Flags are important. They are colourful, often aesthetically beautiful representations that take on meanings other than governments would have them. Sometimes for the negative, but by and large, flags are positive displays of identity.
British flag tradition divides the ensigns into blue, red and white. This has been the basis for most of Australian vexillogical history. The purpose of the ensigns was to separate government, civil and navy. The blue ensign represented government and was only intended to be flown on government buildings. The red ensign is for civil or merchant means and is mainly intended to be flown on merchant vessels at sea. The white ensign was for the Royal Navy.
The blue and red ensigns without defacement. The white ensign is the Royal Navy white ensign.
When an ensign has a badge or emblem added to it, this is called a defaced ensign. So for instance the current Australian national flag with its southern cross and six pointed star is termed a defaced ensign.
For most of the colonial Australian era defaced ensigns were used. There was the
Murray River flag which had blue and white stripes across a defaced ensign. There was the
NSW Ensign which had a blue cross with stars on it in a defaced white ensign. And there was the
anti-transportation league defaced blue ensign which contained a yellow southern cross.
The
Eureka and
Bowman flag were exceptions during colonial times as they carried no dominant European or British imagery. The Bowman flag ended up becoming the Australian coat of arms.
While colonial Australians were making up flags of all kinds, the governments of the colonies - now our States - stuck much closer to the British Ensign tradition and placed government badges on blue ensigns. Even today the State flags are defaced Blue Ensigns.
So pluralism dominated the colonial era even if that pluralism was predominantly based around the British Ensign tradition with the Eureka and Bowman being the stand outs.
The defaced blue, red and white Australians Ensigns. The RAN used the British white ensign until 1967, during the Vietnam conflict, when it was replaced by the Australian White Ensign upon British request.
With Federation and the flag competition which followed, pluralism still remained. It was assumed that the national flag would be the Union Jack, but Australians ended up using the
Australian Blue Ensign and the
Australian Red Ensign interchangeably with the Union Jack as Australian national flags. This continued until well into the 1970s.
Successive Australian governments, including Curtin's and Menzies had urged that Australians adopt the Blue Ensign as the unofficial national flag rather then Red ensign - which carried the colour of communism - or the Union Jack, which was ... well ... British.
This arrangement was finally formalised in the 1953 Flag Act. It is also interesting to note that the Blue Ensign, which was the flag of government and only supposed to be flown on government buildings, became Australia's new national flag. A statist start to the second half of the twentieth century.
The Australian National Flag has come under constant scrutiny, its Union Jack in the top left corner is questioned as truly representing Australian identity. It also challenged from what is a pluralistic society as to whether it can be truly representative as a unifying and unitary symbol.
Modern flags have not looked to British heraldry for inspiration and have instead used colours, fauna and flora that are native to Australia.
The 1970s also produced challengers to the Ensign tradition of Australian vexillology. Harold Thomas designed the Aboriginal Flag, which was used several years later by
Cathy Freeman in a pluralistic manner to display her identity at the commonwealth games. There is also the Torres Strait Islander flag which is outside of the ensign design tradition.
The 1980s saw the popularity of Boxing Matilda with the win by Australia II of the America's Cup. Since then it has become common
for overseas Australian military units to fly in a pluralistic manner alongside the national flag. The Boxing Matilda motif originally came from the Australian Air Force in Singapore when 21 Sqn was annoyed that their aircraft looked exactly the same as the British aircraft - so they slapped a boxing kangaroo on them. This motif was used on aircraft and ships in the Pacific, Europe, North Africa and the Mediterranean.
In 1982 Robert Ingpen designed the
Northern Territory flag using the 'Australian Pale' motif. This has the southern cross in the left hand position of the flag and a defaced badge or motif in the right hand side of the flag. This is a uniquely Australian design which
Brendan Jones used to base his state flag designs
on.
The 1990s also saw the increasing popularity of Ausflag and its competitions. Though the assumption was the the current unitary national flag would be replaced with another unitary one. Constantly there has been the presumption that there must be
one which goes against Australian practice and history. Australians have never really used just
one flag. Australia is kind of unique in our pluralistic view of flags.
Recently there have been two other significant events surrounding the 1953 Flag Act. When the Howard Government came to power, Ausflag's Harold Scruby sent
a letter to the government requesting the Australian Blue Ensign be looked at to determine if popular will should determine that it is to replaced or not. The government's response was to attempt to entrench the Blue Ensign in the flag act
via requiring a referendum to change the national flag in the Flag Act.
The second significant event was the elevation of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags via Section 5 of the Flag Act to
official flags of Australia. So again, flag pluralism is finding its way back into the Australian vexillogical conscious despite the Flag Act assuming a unitary national flag.
Consequently I amended the Flag Act so that Section 5 could be used to petition the Governor-General for flags to be put up at referendum to be elevated to 'official flags of Australia' and can be used with the same exalted status as the Australian National Flag. This becomes a legislative formalisation of flag pluralism.
This would not discriminate against those that think the Blue Ensign represents them fully as Australians, as they would still be able to use it as a national flag. This would allow other Australians to use referendum approved - hence popular - Section 5 flags to represent themselves as Australians. For instance the Eureka Flag would be an instant candidate to be submitted by petition to be voted upon in a referendum to determine if it will become a Section 5 flag.
Most nations and international institutions adopt unitary approaches to a national flag, but who says Australia has to do the same: we can innovate however we want. We can do it our way.
Australians are pluralistic, our vexillogical history is pluralistic, and Section 5 of the Flag Act - with some tweaks - enables that pluralism to expressed fully. Australia can, and should, have more than one national flag.
Three popular flags from the Ausflag 1993 Flag Competition.
