Parliamentary Debates

House of Representatives, Wednesday 11 December 1996

Paul Neville (National Party of Australia) – Member for Hinkler (Qld)

I very much appreciate the opportunity to participate in the debate on the Flags Amendment Bill 1996 tonight and to follow my good friend, the member for Throsby (Mr Hollis), whose speech I would like to comment on a little further in my presentation. This is a defining and important moment because since the Flags Act 1953 we have not provided a facility whereby if we change the flag all Australians can participate in that decision.

As the current opposition and the former government did, we will not impose a national anthem on Australia. Even now there is disquiet as to whether that was the right choice. I am not going to canvass that tonight.

This bill adds two new sections. The first, proposed new subsection 3(2), provides that the Australian national flag shall cease to be the national flag if a majority of electors in the states and territories are given a choice between the present Australian flag and a new flag or flags. I do not know what could be fairer than that. The second, proposed new subsection 3(3), provides the way in which a proposal for a referendum should be carried out. That is admirably sensible. It does not allow some demagogue like our previous Prime Minister, ipso facto, after some competition over the weekend – my colleague described the selection of the South African flag - to impose the selection of the flag on the Australian population.

The member for Throsby said that there was confusion between the Australian and New Zealand flags because of their similarity. That is a bit of a tortured argument. That is the one Gough Whitlam ran in the debate with Jim Killen some years ago because when he went to Canada once they made a mistake and put the wrong flags up.

Let me give you a few other examples. I wonder whether you could show me the difference between the Dutch and the French flags, with their red, white and blue bands, if I dropped the two of them in front of you. If I gave you the German flag and three other flags that have yellow, red and black bands, I wonder whether you could put them in the right order. What about the five Scandinavian flags, which are all identical in design but different in colour? Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland all have identical designs for their flags but different backgrounds, different coloured crosses. You might pick the Finnish one because of its distinctive blue and white design, but I think you would be groping when it came to the other four. All of us would be, unless we were in the maritime game, had an interest in flags, or had access to a list of flags or an encyclopaedia.

The member for Throsby said he thinks the flag should be confined to a museum and that, because we want this matter debated in the parliament, there are more important issues and we are out of touch with the Australian people. Let me bring you back to earth. As we have often said in debate in this chamber over the last three months, it is your party which is out of kilter with the Australian public, as was very clearly demonstrated at the last election.

Let me give an example. In the last parliament I did quite a comprehensive survey in my electorate of the things that worried people. These were some of the things that worried people. I will leave out the republic because that is a matter for another debate; there were protagonists for and against a republic. With regard to some other issues, 23 1/2 per cent were worried about the environment, 30.1 per cent supported a republic, 31.6 per cent were concerned about education, 42.4 per cent were concerned about health care and 63.2 per cent were concerned about unemployment. But the daddy of them all, the thing that most concerned people in my electorate, was that there was a move to change the flag - 72 per cent.

I do not think Queensland is any different from any other part of Australia. That survey of Queenslanders was conducted at the height of the Keating era and people were reacting against their symbols being tampered with. They were reacting against political correctness. People were looking for certainty. Nothing came through more clearly to me as I doorknocked during the last election than that Australians are looking for certainty. I repeat that figure: 72 per cent. That means, at an absolute minimum, 22 per cent of those people were Labor voters and on average probably about 36 per cent of them were Labor voters. Surely, that says something to you. In my area, I could extrapolate that between half and a third of all Labor voters were worried about this issue.

The history of the Australian flag in its many parts is a magnificent story. As many speakers have said, it goes back to the red cross on the white background, the cross of St George, patron saint of England, a very old flag, and the cross of St Andrew, the white diagonal cross on a blue background, for the patron saint of Scotland – again, a very ancient flag.

In 1606 the King of England died, leaving no heirs. His closest relative was the King of Scotland. In 1606 the King of Scotland became King of England and he superimposed the cross of St Andrew on the cross of St George and created a flag called the flag of the Grand Union. That was the flag under which Australia was settled. Captain Cook first raised that flag at Botany Bay, on Possession Island. Later, in 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip raised it at Port Jackson.

In 1800, Ireland joined the United Kingdom and the flag of the order of St Patrick was added. My Irish friends tell me it is not St Patrick's flag. They are quite explicit about that. They say it is not an official Irish flag; indeed, they are correct. But the flag that was known as the flag of the order of St Patrick was added. That is the little red diagonal flag that was added to the flag of the Grand Union, which then became the Union Jack. That flew until Federation, and even beyond Federation in conjunction with our own flag.

The idea of adding the Southern Cross is not new. If you look at the history of the flags, the first known flag devised in Australia was the flag of Honor Bowman of Archerfield, near Richmond. At her property she flew a flag which depicted the symbols of a kangaroo and an emu holding a shield, which has become, through two manifestations, our coat of arms. Later, in 1820, a group of seafarers sent to the Lords of the Admiralty a white flag with the red cross of St George and a star in each of the four quadrants, symbolic of the Southern Cross.

If you take the four stars out of the quadrants, put them at the ends of the bars and change the colour from red to blue, you have a flag very similar to the Eureka flag. So the idea of a Southern Cross and a cross that probably germinated from our European origins was set in the Australian psyche many years ago. In fact, the Anti-Transportation League suggested a flag not unlike the one we have today, and that was as early as 1851, with the Union Jack in one corner and a yellow Southern Cross, without the Star of Federation or the Commonwealth Star, sitting against a blue background.

As many speakers have said, in 1901 there was a competition in which there were 32,823 entries. There were five winners who suggested a flag almost identical to the one we have today. Indeed, the Commonwealth Star or the Federation Star had six spikes. That was our flag from 1901, approved by King Edward VII in 1903. Then, in 1909, in recognition of the fact that Papua had come under our control and also that there were other territories under the control of the Commonwealth, the seventh spike was added to the star. That was approved by the King a year later.

As the member for Moncrieff (Mrs Sullivan) said, there was always a certain amount of confusion in the early days of Federation about whether the official Australian flag was the one with the red ensign or the one with the dark blue ensign. If you look at paintings of the First World War you frequently see the Australian troops going into battle carrying the red version. As the member for Moncrieff said, the painting of the original photograph of the opening of federal parliament showed a red ensign. In a subsequent version of that painting it was changed to blue.

An unofficial rule until about 1941 was that the blue ensign was used on official occasions and on official buildings and the red ensign was used by the maritime services and private citizens. In 1941, the then Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, suggested that the blue flag be used. Cabinet made a decision on that matter in 1951 which was confirmed by the Flags Act 1953.

It was not until 1967 that the Royal Australian Navy used the white ensign. It previously used the British navy's white ensign. In 1948, the RAAF petitioned George VI for the light blue ensign with the roundel in the bottom right corner to be the ensign of the RAAF. Interestingly, it was 1981 before the red kangaroo was added, with the approval of the Queen.

A lot of history and a lot of development has gone on in this area. In many ways, that parallels our development. I am not saying that things are immutable and that things cannot change, but I am a great believer that things should evolve and not be pushed.

I think there has been a tendency to try to create history. I think the Turnbull committee was a disgrace. The concept of the committee was not and Turnbull himself is not, but the committee was set up to examine whether we should become a republic without a counterbalance of continuing with our current constitution and monarchy. The previous Prime Minister seemed to want lop-sided arguments all the time. The Murdoch competition did not offer the current Australian flag as an alternative to the ones it was suggesting.

People do not take very kindly to their Australian symbols being tampered with. The amount of controversy surrounding the two forms of the Olympic 2000 flag is evidence enough of this. In the short time since the first Olympic flag, which was on our ties, was developed, we now have a second one which is already embroiled in controversy.

The other thing I find strange is that there is a tendency by my opposition colleagues to want to repaint history in the mould of Paul Keating's vision. I remember the True Believers television series, which I found very interesting and would not knock for a minute. But something that always disturbed me was that the old newsreels were reworked using Kevin Golby's voice but with new scripts. Even some of the critics mistook those new scripts for the old scripts and re-imposed another sense of history on us. We have to be very careful how we handle these sorts of things.

Some 72 per cent of the people surveyed in my electorate said that this was the greatest single issue that concerned them. As I go round to schools, I find that there is not only trouble sometimes with literacy and numeracy but also great ignorance of our symbols and the history of our symbols. I have only gone to one school in my electorate that could tell me what the four ensigns represented - the dark blue, the red, the white and the light blue. I think that is sad. When you tell the kids stories about the flags, the coat of arms, the wattle, the opal - all the rich symbols of Australia - and how they were developed their faces light up. We do not inculcate those in our kids as do the British, the Americans and, in more recent times, the Canadians.

I take a great deal of satisfaction in supporting the Flags Amendment Bill 1996. It psychologically enshrines in the minds of all Australians the need that all Australians should be consulted if there is ever going to be any change to the flag. I think it also lays down a proper mechanism whereby Australians will be given a choice of flag.

I do not see the Union Jack in the corner of the flag as a symbol of oppression or sycophancy, I see it purely as a symbol of where our parliamentary system of government came from and where our rule of law came from. A lot of people from non-British nations who have settled in Australia also see that as a great symbol. They came here for the security, the rule of law, the peace, the lifestyle that it embodies. I remember a TV interview one night with a young man who was fifth generation Irish. He wanted to know why we wanted to change our flag. I find the same problem. I will readily embrace whatever the Australian public decide at a referendum. I commend this bill, which gives the maximum amount of choice to Australian people, to the House.

Debate interrupted and resumed on Thursday 12 December 1996.

In winding up my presentation on the Flags Amendment Bill 1996, I would just like to retrace what I have said. Flags have been around since 1122BC and have always been the insignia of leadership. We have talked about the development of the Australian flag from its earliest manifestations in the era of 1606 - I traced it from then right through to today. I point out too that that has carried with it the development of our legal and parliamentary codes, and for that reason the flag has a very important position in our democracy.

There is one aspect that I have not spoken about that I would like to touch on briefly before I finish. That is, the flag, as an insignia of leadership, as the embodiment of the history and the character of the nation, is the thing that we carry into battle. Although the flag perhaps does not have the same significance in this mechanised and atomic age that it might have had in the past, it is still very much an important symbol to those who have served in the Australian forces.

The flag was always used as a symbol of identifying friend or foe. It was a rallying point – was it not? – in battles. Even as recently as the Second World War, there were a number of occasions where battles were turned with some young soldier racing forward with the national flag, a banner, and using that as a rallying point for troops. For that reason, one can understand that the many RSL sub-branches around Australia have a great affection for this flag. The people they represent have played a significant part in defending that flag not just with words and not just with deeds but with their sheer physical effort, many times with their imprisonment and still, more importantly, on many occasions with their lives.

Last year during the Australia Remembers activities I met with RSL clubs in little communities like Eidsvold, Monto, Childers, Gin Gin, Miriam Vale, Calliope, Biloela, even those in little mining towns like Moura and those in the bigger centres like Bundaberg and Gladstone. I noticed that wherever I went there was a universality of affection for our flag and what it represented. Therefore, if we are planning to change the flag, we need to have mechanisms in place that ensure that the Australian population as a whole has a say in how that would happen.

One of the great tragedies of this era that we have lived in - where we have discussed the republic, the constitution and the flag - has been the way many people, including the former Prime Minister, have made light of our symbols, criticised them overseas and played with them in the parliament. With this Flags Amendment Bill 1996, we have laid down very clearly once and for all that this flag can be changed only by a majority of the electors in the states and territories and that they must be given a choice between the current Australian flag - the one that is viewed with so much affection - and other flags, and that whichever flag is chosen will become the flag of this country. It also provides the mechanisms whereby such a referendum would occur, and they appear under proposed subsection 3(2) and proposed subsection 3(3) of the bill.

Finally, although I have a great affection for this flag – I recognise the price in blood that has been paid to defend it, I recognise the history that it contains, I recognise the character that it embodies – if under this bill a majority of Australians decide they do want to change it, I will be satisfied that it is a full and frank expression of the national will, and that is something that I would readily embrace. In the meantime, I believe that we have been well served by this flag and that it should be retained and be recognised with a place of honour in this nation.