Tory Shepherd, Ozzie flag oi oi, and once more around the mulberry bush ...

(Above: more Nicholson here).

Of all the arguments in favour of Australia getting a new flag - which would logically follow from Australia becoming a republic and Australia getting a new national anthem, rather than its current dirge - the silliest would have to be the one led by Tory Shepherd in Our national flag has been highjacked by hillbillies.

Well let's not argue about highjack in the header, which I see is allowed by some as a variant of hijack and hijacker, which after all is just an Americanism done by joining highwayman to jacker (which apparently in turn is derived from hunting by night with the aid of a jack light).

Instead let's cut to the Tory chase:

The day’s been bastardised by bogans and for a while now has been descending into a celebration of banal racism.

But Penbo does not go far enough when he says we need to transform the day into a celebration of belonging to this country.

Australia Day needs an overhaul.

So has the flag. So let’s change it. Not just because, as he puts it, it’s sullied by another nation’s symbol, but because the flag itself has become a symbol of racism.

Um, I'd always thought it was a symbol of useless Pommy gits, what with the Union Jack rampant in the corner and a half assed Southern Cross quiescent in the south. And sic transit gloria the White Australia policy, as if Australia and the flag had suddenly become racist this last decade, when there's been a vigorous streak of racism bubbling along ever since the British found a terra nullius (try being Chinese on an Australian goldfield in the nineteenth century and telling me otherwise).

But poor Tory is in visceral mood, and fearing the bogans who will seize Australia day and make it their own, she wants change, and she wants it now:

A flag is a symbol, and a symbol is by definition a shifting creature, pointing to an underlying idea. Our flag’s meaning has shifted and increasingly it is pointing to a fervent nationalism that has crept over the line into bigotry and intolerance. It’s rabid patriotism and it’s ugly.

Well yes, a flag is a symbol, but what exactly is the underlying ideal - a republic? - and what's to say that a new symbol won't attract exactly the same sort of herd bogan mentality to it?

A symbol is only useful if it can make manifest the undercurrents already flourishing in the land. And fortunately - at least up until the days of the Hawke and Howard governments - Australians were resistant to the use of the flag for cheap knee jerk flourishes of patriotism, in contrast to the United States, where even street bums with nothing to thank the country for, will still wave the flag in your face. And unfortunately after the Howard government flag waving became de rigeur in the antipodes.

Who can forget Howard's desire to link education funding to schools having to have a flagpole, and a flag? (Schools told to fly flag or lose cash).

With a little bit of luck, if he'd stayed in power long enough, everybody would have started the day the way they did back in 1901:

In 1901, once a week, children were organised into the form of a hollow square facing the flagpole. [The Victorian "Education Gazette and Teachers' Aid" outlined the procedure]: "When, at a given signal, the flag is run up, the boys should salute, and the girls stand to attention. Then all, placing the right hand on the left breast, should say the following words simultaneously:-

'I love God and my country; I honour the flag; I will serve the King, and cheerfully obey my parents, teachers, and the laws.'

Immediately afterwards, taking the time from the teacher, or some one appointed for the purpose, three cheers for the King should be given, the boys uncovering their heads." (here)

Well they kept that kind of racket running well into the nineteen fifties with only a name change to take care of Queenly gender issues.

But okay, taking on board Tory is mad as hell, if we want a quiet symbol of Australia's peaceful non-racist, non-confrontational ways, how about this?

I keed, I keed. Back to Tory's fever:

The flag has come to signify Cronulla. The immediate mental image of the flag, for many, was proudly waving from a pole against a broad blue sky. Now it is more vividly pictured slung around a sunburned red neck, under an angry face. It is associated with the smell of drunken louts and the stench of racism.

On Facebook it is the profile picture of all those “F(*&(K Off, We’re Full” eedjits.

Indeed. But there are always simple minded folk who will take up any symbol on offer, chant four legs good, two legs baad, get on the piss, go tribal and bay at the moon. If you wanted to be perverse, you could argue that republicanism is more of the same, in a refined way, as Australians seek to define an Australian image and ethos removed from that wretched Union Jack tucked in the corner.

So how about the Eureka flag?

After all, it stood for an anti-taxation platform amongst the original diggers, and was taken up by the shearers during the 1891 Barcaldine strike.

Sorry, no go for Tory:

Like the Eureka flag, it has irreversibly become associated with a different meaning. The Southern Cross on that flag was once associated with workers rising up against corrupt officials, a symbol of strength and defiance, and a fair go. It was picked up and flown by a range of people who admired those qualities, but now it rests most firmly with right-wingers afraid of non-Anglos.

These flags started out noble, and ended up bogan.

Um, yes, but when the Eureka flag started out, it actually started out fractious and troublesome and rebellious and difficult, not noble, and was considered bogan at the time.

The Murdoch minions of their day heaped scorn on the Eureka flag and its Irish tendency to deny the Union Jack. It was rabble rousing wild cat stuff, and a matter for serious conservative scorn, and cherished by few, unless you happened to be Irish, or a gold miner or a shearer rallying to the cause.

Could it be - gasp - that symbols will be taken as used as symbols according to the desires of those who wish to use the symbol? And Tory's new flag will suffer the same fate? How about every student is required to do a course in Roland Barthes and the use of symbols in public discourse?

Well Tory's not going to have any of that French dandified cheese-eating reflexiveness, not when she's out bogan and flag-hunting:

So let’s get a new one. The process itself would be a way to explore what it means to be Australian, in the same way that the Republic debate does. It would be a chance to do a less token job of recognising the damage colonising forces did to the Aboriginal people, and to recognise their part in our history and heritage. A way to discuss and express the rich tapestry of Australian life.

You mean a new flag before a republic? Cart before horse in the classic Australian way. Knee jerk nationalism of a new kind as the way forward? A flag competition just like all the flag competitions that have gone before? Designers all agog, and the rest of us bored to tears by the lack of imagination on display?

Before we can all even agree that the monarchy is no longer relevant and that visits by the likes of Prince Willy are just a way to distract from the summer heat, in much the same way as Sydney bungs on a festival, and invites other entertainers to our shores?

Yep because Tory wants a symbol that suits her symbolic needs, and never forget, she just loves Australia, so naturally she loves invasion day:

I love Australia Day. And that’s coming from someone who works public holidays. It’s immensely important to humans to have rituals, and days dedicated to those rituals. They are a chance to celebrate an idea, to remember history, to dedicate to family.

But more than anything they are a chance to reflect on who we were, who we are and who we want to become.

Hmm, could it be that we need a flag showing a pair of thongs (flip flops to you bloody foreigners) and a nice strong sun block, perhaps on a sand background, with a beach umbrella rampant?

No, you see, Tory is determined to be strident:

This Australia it’s more important than ever to have that reflection. Because we’ve started heading down the wrong track, and both Australia Day and the flag are becoming symbols of that.

So we – someone, Australians, all of us, convict puppies, free settler spawn, refugees, mongrels and migrants – need to work out a better way forward.

Starting with the day, and with the flag.

Or perhaps half assed, and in an upside down back the front way, like forget the republic, let's just do the flag, and maybe a national song (hands up Waltzing Matilda) and a new anthem competition so we can have a brand new dirge. And once the new symbols are in place, everything will be hunky dory. Except ... hang on a sec ... there's still bogans and racists in this fair land. How can that be?

Well I hate to sound back to the future, but Bob Hawke, John Howard, and the rampant Murdoch press and its minions - and yes The Punch, while pretending to be a blog is part of the machine - can take a lot of credit for the way things go these days on Australia Day. For that thought, I'm indebted to one iansand, who said it well enough that I'll borrow his words:

Over the last 20 or 30 years (and for all I know Gough started it) I have noticed a shift in politics from a quiet pride in being Australian to strident nationalism. It has been used as a political tactic. Hawke and the Americas Cup is an example and Howard’s fortress Australia approach to refugees was another. When did we start having official celebration of Australia Day beyond a couple of old fogies rabbiting on at a ceremony somewhere? The rest of us went to the beach and had a few beers. It is a bread and circuses thing.

That political change preceded (or maybe followed) social change. We have gone from laconic nationalism to strident nationalism. When I were lad flying an Australian flag on your car would have been tacky (and I still think it is), but how many will you see today? Stridency has moved from vaguely embarrassing to an accepted norm.

Well Gough didn't start it, but he certainly gave it a kick along, and now both parties' logos reference the flag, with the Labor party donning the Southern Cross, and the Liberals wrapping themselves in the whole damn kit and kaboodle thing. And since those days, when natural English reticence got cross-bred in to Bob Hawke mongrel and John Howard paranoid petit bourgeoisie, we've been heading down the stridency path. And yes, now you see the Australian flag flying on cars in a way which is so American the vulgarity fills the nostrils with its jingoistic stench.

Given all that, and given patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, and there being many scoundrels in the world, changing the flag is a bit like window dressing the Titanic without worrying about the structural design.

Tory's stridency naturally produced some strident responses, and a good time was had by all as they denounced lefties and traitors, and so it goes, The Punch has served up yet another stew of conversation, though to call it intelligent is an abuse of language. And after wiping myself down and flecking off the spittle, I came to the conclusion I'd be better off with a cup of tea and a good lie down.

But not before putting in a plug for a republic first and the Eureka flag second, never mind that the Maoists and the neo Nazis at one time or another embraced it, and never mind that it has a snowball's chance in hell of getting adopted. After all, what's the point of loon pond if you can't have a bunch of mindless squawks entirely lacking in musicality and symmetry.

It's the only flag for me, on the basis that any flag that gets called "the banner of Jew poofters" sounds just right. (here)

Meantime, Tory made me ever so nostalgic for the good old days of raising the flag and saluting it and saying the oath and standing for "God save the Queen" in the cinemah, that I suddenly came over all Gough again, and wanted to storm the barricades and overthrow the British and their wretched anthem and flag, and that's why I thought I might end with this bit of nostalgia. Oh lord, so young and so full of Bellbird bogans: