ADVANCE AUSTRALIA WHERE?

Australia Day may be behind us again for another year but there are still some dust clouds in its wake. Criticisms by the Australian of the Year, Mick Dodson, that we celebrate it on the wrong day and the date should be changed to pacify Aborigines.Criticism that there were more worthy indigenous people than Dodson anyway for the top honour.And growing concern about hooligans hijacking the Australian flag as some sort of right-wing, racist, skin-head emblem.

And growing concern about hooligans hijacking the Australian flag as some sort of right-wing, racist, skin-head emblem. There’s that miniscule group of numbskulls calling themselves Southern Cross Soldiers but on their website emblem they mis-spelt the word as ‘Sothern’.

The RSL president in New South Wales has called flag-draped hooligans  ‘bloody dickheads’. Don Rowe says ‘They need to wake up to themselves. The flag is the symbol of our nation, it's not an excuse to get drunk and do loutish behaviour,’

His view is echoed by Australian businessman Dick Smith, who said those responsible brought the flag into ‘disrepute’.

‘When I see what some of these louts are doing draped in the flag, it is disgusting,’ he said. ‘People have fought and died under that flag.’

Of course Dick Smith put the Aussie flag on his brand of Aussie-owned, Australian-made products, and I think that Dick Smith brand has now been sold to Sanitarium –a foreign company.

Other critics say Australia Day celebrations are starting to look like drunken Kontiki tours in Europe.

The Daily Telegraph says today ‘the symbol of Australian pride is being hijacked by a new breed of hooligans who drape themselves in the national flag before embarking on hate-filled rampages. The show of patriotism has resulted in a surge in the number of young people getting Australian-themed tattoos, including the boxing kangaroo and the Southern Cross.’

It does raise other issues about the flag and the national anthem. Australians have never been known to be overtly patriotic and at Australia Day concerts and beaches flags – and flag-motifed t-shirts and bikinis were everywhere.

Maybe I spent too long living in the United States but I am still surprised and mildly offended by the way commercial companies use and abuse our flag and national anthem in radio and television ads.

They do get overly precious in the U.S. I remember the ludicrous controversy when Jose Feliciano put his heart and soul into his version at the opening of the World Series one year. He was virtually accused of blasphemy.

Didn’t seem to matter that a blind kid from Puerto Rico was worshipping his success and freedom from poverty.

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009