Under Turnbull, a republic could be back on the table. First step, change the flag
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Version 0 of 1. When it comes to questions of Australian national identity few topics raise such heat and fury as our national flag. The current Australian flag, with its dominant British union jack, is an anachronistic colonial throwback that ought to be ditched along with Prince Philip’s knighthood. While we’re at it, let’s take one step further and redesign the flag as a first step on the long overdue road to an Australian republic. It’s time to talk about it again. I don’t want to get bogged down in what the new ensign would look like. I’m happy to leave that to the designers, except to say that the new flag should proudly reflect 60,000 years of Indigenous history, a more recent European heritage and the multicultural melting pot ideal that this can be a racially tolerant, welcoming home for some of the globe’s less fortunate. Jerry Seinfeld got it right when he said: “I love your flag. Great Britain at night.” It’s time to turn on the lights, get real with a flag debate and redesign, and to ensure that we are not standing alone (or at least alongside only Tuvalu) in the region as a Commonwealth nation upon whose national ensign the union jack remains imposed. Related: Fiji to remove ‘outdated’ union jack from flag Fiji plans to erase the union jack from its flag in time for the 45th anniversary of its independence from Great Britain later this year. Meanwhile New Zealand’s conservative prime minister, John Key, also wants to ditch the union jack. In our second century of federation, surely it’s Australia’s time, too. One enduring and ridiculous fallacy is that the current Australian flag should be retained because so many of our “boys” fought and died under it, not least at Gallipoli. It’s bunkum of course: perhaps 1,000 of Australia’s 102,000 war dead (excluding those who died in frontier conflict) died under the Australian flag. I mention frontier conflict because it is another salient reason why the union jack should be ditched from the Australian flag. The jack naturally symbolises invasion, dispossession and murder (of at least tens of thousands) to the Indigenous descendants of the victims of the British settlers, troops, militias and police. It will never, can never, be a flag consistent with achieving the type of genuine reconciliation towards which Australia purports to be moving. In 2013 the director of the Australian War Memorial, Brendan Nelson, said: The names of 102,000 men and women are here (at the memorial) on the roll of honour. Almost all lie in distant lands from the Boer war, two world wars and Korea, through to Vietnam, Afghanistan and numerous other conflicts and operations. They went in our uniform, under our flag and in our name. But their lives were finally given up in support of one another. “Our” flag? For about 101,000 of our war dead (that is, those Australians who died at war until 1953) “our” flag happened to be the British flag. History: while the blue ensign – the current flag – became the Australian government flag in 1901, the Australian national flag was, until 1953, the red ensign or the British flag, ie the union jack. In 1953 federal parliament changed the Flag Act to install the blue ensign as the national flag; the first Australians to fight under it did so in the Malayan emergency. Australia’s longest-serving prime minister Robert Menzies was in power when the new flag came in. Menzies, it seems, was a pragmatist on some other matters of monarchistic symbolism too: he was responsible for moving a monolithic statue of King George V from its position directly in front of the original parliament house because he considered it an eyesore. Our current prime minister is rather less pragmatic on such matters, as evidenced by his judgment that it was a good idea to give the Queen’s husband an Australian knighthood. Related: Fiji ditches the union jack – in pictures It was, of course, the spark that ignited the bonfire of profound Liberal party discontent with its leader. Few could find it in themselves to heartily defend Abbott’s actions vis-a-vis Prince Phil, although David Flint’s defence of it in the Spectator is a genuine “cut out and keep”. Malcolm Turnbull, a republican, will probably be the next Liberal prime minister. Bearing in mind that just about any remotely progressive act from Turnbull will incite an almighty roar from the Jurassic right of his party, changing the flag to reflect today’s Australia could, perhaps, be justified as an act of Menzian progress. The next, related step – a move towards a republic – would be harder, of course. It’s worth noting that as outrage over the Philip knighthood on Australia Day stole the national oxygen, opposition leader Bill Shorten called for a renewal of the republican debate. “Let us rally behind an Australian republic – a model that truly speaks for who we are: our modern identity, our place in our region and our world,” he said. Hear, hear. I reckon Turnbull’s ears would’ve pricked, too. The type of political bipartisanship required for any move towards a flag change and republic, has been sadly absent from Australian political discourse since the defeated referendum of 1999. Is it too much to hope that 15 years later we might enter an epoch of new possibility? |