On January 21, Prime Minister John Howard condemned the organisers of the Big Day Out (BDO) music festival in Sydney for asking those planning to attend not to display Australian flags at the events as an "insult to the freedom it represents".
In a public statement issued on January 24, the socialist youth organisation Resistance labelled Howard's and the corporate media's hysterical response to what they incorrectly described as an attempt by the BDO organisers to "ban" or "outlaw" the flag as "an attempt to deny the reality that the Australian flag is used as a symbol of racism and national chauvinism".
Last year, Resistance provoked a similarly hysterical response to its contribution to the public discussion about what is symbolised by the Australian flag — and the democratic right to publicly reject such a symbol — by selling "flag-burning kits" to university students around the country during Orientation Week.
The kits were created in response to the illegal confiscation from a Footscray gallery by Victoria Police of an artwork designed by Resistance activist Azlan McLennan entitled "Proudly Un-Australian". The artwork depicted a burnt Australian flag.
Melbourne Resistance organiser Brianna Pike told Green Left Weekly: "We don't support a ban on the flag at the Big Day Out, but the organisers have explicitly stated that there is no ban. We agree with their understated assessment that 'In recent times, there has been an increased incidence of flags brandished aggressively and this has led to increased tension' and 'aggressive behaviour' against patrons."
Pike added: "The fact that the event organisers believed they had to actively discourage people from bringing the flag to the concert is just a symptom of the reality that the past decade of the Howard government's cultivation of jingoism and national chauvinism has led to a situation where racist thugs can hide behind the flag and attack people."
Student anti-war activists from Sydney gathered at the gates of the BDO festival on January 25 urging people to "wear an anti-war ribbon, not the flag".
Sydney Resistance organiser Simon Cunich, who was part of the action, told GLW, "The media and politicians should take this as a wake-up call to the fact that the flag is being used as the 'gang colour' of racists. The organisers, as well as many young people who attended the Big Day Out last year, in the aftermath of the Cronulla lynch attacks against Australians of Middle Eastern background, saw that the flag was clearly being used as a symbol of race-hate and intolerance."
At the Resistance stall inside the gates, many young people expressed their agreement about the racist way the flag was used, and the intolerant atmosphere at January 26, 2006, BDO concert following the Cronulla events.
In discussions with other young people about why they were wearing the flag, some regurgitated Howard-speak claiming it symbolised "mateship" or a "fair go for all". Others believed it symbolised "freedoms" that existed in Australia. Resistance members pointed out that such freedoms were not "Aussie values", but were globally recognised human rights, and asked them if they thought Howard embodied the above values in his wonderful egalitarian legislation such as Work Choices.
"Howard has used nationalism and the rhetoric of 'protecting Aussie values' to justify both his brutal foreign policies, such as its participation in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and its attempts to criminalise political dissent", said Cunich. "The fact that Labor politicians Kevin Rudd and Morris Iemma are trying to outflank Howard in his support for the Australian flag just serves to highlight the absolute political bankruptcy of the Labor Party."
In the Sydney Morning Herald's online Your Say section about the issue, many people agreed with the event organisers' assessment. One person who'd been to the 2006 BDO wrote: "It was being used as a 'gang colour' and there's no way in hell I'd want to have been a person of 'Middle Eastern appearance' at last year's event.
"Kevin Rudd reckons 'When you have any national event organiser in this country describing the Australian national flag as, quote, a gang colour, then I don't know what sort of country we live in any more'.
"Kev, mate, when you have young Australians using the flag as a symbol of their hatred for anyone who isn't whitebred, and wearing it as a cape while they go off on super hero adventures to bash up women wearing headscarves, then I don't know what kind of country we're living in anymore, either."