September 3 marks Australian National Flag day — the anniversary of the first time the Australian flag was flown.
Flag Day is an opportunity for individuals, community organisations, local authorities, businesses and schools to celebrate the Australian Flag.
The Australian National Flag, the Australian Aboriginal Flag and the Torres Strait Islander Flag can be obtained free of charge by public or community sector organisations by contacting the electorate office of your local senator or member of the House of Representatives.
Guidance on preserving the dignity of the flag and conducting flag ceremonies can found on the website of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC), which is responsible for administering the Commonwealth Flags Act, 1953.
In 1901, first Australian prime minister Edmund Barton announced an international competition to design a flag for the new Commonwealth of Australia. There were 32,823 entries, and five nearly identical entries were awarded equal first.
On 3 September 1901, the prime minister announced the five joint winners of the competition, and the key elements of their designs were used to create the new flag for the Commonwealth of Australia.
The joint winners were: Annie Dorrington, who was a well-known artist from Perth; Ivor Evans, a 14-year-old Melbourne school boy whose father owned a flag-making business; Lesley Hawkins, an 18-year-old from Leichhardt in Sydney who was apprenticed to a Sydney optician at the time; Eggbert Nutall, an architect with the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works; and William Stevens, a first officer with the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand.
The flag was flown for the first time at the Exhibition Building in Melbourne, which was then the seat of the federal government. In this original design, the stars of the Southern Cross had different numbers of points to signify their brightness.
At that time the flag was known as the Commonwealth Blue Ensign; later, the flag became known as the Australian national flag.
In 1903, King Edward VII approved two designs for the flag of Australia: the Commonwealth Blue Ensign, and the Commonwealth Red Ensign for the merchant navy.
However, people were confused about the use of two Australian flags. In 1941, prime minister Robert Menzies issued a press statement recommending the flying of the Blue Ensign as a national emblem. The Flags Act subsequently proclaimed the Australian Blue Ensign as the Australian national flag and the Australian Red Ensign as the flag for merchant ships registered in Australia.
An amendment to the Flags Act 1953 was passed in 1998 to ensure the Australian national flag can be changed only with the agreement of the Australian people.
The Commonwealth Blue Ensign is not Australia’s only official flag. The Australian Aboriginal Flag and Torres Strait Islander Flag were proclaimed flags of Australia on 14 July 1995, and are being used with increasing regularity for official purposes in Australia, alongside the Blue Ensign.
The Australian Aboriginal Flag was first raised on 9 July 1971 at Victoria Square in Adelaide, prior to being raised at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra in 1972.
Although the Australian Aboriginal flag has been increasingly viewed as a symbol of national unity, the artist and copyright holder Harold Thomas created controversy both in and out of Indigenous communities by asserting his exclusive rights over the design of the flag.
Earlier this year, the former Liberal government resolved the issue by purchasing the copyright from Thomas for more than $20 million. Then-minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt said that now the commonwealth held the copyright, the Indigenous flag belonged to everyone.
“Over the last 50 years we made Harold Thomas’ artwork our own — we marched under the Aboriginal flag, stood behind it, and flew it high as a point of pride,” he said.
The Torres Strait Islander Flag was adopted in May 1992 during the Torres Strait Islands Cultural Festival. Its origin is attributed to the late Bernard Namok of Thursday Island.
In the centre of that flag is a white Dhari (traditional headdress), which is a symbol for all Torres Strait Islanders. Underneath the Dhari is a five-pointed star, representing the island groups in Torres Strait, and the white of peace.
Other official flags in Australia include the state and territory flags, ensigns of the Australian Defence Force, the centenary flag, royal and vice-regal flags, and the United Nations flag.
The protocol for flying any official Australian flag is serious business, and mishandling of either a physical flag or the flag’s iconography may be punishable by law in some jurisdictions in Australia, despite the absence of laws specifically designed to protect them.
When a flag was burned in Perth early in 2003, one flag-burner was charged with disorderly conduct by creating a disturbance, contrary to section 54 of the Police Act.
Offensive behaviour contrary to section 546(a) of the NSW Crimes Act 1900 in its application to the Australian Capital Territory; behaving in an offensive or disorderly manner contrary to section 12 of the Public Order (Protection of Persons and Property) Act; and malicious damage to property by fire under section 128 of the Crimes Act 1900 have been noted as other possible points of legal recourse if authorities wanted to run a potential prosecution up the pole.
Departments, organisations and individuals are encouraged to treat Australia’s flags with the utmost respect and follow the protocols outlined by the PM&C closely to ensure no offence is caused to national dignity.
But as criticisms of Australia’s flag as a symbol of colonialism increase, questions remain about whether there is a place for uncritical respect for symbols and institutions in Australian society.
Recently, Greens leader Adam Bandt offended a number of conservative commentators when he had staff remove Australia’s national flag at a press conference, leaving only Australia’s two Indigenous flags in its wake.
Bandt’s colleague, First Nations senator Lidia Thorpe, defended the move, describing the flag as an obscenity.
“The Australian flag represents a colonial invasion, which massacred and murdered thousands of Aboriginal women, men and children,” she said.
“The Australian flag does not represent me, it does not represent my family and it does not represent many clans and nations around this country.”
Although former prime minister and avowed republican Malcolm Turnbull says Australia’s flag will never change, advocacy groups have called for a new design that celebrates Australian exceptionalism over a distant monarchy of little relevance to the lives of most Australians.
Not-for-profit group Ausflag claim Australia can do much better than fly a flag that tells another country’s story. Executive director Harold Scrubby says the commonwealth ensign is a symbol of Brittany’s dominance over Australia.
Ausflag has proposed a design that omits the Union Jack, enlarging the Federation Star to take its place.
“It′s vital we tell the world we′ve grown up,” Scrubby said.
“This campaign is not anti-British. It’s passionately pro-Australian. It’s no more anti-British than when we changed our national anthem from God Save the Queen to Advance Australia Fair.”
“Placing the symbol of a major sporting and commercial competitor in the dominant position on our flag is as ludicrous as Microsoft placing an Apple logo in a dominant position on their logo and promotional material.”
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Aboriginal flag ‘in public hands’ after Australian government buys copyright
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