Country profile: Australia

The Australian flag came out of a competition held in 1901, the year the Australian colonies federated. It received more than 32,000 entries, and five entrants who had submitted almost identical designs were named joint winners, among them a 14-year-old schoolboy, Ivor Evans, and an artist from Perth, Annie Dorrington.

The flag was flown for the first time on 3 September 1901, at the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne. That date has become Australian National Flag Day.

The Commonwealth Star, also known as the Star of Federation, at first had only six points, one for each state; a seventh was added in 1908 to represent the territories. The Flags Act 1953 officially made the blue flag the national flag of Australia.

Each of the three elements of the Australian flag has a precise meaning:

• Union Jack: placed in the canton, it recalls the historical ties with the United Kingdom and the British origins of the Australian colonies.
• Commonwealth Star: placed beneath the Union Jack, it has seven points, six for the founding states and one for the territories.
• Southern Cross: this constellation, visible throughout the southern hemisphere, places Australia in the world. Four of its stars have seven points, while the smallest has five.

The Australian flag is often confused with that of New Zealand, which also features a blue field, the Union Jack and the Southern Cross. The New Zealand flag, however, has only four red stars edged in white and no Commonwealth Star.

Since 1995, two other flags have held the status of official flags of Australia: the Aboriginal flag, designed in 1971 by the artist Harold Thomas, and the Torres Strait Islander flag, designed by Bernard Namok.

The presence of the Union Jack is regularly debated in Australia, particularly among supporters of a republic, who propose replacing it with a flag with no reference to the United Kingdom.