National Pride is soaring

National Pride is soaring

By Ben Johnson and Stephen Corby

The Sunday Telegraph, February 5, 2006

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Demand for Australian Flags and symbols have risen dramatically in the wake up the Cronulla “riots”.

Tattooists and retailers have fielded a huge demand for symbolic paraphernalia as the line between patriotism and nationalism becomes blurred.

Union Jacks and Southern Crosses are being permanently recorded on the bodies of young Australians as tattoos.

This nascent nationalism is also reflected in the rise in the sale of Australian flags and a growing tendency to tote them in public.

Nelson Iturrieta, a tattooist a Liverpool’s Dutchy and Son Tattoo Studio, says he is inking between 30 and 40 Southern Crosses a week.

“It’s really just become really popular, all that national pride stuff, particularly with the younger guys,” he says.

“The Southern Cross is one of the most popular tattoos at the moment

“Were also getting people asking to get the words ‘Aussie Pride’ tattooed on them, usually next to a Southern Cross.”

It’s the same story at Panania, where Chuck Sekulla, from the Body Art Tattoo and Body Piercing studio, says the flag is poplar with clients.

“We do the flag a fair bit, and even the Eureka Stockade flag, but none of them are as popular as the Southern Cross,” he says.

“There’s a real national pride thing going on.”

Bulk flag supplier Australiana Flags has experienced a boom in business recently.

“I’ve never seen so many flags on Australia Day-or any other day, for that matter,” managing director John Vaughen says.

Sociology Professor John Carroll, of Latrobe University, says Australia’s new found nationalism stems from terrorism.

“There’s a growing sense of the value of our (Western) civilisation and what it stands for, and at the same time a decline in the language of multiculturalism,” he says.