Antinuclear

Australia’s flag not representative of Australia today

Australia’s flag represents neither the nation’s past nor its present  Paul Daley  21 November The Guardian,  All right, jack? Hardly – it’s time for serious debate about Australia’s national symbol, separate from talk of a republic “…….., rid us of that awful colonial symbolism and give us a flag that really represents who we are today, not who we were in 1901.

Who we were?………. there was a terrible flaw in our nationhood that reverberates still: it was Australia for the White Man…… The worst colonial frontier violence against Indigenous people happened under the union jack, of course, flown by colonial military units and police forces. That’s a good enough reason alone to remove it from our own national flag, the blue ensign, with its southern cross and federation star…..

Of the current flag, Blaxland says: “As Jerry Seinfeld says, it is ‘the British flag on a starry night’. The dominant top left quadrant belongs to the flag of another nation, making Australia symbolically subordinate to Britain. This is an anachronism.”

He points out that changing the flag to remove the union jack is not intrinsically linked to republicanism. He cites the example of Canada, which changed its flag in 1965, ditching the red ensign with its union jack for the maple leaf. Canada remains, like Australia, a constitutional monarchy……http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/21/australias-flag-represents-neither-the-nations-past-nor-its-present

November 21, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News