And how that can change when the same symbol falls into the wrong hands.

I remember waving my little plastic Australian flag around at the cricket one summer as Matthew Hayden clobbered some poor bloke to the boundary. 

A similar flag was thrown onto the field by a drunk guy, who proceeded to call the visiting Indian side ‘‘curry munchers’’.

As a homesick teenager in London, I got teary when I saw the Southern Cross on a beer coaster. 

That was only a few months after I had to explain the Cronulla riots to my flatmates, where a number of ‘proud Aussies’ had taken to wearing the national ensign as a cape while ‘cleansing’ the southern beaches .

Debate over the meaning of our flag spiked this week when hip-hop artist 360 told Monday night’s Q&A program that he associated it with racism, having seen shirtless ‘‘dudes’’ wrapped in the flag on Australia Day racially abusing people.

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He was blasted on social media, with people accusing him of lowering the flag as a standard for racists and bigots when only a minority of the public were guilty of loutish behaviour.

To me, it’s a stretch to put our flag in the same basket as a swastika.

But it is naive to ignore that it is used by some as a badge of ugly, nationalistic, aggression. 

Same goes for the now-withdrawn Woolworths singlets sporting the delightful: If You Don’t Love it LEAVE.

Some have brushed that off as a simpler version of: ‘‘Please don’t complain. It’s pretty good here. If you are not happy, why don’t you try somewhere that suits you better?’’

But really, it is a loaded slogan that taps into an undercurrent of fear, ignorance and bigotry. 

For the record, 360 responded to his online critics by saying: ‘‘I do not think the flag is racist. It’s the way some people hide behind the flag when they are acting in a racist way, thinking they are being patriotic.’’

I tend to agree.

@AlexDruce1987