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Competitions seeking designs for a national flag run by the Melbourne Herald and the Review of Reviews in 1900 were well supported. On 29 April 1901 a notice was placed in the Commonwealth of Australia Gazette inviting entries in an official competition, offering a prize of £75 to the winning entry.
From the 32,823 entries received in the 1901 competition, five substantially similar designs were selected as joint winners. A photograph of the winning design, a composite ’embodying the general ideas of the five successful competitors, but different in detail’, was published in the Review of Reviews on 20 September 1901.
The winning design was approved by King Edward VII in 1902. Federal Parliament passed a resolution on the 2 June 1904 to fly this flag ‘upon all forts, vessels, saluting places and public buildings of the Commonwealth upon all occasions when flags are used’. While the design and uses of the flag were proclaimed in the Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, it was not until the Flags Act 1953 that legislation was passed prescribing the form and use of the flag. Section 3 of the Act states that the flag (illustrated in the First Schedule to the Act) is ‘declared to be the Australian National Flag’.
On 14 February 1954, Her Majesty, the Queen of Australia, assented to the Flags Act 1953. The Act was reserved for Her Majesty’s pleasure on 12 December 1953 by the Governor-General, Sir William Slim. The Queen assented to the Act during her first visit, and also the first visit by a reigning monarch, to Australia in 1954.
[Cheers Sina!]
ka pai @ndy I love seeing that union jack off go up in flames, here’s to the end of white rule in australia
Look out Ana, with that kinda attitude, you may make a Sothern KKKross Soldier cry.
WHERE IS THE FLAG OF ENGLAND?
Henry Dupre LaBouchere
I
Let the winds of the world make answer!
North, South, East, West,
Wherever there is wealth to covet
Or land to be possessed:
Wherever the savage nations
To coddle, coerce or scare,
You may look for the vaunted emblem
For the Flag of England is there!
II
Aye, it waves over the blazing hovels
Whence its African victims fly
To be shot by explosive bullets
Or wretchedly starve and die:
Or where the beachcomber hammers
The isles of the southern sea –
From the peak of his hellish vessel
The English flag flies free!
III
The Maori, full of hate, curses
With his fleeting, dying breath.
And the Arab hath hissed his curses
As he spat at its folds in death.
The hapless fellah hath feared it
On Tel el Kebir’s parched plain.
And the blood of the Zulu hath stained it,
With a deep indelible stain.
IV
It has floated over scenes of pillage
And flaunted over deeds of shame.
It has waved o’er the fell marauder
As he ravished with Sword and flame:
It has looked on ruthless slaughter
And assassination dire and grim.
And has heard the shrieks of its victims
Drown even the jingo hymn.
V
Where is the flag of England?
Seek the land where the natives rot
And decay, and assured extinction
Must soon be the people’s lot.
Go to the once fair island
Where disease and death are rife
And the greed of colossal commerce
Now fattens on human life.
VI
Where is the flag of England?
Go sail where the rich galleons come
With their shoddy and wasted cotton,
And beer and Bibles and rum.
Seek the land where brute force hath triumphed
And hypocrisy hath its lair.
And your question will thus be answered
For the flag of England is there!
Get the version by the Wolfe Tones (Irish-American band)
Haha awesome, thanks for that Paul Justo.