Transcript of the Minister for Administrative Services
The Hon David Jull MP
Seventh Conference of The Samuel Griffith Society
Stamford Plaza Hotel, Adelaide
7 June 1996
Constitutionally Entrenching our Flag
Thank you for inviting me here today to talk to you about constitutionally entrenching the Australian National Flag.
I am glad to say that your invitation was one of the first that I was able to accept in my capacity as Minister for Administrative Services in the new Howard Government.
In accepting your invitation, I saw an opportunity to reiterate the Government’s views on the subject of the national flag.
The Coalition Government is strongly committed to the national flag.
It was this commitment to the flag which, during the election, led us to promise to amend the Flags Act 1953 to “guarantee that all Australians would be consulted before any changes to the national flag were made”.
In our pre-election policy statement on veterans we stated:
“The Australian National Flag, as a national symbol, belongs to the Australian people, not the Prime Minister or the Government of the day.”
“Clearly the present legislative arrangement whereby the National Flag can be changed by an Act of Parliament, without the views of the Australian people being taken into account, is unacceptable.”
On ANZAC Day, the Prime Minister stated:
“It’s a very simple proposition…we will amend the Flags Act so that in future there can be no change to the Australian flag without all of the Australian people being consulted.”
Before turning to this and the issue of constitutionally entrenching the flag, I think it would be worth recalling the flag’s historical development.
I must say that few issues excite as much passion in the community as the question of the Australian National Flag.
And I believe that one of the reasons for this is that it is so effective a design: as a potent symbol of our nation and its history, it occupies centre stage in any debate about where we have come from and where we are going.
The Australian National Flag is the oldest of our national symbols.
Despite this, the history of the flag, like the contents of our Constitution, is not as well known by Australians as it should be.
This has undoubtedly made the flag an easy target for those who believe that its symbolism is anachronistic.
But even the most cursory examination of the story of how we came to choose our flag will reveal that it is, again like our Constitution, distinctly Australian and democratic.
The Australian National Flag was by no means the first flag to be designed in Australia.
As early as about 1823, two military officers were credited with the first recorded attempt to design a ‘national’ flag for Australia.
Significantly, this early design, known as the National Colonial Flag, featured a stylized representation of the Southern Cross, on the red cross of Saint George, and included the Union Jack.
It is also worth mentioning the Australasian Anti-Transportation League flag, unfurled in 1851, which again featured the Southern Cross and the Union Jack.
Three years later, in 1854, the Eureka flag was raised by gold miners at Bakery Hill, Ballarat.
This flag captured the spirit of protest and demonstrated the power of flags as symbols.
Finally, I should mention the flag of the Federation movement of the 1880s and 1890s which gave substance to their slogan: “One people. . .One destiny…One flag”.
Long before Federation, therefore, Australians had come to see flags as a means to express and define their views, ambitions and unity.
It was not, however, until 1900, with Federation looming, that the Australian public were directly involved in a search for a national flag.
A Melbourne journal, the Review of Reviews for Australasia, launched a competition for this purpose in November 1900, offering a first prize of
