Clearly your head is still stuck in the 50's because you obviously have not paid attention to Australian attitudes to religion over the last 50 years. Not only have they been "brave" enough it has actually been enshrined in legislation. BTW "cracker night" was on the Queens Birthday long weekend which is still in place. At least it was in NSW in the 60's and still in the ACT until very recently.

If that is so, why do churches still exist? Why are ministers of religion allowed to spout the nonsense? Perhaps you mean that it cannot be taught in secular schools, but religion is far from being "cancelled" as it should be.

And in the 50s, I'm pretty sure it was Empire Day we were celebrating. See below:

"Cracker night' at least in South Australia and the NT was November 5th. Otherwise known as Guy Fawkes Day.

Fireworks were banned in SA by the then Dunstan Labor Government. AFAIK fireworks are still legal in the NT.

Guy Fawkes; The only Man ever to enter Parliament with honest intentions!:E:D

Altering the flag and adjusting Australia day has nothing to do with altering or removing history, the history will still remain and be taught. The point is to no longer glorify or celebrate something that was a significantly bad event for the original inhabitants. If Australia day was more like solemn ANZAC day you would not have the same issues, as you could swing it to more reflect on how Australia came to be and those that have sacrificed along the way, but these days it's really giant piss-up party for all. The removal of the "jack", is part of Australia maturing as a nation and proving it is no longer a vassal of the old empire, the same as removing the Queens face from all our currency, maybe make important Australians on one side and unique fauna on the reverse. The aboriginal flag will never be the national flag of Australia, that is not the debate here, it is a flag that represents the Aboriginal people and their history, not all Australians. As far as Australia day is concerned, it's now broken, a new day is most likely going to have to be made just to make it a worthwhile day without drama and separatist notions.

When John Batman chose the site for what is now Melbourne he initially entered into a contract with the Wurundjeri Elders for the sale of the land in exchange for cattle and so forth. This was signed at a ceremony which is subject to controversy as to whether it was real, staged or a forgery, however William Barak claimed to have attended the ceremony as a child saying that NSW aborigines had helped with communication and traditions. The main issue is that the Wurundjeri probably thought of the treaty as a temporary, lease type arrangement which they commonly entered into with other tribes in the area. This was one of the only recorded treaty that a colonist sought with the locals, and this treaty was declared void by the governor as negotiation with the indigenous was illegal as the 'crown' did not regard them as landowners to negotiate with, to maintain terra nulius.So Australian Aboriginals were given no rights, even though they occupied the land and were not allowed to deal in any way with colonists, which as it sounds they were willing to do in some circumstances, including the land around Melbourne. Obviously a great many saw no other way around this other than to attack colonists and cause trouble. Which the colonies came down hard on and massacred many.

Oh dear.
 

I live on Thursday Island.
From an entertainment perspective ( we need some up here…:D ) if you had the balls to say that to an Islanders face I’d gladly pay for your Medevac down to Cairns.

What was the sample size, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000, 1000000?
I would guarantee that it was not 26M
I see that it was 8,140. Not a lot in the scheme of things.

I tried to follow the link from the article to the survey but it did not work.

My impression of the survey from the article made it seem liked the question was…” which alternative flag design do you support” as they mentioned that of 8140 replies only 6427 people chose an alternative. This was interpreted as a “protest vote” by the originators of the survey.

Any one here who was a fan of Yes Minister would know how to phrase a survey question…

Actually 8,000+ is a huge sample for a survey. For polling on simple questions, a sample of just 2,401 can return results within a 2 percent margin of error at a 95 percent confidence level for a population of 26 million ... so long as the sample is properly representative.

That properly representative sample was what was missing with the Western Sydney University flag survey, at least with regards to the question of whether Australians want to retain the current Australian flag. The survey, titled the 'Alternative Australian Flag Survey', was web-based and open to any and all comers who knew about it. Despite being sponsored by the Australian Research Council, the survey was not all that well publicised and by its name alone, it almost certainly attracted participants of a particular mindset, specifically those looking for an 'Alternative Australian Flag'.

With regards to what the survey set out to do, namely determining which of six alternative flag designs was most popular, the survey generated reasonable results. With regards to gauging the general population's appetite for actually changing the flag, that survey was generally, if not completely, useless.

I forgot about that! I think it’s inevitable when QEII kicks the bucket the Royals will be off our currency.

Because not even the most die hard monarchist would want to look at Big Ears every day of the week.

Sample sizes and polling methods aside.....

You know we’ve never had a truly free vote on a national flag? The competition held by the newly created government in 1901 to find one had “loyalty to the Empire” as one of the judging criteria. So any non-Union Jack design wasn’t going to go far. And the chosen design still had to be given the tick of approval from the British Colonial Secretary and the King.

Do you have a reference for that contention regarding the judging criteria because that matter is generally disputed. There were no judging criteria published by either the Federal government nor the Review of Reviews, a monthly journal that ran a competition for a flag design at the same time.

The "loyalty to Empire" line seems to be drawn from one of two possible sources; either Ivor Evans' 1918 book, The history of the Australian flag, or Gwen Swinburne's 1969 book, Unfurled: Australia's Flag.

Evans, aged 13 at the time of the flag competition, was one of the joint winners of the competition along with Annie Dorrington, L. J. Hawkins, E. J. Nuttall, and William Stevens. They all submitted essentially identical designs - the flag we use today. In his book, when discussing "loyalty to the British Empire", Evans was not describing the judging criteria rather he was describing the one of the factors that he considered to be important to his design.

Swinburne's reference to competition rules as stating that the design should "be based on the British ensigns" is a misattribution, apparently a quote from Barlow Cumberland's 1909 book, History of the Union Jack and the Flag of the Empire.
On this matter the rules of the competition were abundantly clear;

Given the times, I don't know how much more could have been done by the government to ensure that the selection of the Australian flag was free of Imperial influence.

Flag Competition Documents Review of Reviews October, 1900 Designs for a Federal Flag

They even mention that although a flag design without a Union Jack could technically be submitted it had a small chance of being successful.

One of their criteria was “kinship with Empire”.

So whilst technically you could submit a non Union Jack flag, anyone with half a brain in 1900/1901 knew from the competition brief and the prevailing political culture at the time knew a new flag design that did not have a Union Jack or another symbol denoting being a part of the British Empire was not going to go far in the selection process, so why even bother submitting an entry without one.

To me that was hardly a free and open choice.

Were we even an independent nation in 1901? A lot of historians would regard Federation as just the colonies joining together as one under the same system of British rule. It wasn’t until 1930 that Australian could decide who their Governor General was going to be, as opposed to one selected by the UK. It wasn’t until 1931 that the power of the British parliament to legislate for Australia was mostly removed. It wasn’t until 1986 that it was fully removed, and the appeal to the Privy Council was removed. There’s also technically some reserve powers in the Constitution that technically the Monarch can exercise in regard to Australia, it’s just by convention that’s never happened, so legally and practically it’s an unknown.

It be other nations like Canada, Singapore, India, South Africa etc that removed the Union Jack from their cantons all did so decades after 1901. The culture, the political will to change these symbols changed throughout the 20th century. So to me it’s fairly obvious that short of a war of independence any Australia symbology created as a result of Federation in 1901 was going to adhere to the standards of the time, which meant symbols of the British Empire.


Just like state and territory flags.

The flags that were created for the states pre mid 20th century all featured a Union Jack.

From the 70s onwards, the flags created for places like the NT, the ACT, Christmas and Cocos Islands and Norfolk Island all omit the Union Jack.

I think it’s obvious had the National flag have been created later in the century it would have featured a non Union Jack design.

And has anyone noticed VH registered Jetstar A320 aircraft don't have the Australian flag on them? I guess it is a bit "non denominational" so they can fly in Oz and NZ without offending anyone?

Nothing to do with the often used furphy "not offending anyone"

None of the JQ 320s for any of the various entities, JQ Australia, JQ Asia, JQ Japan, the undelivered JQ HK aircraft, had any national flags applied. Probably to allow the various aircraft to be shifted around each entity as they saw fit. The exception was JQ Pacific aircraft which eventually got a small Vietnamese flag on the nose , may have been due to the government owned Vietnam Airlines buying a majority share in 2012, because I can't see any flags on their aircraft they had prior to that date.

The Aboriginal Flag of today, goes back to the 70s Land Rights campaign. Its not a symbol of pride, nor is it inclusive.
It has become a symbol of protest and division, not one of unity. So it will never be adopted by QANTAS.
If there was a buck in it, Joyce would have adopted it on day two. Hes not gone for a Rainbow Flag, so theres no hope for the Aboriginal Flag.
Besides, it makes no mention of the Torres Strait Islanders and a few other First Nations we claim as ours, who consider themselves apart from others.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....0e29f42c7.jpeg

QANTAS, invented in Queensland,
XXXX, invented in Queensland.
Logical pairing really.

Ask anyone who is not a resident of Australia to look at an Australian flag and say which country it belongs to, then point to a Qantas tail and ask them whose it is, chances are 1% will get the former and 99% will get the latter.

The reason the Canadian flag is so well recognised is that it is so simple and uncluttered, displaying the maple leaf as it does.

We also have a symbol that is exclusively Australian and that is the kangaroo, a simple flag with just a red roo on a contrast background would eliminate all the racial divisiveness, with nothing to remind of the colonisation by Britain, and no need to add this flag and that flag, just one that says 'Australia', no matter what tribe you are from.

Have a look at the Norfolk Island flag, just a clean green Norfolk Island Pine on a green and white three panel flag.

That lower flag troubles me, I always see someone with a plumbers crack flashing a browneye.

Presently, there is an extremely intense political focus concerning the inclusitivioty of Australians which IMO is such an hypocrisy given how the traditional owners of this land have been treated.