Australian flag burning: Calls to change laws after Australia Day incident, Perth home raided over bomb scare
On Australia Day, Australians faced intense scenes including the burning of Australian flags, bomb threats and attacks.
The scenes sparked outrage from Australians who called for the laws to be changed, including making burning the Australian flag illegal.
The Australian flag was set on fire at an Invasion Day rally at Queens Garden in Queensland. Victoria Police intervened at an Australia Day Parade rally in Melbourne after a man was seen trying to burn the national flag.
Speaking to Sunrise on Tuesday, Education Minister Jason Clare described the actions across the country as “seriously bad” but refused to say whether he thought burning the flag should be illegal.
“We saw some seriously bad things in Perth yesterday. Someone threw a bomb into the crowd,” he told Sunrise.
“If this had worked, if this had been real, a lot of people would have been killed.
“On the other side of the country, we had a neo-Nazi who was speaking badly about the Jewish people from the podium.
“Haven’t we learned anything here? You know, we know that words can lead to shots. That’s why we passed those hate laws in the House last week. We need to turn the temperature down here.”
“Most Australians would look at that idiot who burned the flag and just shook his head.”
Presenter Nat Barr told Mr Clare that Australians say flag burning should be illegal.
“My understanding is that the states already have laws enabling police to take action,” Mr Clare said.
“I remember John Howard saying, ‘If you change the law here, you’re going to martyr Yahoo.’
Asked whether flag burning was illegal, Mr Clare said: “I’ll leave that to the legal eagles” before saying Australia was the best country in the world.
Barr pressed the minister again, asking what he personally thought after he repeatedly refused to talk about whether the law would be made legal.
“As I said, I will consult the experts here on what works,” Mr. Clare said.
“We need to send the message to these people that this is a country we should be proud of. This is a flag we should be proud of. It’s not a flag we should burn.”
Do you think burning the Australian Flag should be illegal? Let us know in the comments below.
Perth bomb threat
In Perth’s CBD, Occupy Day demonstrators were told to leave the area after a man threw what is believed to be a primitive explosive into the crowd.
Police said they arrested a 31-year-old man and seized a device made of ball bearings and screws wrapped around an “unidentified liquid” in a glass container.
“Forensics are now doing what they need to do to determine what this fluid is,” WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch told reporters in Perth.
The device, about the size of a medium-sized coffee cup, did not explode and no one was injured.
The police searched the man’s home. He has not yet been charged. Mr Blanch said there was no ongoing threat to the community.
A man who attended a rally in Sydney is facing charges of publicly inciting racial hatred, accused of spreading neo-Nazi rhetoric at a demonstration in Surry Hills.
“We would argue that the language he used and his presence was clearly and unambiguously associated with neo-Nazi ideology,” NSW Police deputy commissioner Brett McFadden told reporters.
– from AAP
