It attracts minority support. The latest poll gives it 48 per cent.
Recent research at the University of Western Australia shows those who fly it on cars are just as likely to be racists as patriots. How can something which speaks of Britain at night possibly evoke Australian patriotism?
I fly my Eureka flag every day of the year outside my unit. When the nutters pull it down I buy another one. I call this and the views I hold, patriotism.
The design of the Australian flag was decided by two navy officers, probably poms and approved by Menzies in The Flag Act 1953.
Menzies was British to his boot straps, as he used to say. When the Japanese were attacking Darwin, Menzies was trying to join the British war cabinet. In his flag antics, he was merely trying to entrench Britishness in Australia.
At the recent Festival of Ideas, conducted at Melbourne University, the consensus was that Australia has not yet reached its post colonial era.
While we accept the trappings of Britian, we will never reach this era.
We have much to be proud of. We built our own society based on our own values of social and religious equality. We should embrace our values more fully and move on.
John Bergin,
Armidale
