Peter Dutton’s Indigenous flag ban is disgusting politics with dangerous consequences

Peter Dutton’s undertaking not to stand in front of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags is the kind of red-rag-to-a-bull politics that feeds off false division under the guise of unity.

The opposition leader claimed on Tuesday that, unlike other nations, Australians are asked to identify with three different flags but he intended to appear only under the national flag of Australia. “In the run-up to Australia Day as well as Anzac Day and other days of significance, we need to have more pride in our country about who we are and our great Australian story,” he told 2GB’s Ben Fordham. “I think we’ve cheapened the story of our reconciliation and I think we’ve commercialised elements of that which is unhelpful.”

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is playing divisive politics with serious ramifications for community harmony. Credit: Kate Geraghty

Anthony Albanese took to the podium in May 2022 for his first press conference as prime minister at Parliament House in front of three standards: the Australian national flag, the Australian Aboriginal flag and the Torres Strait Islander flag. Subsequently, the three flags hang in the House of Representatives and Senate chambers.

Dutton has proven to have a good radar of public sentiment. But even if you accept some people don’t like the idea of three flags being displayed, Dutton has shown callous disregard for community harmony by weaponising such unease.

Dutton’s latest foray into the politics of separatism is a distraction from his continuing failure to articulate policy and places responsible promotion of social cohesion below goading the left into reaction.

Wittingly or unwittingly, Dutton has aligned himself with Pauline Hanson, who from the jump has fulminated against the plethora of flags. “To survive in peace and harmony, united and strong, we must have one people, one nation, one flag,” Hanson warned against the Aboriginal flag in her 1996 first speech to parliament.

Dutton also seems unaware of the Coalition’s proud record.

Scott Morrison’s dramatic gesture of acquiring copyright to the Aboriginal flag in January 2022 reminded Australians just what a powerful symbol it had become.

Few flags have played the same role in bringing together a disparate group of downtrodden people and leading them in a struggle against difficult odds. In the decade before its creation, Indigenous people won the vote and were recognised as citizens in the 1967 referendum. The flag was given its final form at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, set up outside Parliament House in 1972, where it played the role it has enjoyed since in the fight for land rights and many other causes.

In 2022, the Herald successfully encouraged then-NSW premier Dominic Perrottet to fly the Aboriginal flag on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, despite some financial cost of making that happen. “I think it brings unity to our country and I think it’s a small price to pay for that unification,” Perrottet said.

First Nations will remember Dutton boycotting the Rudd government’s 2008 apology to the stolen generations. He has apologised, saying he failed to grasp the moment’s “symbolic significance”. His bogus flag-waving is more of the same disgusting, divisive short-term politics, unworthy of a man who would be leader of our nation.

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