Realist,

I agree with you.... I have always said that the aboriginal flag should replace the British flag in the corner at some stage in the future. That is if the aboriginals will accept that. They should be asked first.

I have the greatest respect for our soldiers and having never served I can only imagine that when all those miles away from home the flag becomes a much more important icon than to me on the streets of an Aussie city.

The soldiers however weren't fighting for the flag as some try to say... they were fighting for freedom as they saw it and their country and families.

As to burning the flag .... turn the other cheek. If the worst thing someone does is to burn our flag when they are upset with our country, then let them burn the flag daily. It is a non-violent way of protesting against a country. Those who are offended by it should grow up.

Even though I wouldn't have done it the students who are giving away (selling) flag burning kits do it to get themselves on the news and to protest what they believe is wrong with our society. Again I say big deal... turn the other cheek and grow up. These kids are expressing a view in a free society which is really what the Anzacs fought for. FREEDOM

Why, gw, would Australians of Irish descent want to have the Union Jack represented on the Australian flag? Is there some special affinity between the British and Irish that I, as an Aussie of Irish heritage, am unaware of?

It took the Angles, Saxons, Danes and other inhabitants of England only about two hundred years to get over being invaded by the Normans. You're dragging the chain with this invasion stuff. Get over it!

I always consider it the action of the most abject and those bereft in any standards to wish to burn, out of spite, that which others hold dear.

Burning the Australian flag is as justified as Muslims burning the Danish flag or the Nazis and their famous book burnings. All these actions display a complete absence of reason or justification.

It is the act of the small, the feaful, the incompetent and the negative to pursue such infantile and destructive actions. Nothing can justify it, not claims to historic repression nor anger with the voting preferences of the majority of society.

Oh and the spiteful and arrogant sneering at the “British Empire” might go down with small minded trolls who live in the shadow of their own inferiority complexes but anyone with any capacity for reasoning would see, the British Empire also gave a lot and was, when compared to any other “Empires” from the Spanish in South America to the Indonesian Empire which tried to swallow up East Timor, a pretty good “governor” by all and every comparative standard.

Reynard
The linguistic history, and a fair bit of the cultural history, is that,mostly, the Normans assimilated to the English. Is that what you advocate for Australia, or am I misinterpreting your historical reference?

odsoc

thats an Aye from me for Realists suggestion.