Our flag is part of our collective identity.
Within its weave, its colours and its design is the entire history of our nation and the people have called it their ''home''.
Changing symbols that go to the core of the national identity are not reform; changes such as these are an act of vandalism, a radical assault on the foundations on which our country has grown to be the envy of other regional neighbours.
Abolishing the flag is essentially a repudiation of principles on which our great stress placing us like with another and involves much more than just updating a design or airbrushing out our British heritage; it would inflict the woes of an amnesiac upon us all – like forgetting one's parents.
Only the radical is wilfully and maliciously forsaking his patrimony; this is a moral crime, and one which a people will ultimately pay for by a loss of community consciousness, and therefore a loss of direction.
[Senator Cory Bernardi, The Conservative Revolution, 2013, Connor Court, Ballarat]