Police Cat-burglar Steals Tattered Flag : Melbourne Indymedia

A work of art depicting a burning Australian flag was last night removed from an exhibition in Victoria by State Police. Representatives of the Authorities took the exhibition's centrepiece from a wall in a Melbourne gallery after entering the gallery-space surreptitiously in the dead of night by virtue of a relationship with the owner of an adjoining business. The gallery's operator had not been advised of any plans for an officially sanctioned cat-burglary of the premises in the exercise of censorship. For some reason the Police Media Unit had, on this occasion, deviated from its usual practise, neglecting to report the clandestine and dangerous adventure to the for-profit media in sufficient time that a suitably equipped camera crew might be on the scene.

The work, by artist Azlan McLennan, is the sole piece in an exhibition entitled Proudly unAustralian, a confrontational theme in the light of new and Draconic sedition legislation introduced into and passed through Parliament late last year, and debate over the nature of pluralism, unity, and the Australian character. The broad-ranging suite of new sedition charges endorsed by sinister Attorney-General Philip Ruddock provides for sentences of seven years imprisonment and caters for a variety of modes of expression that undermine the authority and reputation of the State and its principles.

As to the origins of the grievance against the work of art that resulted in the deployment of Officers of the Law for a quiet midnight raid, little is known at present. It is perhaps unsurprising that Authorities saw fit to undertake their clandestine operation the night before Australia Day, an officially sanctioned national festival that is this year being celebrated with hysterical fervour after the national character was besmirched late last year in the wake of Sydney's racial tension. Certainly the secretive operation, conducted without the knowledge of the gallery's owner, reflects a desire to keep the official censorship from reaching the media, and is indicative of the same that has major commercial television networks well-informed and on the scene when anti-terrorist divisions of the police perform five am raids on the homes of suspected Islamic insurgents.

The aesthetic merit and political subtlety of the work itself is not at issue here, being rather a subject for critics and academians.The broader irony in this story that authorises its appearance on these pages may be lost on those surreptitious Victorian policefolk that undertook the intrepid mission of removing the singed flag of Aslan , the large, jowly politicians that ordered it's removal, and the sad, brittle State-loving citizens that took it upon themselves to make the necessary initial complaint.

By limiting free expression in Australia with heavy-handed, secretive policing, the Authorities are themselves putting the torch to the symbols and ideals of Australian cultural life and the local character. Their fierce protection of the State and Empire in the representative image is the antithesis of a style of Australian patriotism that refutes all that their Stars and Union Jack national flag represents - an Australian spirit that refutes and heckles oppressive authorities, rather than applauding and celebrating ceremonial representations of centralised power.

This Australian character, 'forged' in the convict era and the era of the gold rush and settlement and bushranger, and in the madness of Imperial and National wars, and in the later eras of beach and suburban culture has long stood in fundamental, honourable opposition to the industrialised, systematic, fascist instruments of State power, and the collection of power and wealth in the hands of a few privileged holders of stock and titles.

The Eureka flag, hoisted in 1854 by those such as Raffaello Carboni (quoted below) that stood then against the idea of State control, of close manipulation and control of the people, does represent this patriotic Australian sentiment, of which we might, despite a bleak history, be proud. The flag that the Prime Minister and his Government insist should be hoisted in every schoolyard in the country will always represent the agents of brutal oppression from which almost all of our ancestors suffered.

Rafaello Carboni, one of those acquitted after the Eureka Stockade uprising, had self-published a book on the incident and the subsequent trial within twelve months of its conclusion, from which the following patriotic excerpt is taken:

"I came from old Europe, 16,000 miles across two oceans, and I thought it a respectable distance from the hated Austrian rule … The old style: oppressors and oppressed. A sad reflection, very sad reflection, for any educated and honest man.

For what did we come into this colony? Chi sta bene non si move, is an old Roman proverb. If then in old Europe, we had a bird in the hand, what silly fools we were to venture across two oceans, and try to catch two jack-asses in the bush of Australia!

I had a dream, a happy dream, I dreamed that we had met here together to render thanks unto our Father in heaven for a plentiful harvest, such that for the first time in this, our adopted land, we had our own food for the year; and so each of us holding in our hands a tumbler of Victorian wine, you called on me for a song. My harp was tuned, and in good order: I cheerfully struck up, "Oh, let us be happy together."

Not so, Britons, not so! We must meet as in old Europe - old style - improved by far in the south - for the redress of grievances inflicted on us, not by crowned heads, but blockheads, aristocratical incapables, who never did a day's work in their life. I hate the oppressor, let him wear a red, blue, white, or black coat." - and here certainly, I tackled in right earnest with our silver and gold lace on Ballaarat, and called on all my fellow-diggers, irrespective of nationality, religion, and colour, to salute the "Southern Cross" as the refuge of all the oppressed from all countries on Earth. - The applause was universal, and accordingly I received my full reward: Prisons and Chains! Old style."

from The Eureka Stockade, by Rafaello Carboni .