THE RED, WHITE AND BLUE.(Harold Scruby of Ausflag Limited)

HAROLD SCRUBY is executive director of Ausflag Limited. He may very soon be looking for a new job. In charity, one might describe Mr Scruby as a man with no especial gift for silence. Less kindly, he could be called a media hog. Every moment of air time and every inch of press space he can cadge is devoted to Theme and Variations by Harold Scruby. This monotonous and unmusical composition has three notes, which are:

* throw all the mud you can at the Australian flag;

* grovel to the United States and its Stars and Stripes;

* foist on the Australian nation one or another of a range of pointless, tasteless and ugly alternative "Australian" flags, designed by Ausflag.

In the recent Australia Day issue of the Weekend Australian, Mr Scruby wrote an article which suggests that his sense of timing is no better than his notion of tact. It amounted to a sneering attack on Australia's constitution, on the political nous of the Australian people and (of course) on Australia's national flag.

What seems chiefly to get up the Scruby nose is the acknowledgment (simply in one corner of the flag) that a large part of our history relates to Britain. This may delight or disgust us, according to taste, but it is simply a fact, however weak Mr Scruby may be in history. (He confesses distaste for British "decent" [sic]. Spelling, too, perhaps is not one of his strengths.)

If Mr Scruby happened to be up and about the streets on Australia Day, he must have felt extremely foolish, for the very atmosphere seemed to be coloured red, white and blue. Never had the Australian flag been so massively and spontaneously displayed. We love our flag, and the brazen throats of a thousand Scrubys are unlikely to persuade us otherwise.