The Coalition wants to make flag burning a crime. It’s a revival of a decades-old battle
- Written by: Weekend Times
This week, the Coalition released a policy it promised would “protect and defend our national day, our national flag and our war memorials”.
Under this policy, the burning of the Australian
flag and desecration of war memorials would be criminalised. The Coalition also promised to legislate to prevent the date of Australia Day being changed without a plebiscite.
These are long-standing themes on the populist right of Australian politics. They are prominent in the discourse of the right-wing digital campaigning organisation Advance, and in the Murdoch media.
News24 presenter Peta Credlin, the former chief of staff to Prime Minister Tony Abbott, has warned a seismic shift in Australian politics would occur if the Coalition did not seize issues driving One Nation’s support. She included the issues of financial insecurity, disrespect for national symbols like the Australian flag and mass migration.
As the next federal election draws closer, Australians must get used to hearing more and more about flag politics and Australia Day debates. While these issues recede from view from time to time, they have a long history in Australian politics, and are shaping up to be recurring themes in conservative political discourse in the months ahead.
Flag politics
In February, Angus Taylor made his first speech as Liberal Leader in front of an array of Australian flags – no Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander flags in sight.
It was a reminder of the array of flags that appeared behind Abbott as prime minister, and a signal of the populist direction in which the Liberal Party was moving.
In September last year, Liberal Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson wore the Australian flag in the Senate. They have called for the burning of the flag to be criminalised.
Australia has had a national flag day since 1996, when it was introduced by the Howard government. Two years later, Prime Minister John Howard amended the Flags Act to ensure the Australian flag could only be changed through a plebiscite.
In 2004, the Howard government made it a condition of federal funding that schools had a functioning flagpole and flew the Australian flag.
Howard was imposing his own vision of Australia over that of his predecessor, Paul Keating, who had objected to the presence of the Union Jack in the Australian flag.
In 1995, the Union Jack was removed from the version of the flag in the Labor Party logo, and in the same year, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags were proclaimed flags of Australia under the Flags Act.
The flying of the Indigenous flags alongside the Australian flag has been normalised under the Albanese government and is widely seen as an important form of recognition of Australia’s First Nations peoples.
However, then-Liberal Leader Peter Dutton said in 2024 he would not stand next to the Indigenous flags and that the flying of the three flags was “dividing our country unnecessarily”.
Price has echoed the flag discourse of the populist right, saying:
The prime minister’s decision to stand in front of three flags isn’t an act of respect; it’s an act of disrespect. From disrespect comes division, from division comes disloyalty and from disloyalty comes a greater motive for desecration.
Here, the “disrespect” becomes the supposed contempt on the part of elites for the values of ordinary Australians.
Australia Day politics
Flag politics easily merges into Australia Day politics.
Liberal MP Henry Pike – part of the lineup for the release of the new Coalition policy this week – introduced an Australia Day Bill in 2023, and reintroduced it in September 2025. He has said his bill was needed because “every year we see Canberra elites trying to weaken our national day and our national identity”.
Pike has been consistent in this message since his first speech, where he committed himself to championing Australia’s heritage and way of life, suggesting there were:
many in this building who hold these suburban values, and our national traditions, with disdain. They conspire to change our flag, our head of state, our national day, and our services of remembrance.
Two years ago, Dutton urged “patriotic” Australians to boycott Woolworths for not stocking Australian flag merchandise for Australia Day.
In January this year, the Coalition’s digital ads asked viewers to “put Australians first”, “legislate the date” or, as one MP put it:
agree that burning the flag should be illegal.
A sign of the times
Put together, the resurgence of flag politics and Australia Day politics points to growing efforts by conservative politicians to compete with One Nation on issues of national pride.
It’s a worrying sign of the times when devotion to the current Australian flag or the current date of Australia Day becomes a test of patriotism.
Democratic deliberation or nuanced discussion is set aside in favour of the question: how much do you love Australia?
Unlike France, Australia has no prohibition on the appropriation of national symbols by political parties.
The current Coalition leaders, Taylor and Nationals leader Matt Canavan, are keen to stoke patriotic emotion by suggesting national identity is under threat.
How successful the Labor Party will be in promoting an alternative “progressive patriotism” is yet to be seen.
Marian Sawer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
