Watch Steve Price Have A Meltdown Over The Idea Of Scrapping The Australian Flag
"You don't just chuck the flag out because a few people want it to be."
An all-white panel of hosts on The Project debated whether or not Australia should change its national flag last night and, as you’d expect, it was a trainwreck.
After years of campaigning from Kamilaroi woman Cheree Toka, the Aboriginal flag is finally a permanent fixture atop the Sydney Harbour Bridge, replacing the NSW state flag in an effort to save $25 million on a flag pole.
The decision to fly the flag prompted a discussion on The Project as to whether we should ditch the Australian flag — which fundamentally represents colonisation — and replace it with the Aboriginal flag.
As Sydney Harbour Bridge gets a permanent Aboriginal flag, is it time Australia talked about it becoming the dominant flag we use? pic.twitter.com/VBRwf9JRrO
— The Project (@theprojecttv) July 11, 2022
“Is it time the nation as a whole embraces the Indigenous flag as the national flag?” host Hamish Macdonald asked the panel.
Steve Price immediately chimed in declaring that we don’t need to change the flag, asking who would want to do such a thing — despite the fact that countless people have called for it. “No,” said Price. “I think Australians support the flag they’ve got. We don’t need to change the flag, who wants to change the flag?”
“I think you’ll find a lot of people,” replied Carrie Bickmore.
Price then claimed we only have one flag (untrue, Australia has many flags including the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags) and that we would need a referendum to change the flag.
“We only have one flag, that’s the Australian flag. If you want to have a referendum on the flag, good luck buddy,” claimed Price.
But when Bickmore suggested that the relationship with the flag will likely change in future generations, Price immediately shut down the idea.
“No it won’t,” he abruptly added.
When he questioned Peter Helliar if he would throw out the Australian flag, Helliar asserted that he would be happy to have a conversation about it.
“It would need a referendum, and it won’t get up,” Price replied. In closing, Price claimed that “you don’t just chuck the flag out because a few people want it to be”, despite the fact that it is far more than a few people that are proponents of a new flag.
Interestingly, The Project chose to debate the topic in a panel of exclusively white people, rather than including any First Nations voices in the conversation regarding their own flag.
The decision not to include any Aboriginal panellists in the conversation about the future of the flag comes just weeks after The Project ran a segment in which host Waleed Aly accused Senator Lidia Thorpe of ceding sovereignty by entering politics.