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Competitions seeking designs for a national flag run by the Melbourne Herald<\/em> and the Review of Reviews<\/em> in 1900 were well supported. On 29 April 1901 a notice was placed in the Commonwealth of Australia Gazette<\/em> inviting entries in an official competition, offering a prize of \u00a375 to the winning entry.<\/p>\n 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<\/em> on 20 September 1901.<\/p>\n 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<\/em>, it was not until the Flags Act 1953<\/a><\/em> that legislation was passed prescribing the form and use of the flag. Section 3 of the Act<\/em> states that the flag (illustrated in the First Schedule to the Act<\/em>) is ‘declared to be the Australian National Flag’.<\/p>\n On 14 February 1954, Her Majesty, the Queen of Australia, assented to the Flags Act 1953<\/em>. The Act<\/em> was reserved for Her Majesty’s pleasure on 12 December 1953 by the Governor-General, Sir William Slim. The Queen assented to the Act<\/em> during her first visit, and also the first visit by a reigning monarch, to Australia in 1954.<\/p>\n [Cheers Sina!]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [img deleted] 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 … Continue reading