Transcript of the Professor Geoffrey Blainey
National Flag Day Address
Brisbane
3 September 2001
Today is the 100th birthday of the Australian flag.
We honour those who designed it. We honour those who upheld it, decade after decade.
The Australian flag has grown in stature. In recent years the affections that surround it have increased. The search for a new flag has failed again and again.
The critics of Australia’s flag – not the flag – have been found wanting.
Contrary to the critics, the flag of a modern nation is never meant to be an up-to-date information sheet. Otherwise we would often be redesigning it. We would have needed a new flag in 1915 – after Gallipoli – and a new flag in 1942, to commemorate the American alliance. We would have needed a new flag in 1967 to commemorate the Aboriginal referendum, and a new flag in the 1990s.
Some say that Australia
