Liberal leader Peter Dutton will not stand beside the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags at press conferences if he becomes prime minister, insisting Australians should be unified under a single national flag.
The opposition leader last night said he strongly believed “we’re a country united under one flag”, and standing beside multiple flags was “dividing our country unnecessarily”.
“We should stand up for who we are, for our values, what we believe in. We are united as a country when we gather under one flag,” Mr Dutton told Sky News last night.
Indigenous Australians Minister Malarndirri McCarthy said Mr Dutton was not fit to lead the nation, and that it was his actions that were divisive.
“Peter Dutton is once again proving himself unfit to be Prime Minister,” Senator McCarthy said in a statement.
“Yet again, he’s seeking to divide Australians and grab a few culture war headlines.”
Senator McCarthy noted the Australian Aboriginal Flag and Torres Strait Islander Flag were official flags of Australia.
She said “all Australians should take great pride” in the world’s oldest continuing cultures.
Malarndirri McCarthy says all Australians can take pride in the flags that represent the world’s oldest continuing culture. (ABC News: Che Chorley)
Mr Dutton has repeatedly taken up the issue of the national flag and issues of national identity.
The opposition leader called for a boycott of Woolworths in January when it stopped stocking the national flag for Australia Day, and criticised pubs that did not want to celebrate the national day, which marks the landing of the British First Fleet and, for many Indigenous Australians, the beginning of generations of disenfranchisement.
Mr Dutton was also one of a handful of Coalition MPs to walk out of the 2008 National Apology to the Stolen Generations, something he later regretted, and last year opposed the establishment of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament through a referendum, which was defeated with 60 per cent of Australians voting against it.
The Liberal leader later told radio station 2GB he wanted to see “practical reconciliation”, rather than symbolic measures that were only “ticking boxes”.
Dutton claims Indigenous flags are not national flags
Last night, Mr Dutton told Sky News asking people to identify with multiple flags was “confusing” and not something other nations did.
“We should have respect for the Indigenous flag and the Torres Strait Islander flag, but they are not our national flags,” he said.
“I think the prime minister sends a very confusing message.”
The Aboriginal flag was first flown in 1971 and the next year became the official flag for the Aboriginal tent embassy outside parliament house.
In 1995, former governor-general Bill Hayden declared both it and the Torres Strait Islander flag official “Flags of Australia” under the Flags Act.
