The ‘Southern Cross’

Given the symbolic importance of the Southern Cross and the Eureka Stockade to the later history of Australia, it is perhaps not surprising that both have been issues of controversy. The Southern Cross, first flown at Bakery Hill on 29 November and then over the Eureka Stockade until the assault on 3 December, was viewed by diggers as the symbol of their resistance to colonial authority. It was not the flag of revolution but an assertion by the people that their dignity and rights would be defended against an insensitive and despotic government. The design of the flag was taken by Charles Ross, one of Eureka’s miners from Canada to three women Anastasia Withers, Anne Duke and Elizabeth Hayes to sew in time for a large rally at Bakery Hill. There is no evidence who designed the flag, although Ross was known on the diggings as the ‘bridegroom’ of the flag and is often credited with having created its unique design.  

 

 

During the battle on December 3 1854, he was mortally wounded near the flagpole and the Eureka flag was torn down, trampled, hacked with sabres and peppered with bullets. It was retrieved by Trooper John King and the King family kept the flag for 40 years, until loaned to the Ballarat Art Gallery in 1895, where it remained in continued obscurity until it was ‘rediscovered’ by Len Fox during the 1930s. However, it took decades to convince authorities properly to authenticate it. [1] Final proof was found in the sketchbooks of Charles Doudiet, auctioned in 1996. Doudiet, a French Canadian artist-digger, had been prospecting at Ballarat in 1854 where he had befriended another digger, ‘Charlie’ Ross. When ‘Captain’ Ross, as the diggers called him, was severely wounded in the attack on the Stockade, it was Doudiet who took Ross to a hotel to nurse him.[2] Doudiet, eyewitness of these events, then recorded meticulously in his sketchbook the two major events of the Eureka story: the diggers taking the famous oath of allegiance beneath the flag and also the storming of the Stockade that he labelled, ‘Eureka Slaughter 3 December’. Both of his paintings show the flag flying, its design exactly as described by Len Fox’s research. The remnant of the original Eureka Flag remains today, preserved for public display in Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, along with Doudiet’s sketches.[3]

Taxation and the politics of envy

So should politicians and, if some people have their way other people in ‘public life’, choose to do what the rest of us will never be asked to do…reveal how much tax we pay?  Like the confessional, our tax affairs are sacrosanct; they are between us and the Inland Revenue and if we breach the rules we are subject to the Law.  Our personal relationship with the Inland Revenue is not governed by our morality but by the taxation rules enshrined in statute law structured so that people, by following the rules, pay no more tax than they are legally obliged to.  It is my right to plan my payment of taxes within those rules and that includes gifting to my children money on which they will not pay inheritance tax as long as I survive for seven years. So is this tax avoidance…well, yes it is, you are avoiding paying tax on your estate after you die.  We live in a society where tax avoidance has taken on a morally unjustifiable, and in the case of ‘aggressive tax avoidance’ repugnant, status especially if you’re wealthy while we are all quite prepared to avoid paying tax if we possibly can. 

 

Parallels have been drawn with the expenses scandal and the publication of David Cameron’s summary of his tax affairs that are to my mind spurious.  MPs’ expenses was about how some MPs defrauded the tax-payer of public monies and for which they could quite justifiably be held publically and legally accountable.  Politicians’ personal tax affairs or the tax affairs of anyone in the public eye may well be legally accountable to the rules controlled by Inland Revenue but they are not—and nor should they be—subject to public scrutiny.  As long as they operate their own tax affairs within the rules, whether we think they are avoiding paying tax is beside the point…they are acting within the rules.

I have on several occasions in the past commented on our tax system and the ways in which it operates.  Why should individuals because they hold a particular position in society be ‘compelled’ by public opinion or political opponents to reveal private tax affairs when Inland Revenue is perfectly happy with the amount of taxation those individuals are paying?  Ah, I hear you say, precisely because they are in the public eye and because they may well be wealthy in their own rights.  So it’s not really about how much tax they pay but because they’re ‘rich boys’.  I can see you getting greener as this goes on!!  But is the genie now out of the green bottle?  Not necessarily if politicians of whatever party have the guts to stand up to the pressure that they will undoubtedly be put under.  Some will publish and to refuse to do so raises the question…why not?   But you have to question the motivation of those calling for transparency…is it about people breaking the rules or is it moral indignation or is it about causing political embarrassment and making party political points?  If you don’t like the rules that apply to personal taxation than—and there’s a very strong case for doing so—change them but until that occurs why shouldn’t people apply those rules so that they do not have to pay any more tax than they are legally obliged to do so.  But then being morally affronted is so much easier!!!