Page 810 - Week 03 - Thursday, 25 March 1993
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Mr Berry: We have not been going to war with anybody, so we did not really need it.
MR KAINE: If Mr Lamont is about to turn the ACT into a little republic we may well be going to war with New South Wales any tick of the clock now, and we will need Mr Lamont to carry the flag at the head of the army. I think, Madam Speaker, that it is appropriate that we have our own flag, just as it is appropriate that we have other symbols that other States and Territories have.
In terms of the design, I was happy with the outcome because it just so happens that it was the one that I favoured of the four that were put forward. In fact, it was the one that I favoured of all of the designs of flags that have been put forward over the years, so I am personally pleased that the majority of the people out there who opted to express an opinion decided that that was the one that they wanted. I think it is interesting that they did that and I think it has to do with the fact that the only flag that has been used in the Territory up until now has been the city of Canberra flag that was approved in 1927 and which displays the swans and the coat of arms. It has been long recognised almost as a symbol of the Territory in a de facto sense, so I think it was appropriate that that be depicted in some fashion, and it does represent the fact that the city of Canberra is the core of the Territory and forms a very large part of the Territory.
I know that there will be people who do not like that design, but I mentioned before that this one was the one that I preferred out of all the designs that I have seen. There have been a number of competitions run over the years to design an ACT flag, and some of the entries, quite frankly, are appalling. People have their own ideas, but does anybody really want an ACT flag with a boxing kangaroo on it? Those are the kinds of things that people put forward when you have a public competition. If you were to go through all of the designs that have been submitted in various competitions over the last 10 years or so, it would be an exercise in appalling design, I suspect. They even included the proposition that our flag should contain as a symbol the flagpole on the top of Parliament House. What we want is a flag that symbolises the 300,000 people who live here, not the few parliamentarians who visit the other hill over there from time to time and attract bad publicity for Canberra. That, in my view, would be totally inappropriate for inclusion on our flag. I am quite happy with the result.
It stands to reason that in the development of any symbol, any flag, not everybody will agree with it. It would be an unusual community if you could get 100 per cent agreement on anything. There will be a lot of people who abstained from entering into the competition because they did not like the whole idea. There were some who probably abstained because they did not like any of the four designs that we put forward. There are some who did not care. Out of all of those there will be some who, when the game is over, will say, "I did not like that", or "We should not have one at all", and so on; but we, as a group of elected people, made a decision as to a process that we would follow in order to get a decision. That process, Madam Speaker, has been faithfully followed. We have a result. I support that result and I would hope that all members of this Assembly would do likewise.
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