Liberal senator calls for Aboriginal flag to be on display inside Parliament

Senator Bragg has championed the Commonwealth purchasing the copyright to the Aboriginal flag to ensure it can be used widely by community groups without fear of breaching the strict commercial terms sought by its licensees.

“The national Parliament should be proud of both flags and prepared to fly and display them prominently around the precinct,” Senator Bragg wrote in a letter to Senate president Scott Ryan, seen by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.

“I am a supporter of wider use of the Aboriginal flag in particular and I think it is important that we avoid the practice of NAIDOC 2020 where both Indigenous flags were outside the House of Representatives but not the Senate.”

Senator Bragg said he also wanted the flags of the Australian states to be present outside the chambers, because it was widely referred to as the states’ house.

The Australian flag has only hung in the Senate since 1992, when the chamber voted in favour of a resolution put forward by former Queensland senator Ron Boswell. A decision to display the flags permanently would also have to be supported by a majority vote of the chamber.

Labor senators Malarndirri McCarthy and Patrick Dodson described the Coalition’s act of voting down the motion to fly the flags at the time as a “slap in the face to unity and truth-telling”.

“Once again, the Morrison government is choosing division over unity, and ignoring the 65,000 years of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history in this country, as well as ignoring the fact that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags are recognised as national flags,” Senator Dodson said last month.

Senator Bragg’s letter criticised Labor for putting forward the motion during NAIDOC Week, describing it as a “political stunt” about an issue that should have been “above politics”.

“Like most motions, they are stunts and gimmicks without the possibility of constructive, or any, debate. Indeed the use of motions denies senators an opportunity to address the issue at hand. They are designed to wedge opponents,” he wrote.

Indigenous Australians Minister Ken Wyatt said he would like to see the Aboriginal flag displayed outside the chambers all year round but was highly critical of Labor for using NAIDOC Week to move the motion.

“We should be talking about every day, things we have to improve for our people,” Mr Wyatt told NITV.

“Get real and look at the quality of life that our people need to live, not … the symbolism element that some people tend to push.”