Let’s salute the nuddy pole!

Highly charged: do we really need a flag anyway?

Of all the minimalist puzzles in Zen koans, my favourite is “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” As that sound is a prelude to this column, please attempt it now.

All hail minimalism. I recall with pleasure the minimalist approach to foreign policy mooted by an upstart Dutch political party: any country annoyed by the Netherlands would ring a hotline and hear a recorded message saying: “We surrender!” I also preferred the so-called “minimalist approach” to a hypothetical Australian republic. Simply replace “Governor-General” with “President” on all the Yarralumla stationery. Easy peasy.

A few weeks ago I chaired a discussion on the Australian Republican Movement’s new model, which controversially involves a form of direct election. It co-starred Peter FitzSimons (the red-bandana-crowned king of the ARM), erstwhile foreign minister Bob Carr and constitutional expert Professor Anne Twomey, who at one point asked a mischievous question: “Why have a head of state at all?”

I was reminded of the issue of the Australian flag, which, as a lifetime member of the Ausflag committee, I’ve long wanted changed. At least getting rid of the Union Jack stuck in the top corner like a stamp on an envelope, directing any patriotic feelings to the letterbox at Buck Palace. Then another novel thought struck. Why have a flag at all?

Flags are very dangerous pieces of fabric. We are not content to fly them and salute them and lower them to half-mast on sad occasions. Countless millions have died fighting for the wretched, bloodstained things. The flag has draped countless coffins. So let me run a radical idea up the pole and see if you salute it. Beloved readers and fellow patriots, instead of fighting over a putative design for a flag (just as we squabble over a putative republic), let’s be the one and only nation without one. No fatal fabric. No flag. Behold the nuddy pole!

Designing a flag is and always was a martial art. Flags date back to ancient Egypt – as a rallying point in military conflicts. From then to Hitler’s contribution, the fluttering swastika flag, they’ve been associated with megadeath and madness. I suspect there was a Stars and Stripes painted on the bomb dropped on Hiroshima; at the pro-Trump insurrection at the Capitol last year the same flag filled the air, along with MAGA chanting. And please note that Australia has a proud tradition of following the US flag into US battles, including in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan; many Australian conservatives seem more inspired by the US flag than their own.

So imagine your sense of peaceful pride when, in years to come, you stand outside the United Nations building on New York’s East River and look up at that long row of flags representing said nations… only to see one nuddy pole. It might puzzle some but soon they’d get the elegant simplicity of the Adams Idea – for which he’d claim neither royalties nor reward.

Apart from the cost savings, this ultimate and inspired piece of minimalism would mean that people everywhere would think of Australia whenever they saw a nuddy pole. Every time a soldier from any nation lowered a flag at sunset there we’d be. Nuddy poles. More valuable than Blue Poles.

There’s also an audible aspect. Flagpoles have a rope for raising and lowering these terrible textiles. So by all means let us keep the rope on our nuddy flagpole. Because it brings us back to the Zen koan. You will hear the sound of one rope slapping.