Aboriginal flag is bold, beautiful and ours

Illustration: Eric Lobbecke

In a speech at the Museum of Sydney on January 25, 1998, the former chairman of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and former Australian of the Year, Lowitja O’Donoghue, spoke for many Australians when she set out her hopes for a new ­national flag, one that bound the nation together.

“Our national flag should be a symbol of our national ideals and of the people we want to be,” O’Donoghue said. “We regard ourselves as ­independent, individual and ­inclusive, but our existing flag, our national symbol, says none of this.”

Instead, she said, our flag symbolised a narrow slice of our history including “a significant period when the rights of Australia’s indigenous peoples were overlooked”.

It was for this reason that most indigenous Australians could not relate to our flag, which often spoke of “dispossession and ­oppression”.

“It’s time to leave the Union Jack behind, along with other ­mementos of our infancy as a ­nation. It’s time to agree upon a flag that has meaning ‘for all of us’ … It’s time to realise that a reconciliation movement has taken root in our community that needs symbols to help it along.”

The main debate recently has been about a constitutional referendum on indigenous recognition. Experts have reminded us that only eight of 44 referendums to date have succeeded. Failure would portray us as a racist nation.

Little has been said about the flag lately. But this may be the time to consider changing it to the most beautiful design flying over our land: the Aboriginal flag.

Cynics may see this as compounding the errors of the past: “We’ve stolen their kids and their land, now let’s nick their flag.”

But imagine if Australia’s indigenous people were to offer their flag to Australia as the ultimate symbol of reconciliation.

Copyright of the Aboriginal flag lies with Harold Thomas, who designed it in 1971 and who was ­declared the owner in the Federal Court in April 1997. It would also require his imprimatur.

In 1965, the then Canadian prime minister Lester Pearson ditched the British red ensign and hoisted the stunning, and universally admired, red and white Maple Leaf flag up the flag pole. It contained one primary symbol that represents all Canadians equally.

The Aboriginal flag has the same elements as the Maple Leaf flag. It’s bold, beautiful, classically simple and features one primary symbol — the sun that gives life and shines over us all.

And we wouldn’t need any ­design committees or competitions. The former New Zealand prime minister John Key claimed he had been seated under the Australian flag at several international meetings. In 2015 he made a bold move to win New Zealand its own flag. It ended in failure in what was described as “a toxic example of groupthink” — with a Flag Consideration Panel, two referendums and a compromised, mediocre design.

Our flag is an embarrassment. To the rest of the world it makes us looks like a British branch office. Of the 55 nations in the Commonwealth, all but three — Australia, NZ and Fiji — have their own ­national flags.

Great national flags can generate a lump in the throat and a tear in the eye. Our defaced British ensign fails that test.

At international meetings and events, we look like Great Britain versus Little Britain. Next to New Zealand, we are indiscernible.

Our flag is so utterly confusing, we need a Boxing Kangaroo flag to define us. At cricket matches the English “Barmy Army” regularly ridicule us chanting: “Get your s … stars off our flag.” An embarrassing truth like the little boy who exposed the emperor’s nudity.

And who can imagine the Union Jack a decade after Brexit? Scotland and even Northern Ireland could possibly secede, leaving England and Wales to combine the St George Cross with the Red Dragon passant.

We are a sovereign, mature, ­independent, egalitarian nation. The Aboriginal flag symbolises all these qualities and it would do more for reconciliation than any changes to the Constitution.

It would tell the world we’ve grown up.

And change would only require a plebiscite like the gay marriage vote, not a risky referendum.

The Aboriginal flag is a legally proclaimed Australian flag. Why not let fly it over Parliament House in Canberra for a month and test the reaction?

Harold Scruby is the executive director of Ausflag, which supports a new flag for Australia.