotions in 1991 and 1997. They tend to favour red, white and blue designs because an opinion poll in 1995 showed that was the colour scheme favoured by a "plurality" of people. Hmmm, do our cricketers proudly wear the "baggy red cap" (or white, or blue, or all three)? No, when you think "Australia", you think "green and gold"!
* Properly the Union Flag. A jack is a flag flown from the jackstaff of a ship, so the Union Flag became commonly referred to as the Union Jack when it was seen all over the world on the jackstaffs of British ships.
Written by John Pyke, with a little help from DiDa!. Last edited 8 December 1999.