Bishop calls for jailing of flag burners

Wednesday, November 17, 1993 - 11:00

Kiraz Janicke, Sydney

Federal Liberal MP Bronwyn Bishop has introduced a private member's bill to make it an offence to destroy or damage the Australian flag. The bill imposes a six-month prison sentence or a fine of up to $11,000.

Resistance activist Simon Cunich, who helped distribute Australian flag-burning kits on Sydney university campuses last month to protest against the government and media vilification of the Australian Muslim and Middle Eastern community, told Green Left Weekly: "For more than a century, the Australian flag has been used as a symbol to denigrate other people's cultures and ways of life. It represents the dispossession and continued oppression of the Indigenous Australians. It represents Australian wars of aggression in Vietnam and Iraq in the interests of big business.

"It also represents the brutal detention of refugees, the destruction of our civil liberties and the racist scapegoating of Muslims in the so-called war on terror. By burning the flag we are saying that we reject these values."

Responding to Bishop's threat that, "It is about time we stood up for our national symbol and sent the message that it is not acceptable for our flag to be destroyed or violated in any way and that if you do, consequences will follow", Cunich added: "The draconian penalties Bishop proposes are a further attempt to undermine our fast-disappearing civil liberties".

This is not the first attempt to make desecration of the flag a crime. In 1953, then leader of the ALP and staunch supporter of the White Australia Policy Arthur Caldwell called for the Flags Act to be amended to criminalise desecration. The National Party's Michael Cobb introduced private member's bills in 1989, 1990, 1991 and 1992 to ban desecration, but on each occasion the bill lapsed.

It is no surprise that some of the most fervent supporters of Bishop's proposed bill are members of the neo-Nazi group Stormfront.

From Green Left Weekly, April 5, 2006.

Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.