Concert owner tries to stop Australian flag being used as gang colours

SYDNEY LETTER: Ken West did not mince his words when asking the 60,000 people attending Sydney's "Big Day Out" concert not to bring the Australian flag with them. West, who owns the annual music festival, was appalled by fans' behaviour last year in the wake of race riots in Sydney, writes Pádraig Collins.

"The Australian flag was being used as gang colours. It was racism disguised as patriotism and I'm not going to tolerate it," he said. West even went as far as moving this year's concert from Australia Day (January 26th - when it has been held since its 1992 inception) to the day before to avoid nationalistic overtones.

At last year's concert people, especially those deemed to be of "ethnic" origin, were commanded by thugs to kiss the Australian flag. Anyone refusing risked being beaten up, and many were.

Despite having admirable intentions - protecting the vast majority of decent people at the concert from ignorant, racist oafs - West was damned by all sides. Prime minister John Howard got in first, saying "flags don't have legs and arms".

Despite the fact the concert organisers at no point sought to ban the flag, Sydney tattoo parlours reported a surge in people getting Australian flag tattoos.

The rise in Australian nationalism is something I have witnessed over the years. When I first lived here as a backpacker in 1992 a lot of Australians seemed to still have a cultural cringe, feeling their society was inferior to that of other countries, but particularly to Britain, the mother country.

Holidaying here in subsequent years, and emigrating in 2002, I saw things were changing.

The cultural cringe was going - which was a good thing. But what has replaced it in some quarters; a fear of difference and change, an unwillingness to accommodate anything other than a homogenised Australian identity, is a dreadful thing.

You see it at first in the small things. At the 2003 "Big Day Out" festival I went from seeing an Australian band at a side stage back to the main stage to see an English band. Some teenagers struck up a conversation with me and asked whom I had just seen. I told them I had seen the Australian band and that it had been a rubbish show.

Unbelievably, they took deep offence at an Irishman daring to criticise an Australian band; one they had not bothered to see for themselves. I quickly moved away and have never gone to a "Big Day Out" since.

The biggest turning point in Australian nationalism was undoubtedly the Tampa situation of August/September 2001, where 433 mainly Afghani refugees who had been rescued from a sinking boat by a Norwegian cargo ship were expelled from Australian territorial waters.

The majority of world opinion was opposed to what the government did, but prime minister John Howard vigorously defended his actions, famously saying: "We decide who comes into this country and the circumstances in which they come". His coalition government won an increased majority in the federal election a month later.

Australia subsequently did take 92 of the refugees, while close to 200 were taken in by New Zealand. Australia made payments to New Zealand for doing so.

In a subtle change, Australia's department of immigration and multicultural affairs has just changed its name to the department of immigration and citizenship.

Multiculturalism is out, homogeneity is in, in official circles at least.

But a quarter of the population was born outside the country, so the Home And Away cliche of blonde, blue-eyed, beach worshippers is as far from reality as thinking everyone in Ireland has red, curly hair and dances at the crossroads.

On Australia Day I was in a group of about 10 who went to see a big football match in the city. All bar me were Australian-born, but the others had parents and grandparents who were from several different countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America.

It was as multicultural a mix as you could imagine, but we were united in our distaste for what the Australian flag has come to mean. Many at the game were wearing it as a cape; chauvinistic überAussie superheroes.

Nationalistic expression so often comes back to the flag and, as Irish people know well, flags and emblems have deeper meanings than just being colours on a cloth.

It's hard to see the Australian flag as anything other than an anachronism though. You can't look at it and not see the Union Jack, so how can that be a symbol of national pride when, for instance, Australia plays England in the Ashes? "I'm against your team despite that fact that almost quarter of my flag is made up of yours."

Australia's international sporting teams wear green and gold outfits, not red, white and blue.

Since April 19th, 1984, Advance Australia Fair, not God Save The Queen, has hailed their frequent victories. One day, and sooner not later, the fans will have a flag entirely their own to wave.

It's important not to lose track of the fact that those misusing and misrepresenting the flag are very much in the minority. Australia is, by and large, a very tolerant and accepting society.

Ethnically-motivated crime is relatively low and inter-marriage between virtually all groups is relatively high. Now that's a multicultural society.