And in a trifecta for the start of the new financial year, now the flag is even more tarnished than we thought. Recent protests, particularly by anti-authority groups, have featured various versions of the Australian flag to signal their beliefs. The blue ensign, chosen from a design competition in 1901 was to be used by the new federal government not by the people. Restrictions on its use were not lifted until 1941 and it did not become the national flag until 1954. It has became forever tainted after the Cronulla riots in 2005.The red ensign is now waved by sovereign citizens while the trade union movement claims the Eureka flag. The blue ensign is now often worn as a cloak – an academic commented that if worn like clothing, the national flag could have “sinister” connotations while the CEO of the Multicultural Council of Tasmania said the flag “should never, ever be weaponised or treated with disrespect”. There were no comments reported from women although Australia would be better off with a new and different flag to mark the Republic if we could ever agree on its design. Of note, however, is the choice by Pauline Hanson and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price – both federal Senators – to drape themselves in the blue ensign for National Flag Day on 3 September. [“Under False Flags: why are Australia’s blue and red ensigns and Eureka Flag being flown at Right Wing Rallies” by Tory Shepherd, The Guardian online, 6 September 2025 – an interesting, short read about the history of many of Australian flags other than The Boxing Kangaroo.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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And in a trifecta for the start of the new financial year, now the flag is even more tarnished than we thought. Recent protests, particularly by anti-authority groups, have featured various versions of the Australian flag to signal their beliefs….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-8","wpcat-8-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2982"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3030,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2982\/revisions\/3030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}