Peter Dutton has confirmed that if elected prime minister next year, he will only display the Australian flag at press conferences – claiming that displaying three flags was ‘dividing our country unnecessarily’.
Since Anthony Albanese became Prime Minister, press conferences now feature the Australian flag displayed alongside the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags.
Prior to being elected, only the Australian flag was shown.
‘We didn’t make a fuss, we didn’t put out a media release … we just did it,’ Mr Albanese said at the time, before the failed Voice to Parliament referendum.
‘We have flags that represent our entire nation. It’s an opportunity to speak about our full history.’
However, Mr Dutton called out the move and revealed he would never address the nation with both the Australian and Indigenous flags behind him, arguing that it sent a confusing message.
‘I’m very strongly of the belief that we are a country united under one flag, and if we’re asking people to identify with different flags, no other country does that, and we are dividing our country unnecessarily,’ he told Sky News.
‘We should have respect for the Indigenous flag and the Torres Strait Islander flag, but they are not our national flags.’
Mr Dutton also slammed Mr Albanese for sending ‘a very confusing message’ to Australians about the country’s values and celebrating Australia Day.
He labelled Mr Albanese as ‘the weakest Prime Minister’ in the country’s history and claimed Aussies should celebrate the national holiday under ‘one flag’.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said he would only stand in front of the Australian flag when addressing the country if elected as Prime Minister
Since Anthony Albanese became Prime Minister, the Australian flag is seen alongside the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags at press conferences
‘The Prime Minister is not out there calling out Woolworths and not out there calling the pubs who don’t want to celebrate Australia,’ Mr Dutton said.
‘He wants to be all things to all people, which is why people rightly perceive him as being the weakest Prime Minister that we’ve had in our country’s history.
‘I think the fact is that 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, which is what we should do on Australia Day.’
Mr Dutton said Australians should instead reflect more on the country’s rich migrant story and ‘value and respect’ the history of migration.
‘The incredible story of people who came here, particularly in the post Second World War period, with nothing, and have worked hard as trades, as farmers, and they’ve educated their children,’ Mr Dutton said.
‘The next generation has done incredibly well. They’ve done well themselves. We’re a great country today because of that. We don’t talk anything of that part of our history and so that’s a view that I’ve taken.’
Meanwhile, the Coalition’s Indigenous Australians spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has called for Welcome to Country ceremonies to be rolled back.
‘There are those right around the country, who basically their only role, their only source of income, is delivering Welcome to Country,’ she said on Sky News on Sunday.
‘This commercialisation of culture, which is exactly what is going on, I can understand there will be those that will be upset if we try to bring it to an end.’
The comments come as a a shock poll conducted last week indicates that Mr Dutton is on track to secure a major historical upset at the next federal election.
Seat-by-seat analysis of the latest polling shows Albanese’s government currently has a ‘near zero’ chance of retaining its majority in the House of Representatives with the Coalition set to snatch at least nine seats away at next year’s federal election.
Dutton labelled Anthony Albanese as the ‘weakest’ Prime Minister, claiming he was sending a ‘very confusing message’ to Australians about the country’s values
The shock prediction comes after almost 5,000 voters were surveyed by Accent Research and the RedBridge Group, which then modelled what the federal parliament make-up will likely to look like after the next election.
RedBridge found the Coalition’s strategy of targeting outer suburban and provincial seats hit hard by the cost of living crisis was working to win over voters.
On current voting intentions, there’s an 82 per cent probability the Coalition would have the most seats in the lower house, winning between 64-78 seats, compared with 59-71 for Labor, according to Accent Research principal Dr Shaun Ratcliff.
The Greens and crossbenchers were likely to win 13 seats while 14 other electorates were too close to call.
Parties need to win 76 Lower House seats to form government.
