Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise today to speak on the bills from Senators Xenophon and Madigan in relation to the National Flag Act 1953, requiring that Australian flags flown, used or supplied by the Commonwealth be manufactured in Australia from Australian materials. Like the two senators, I am a very proud Australian and I certainly believe that the responsibility of government is to support Australian businesses and manufacturers to ensure we have the best possible opportunity for the future of our country.

Before I go on to discussing the bill specifically, I will share some research I did before speaking this morning. I thought the best thing for me to do was to look at a little of the history of the Australian flag and, regretfully, I must admit that I was quite ignorant about its development. Apparently in 1900 the Melbourne Herald offered £25—which is about $3,000 in today's terms—for the design of a national flag for Australia. They stipulated that all entries had to include the Union Jack and the Southern Cross on the flags. At a similar time another publication, the Review of Reviews of Australasia, also held a competition that did not require inclusion of the Union Jack and Southern Cross—it was an open competition. Following Federation, the British government requested that the Australian government design a new flag, and so an official competition—separate from the other two—was held, and received more than 32,000 entries. The really extraordinary thing was that from all of the competitions, the five entries that were eventually selected were almost identical, with only very minor differences. The winners included, amongst others, a 14-year-old Melbourne schoolboy by the name of Ivor Evans; Lesley Hawkins, a teenage optician's apprentice from Sydney; and William Stevens, a ship's officer from New Zealand.

There was quite an interesting comment in The Bulletin at that the time. I hope the chamber will indulge me in relating their fairly strong words. About the winning flags, The Bulletin commented:

… no artistic value, no national significance … Australia is still Britain's little boy … that bastard flag is a true symbol of the bastard state of Australian opinion …

I thought that was quite extraordinary, given that it was published back at the turn of the 19th century—not the 20th, the 19th.

The design was basically seen as the Victorian flag with a star added. The New South Wales government immediately objected to that of course. They said, 'We are not having a national flag that looks like the Victorian flag.' On 3 September 1901, however, the flag was unfurled for the first time at the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne. That date, 3 September, is apparently now Australian National Flag Day, not that we necessarily celebrate it.