Dear Editor,

Ray Martin and his fellow radical aboriginal rights activists calling for a new national flag with an aboriginal motif need to consider that the Union Jack is an important symbol in understanding who they are as a contemporary people.

The 2001 census showed 69% of unions involving an aborigine involved a non aborigine, up from 46% in 1986. The number of full bloods may number no more than 30,000. Because that other civilisation came for better, worse or indifferent in less than 200 years there was a modern western nation established here because of this fact, which three quarters of the 517,200 Australians who self identify as 'indigenous' enjoys by living an urban lifestyle in towns and cities alongside their fellow countrymen.

The future for aboriginal people lies not in statements of separateness but as an ethnic minority with equal citizenship subject to one law as part of a united Australian Federation.


Nigel Morris

National Convenor
Australian Flag Society