EXCLUSIVE: WA Liberal Senator backs calls to criminalise vandalism of Australian flag

WA Liberal Senator Michaelia Cash has told Youth Jam's Newsflash show that she'd "back a bill that would criminalise the burning of the Australian flag".

As previously reported, Shane Pilgrim - an ex-service personnel - has started a petition calling on the Federal Government to criminalise the vandalism or desecration of the Australian flag.

"Enough is enough, as far as I'm concerned. I would back a bill that would criminalise the burning of the Australian flag," Senator Cash told Isaac Mulcrone.

"I am fundamentally one nation united under one flag and that is the Australian flag. Why? Because it represents the freedoms we enjoy today because generations of Australians, they fought under that flag and so many of them died under that flag," she told listeners.

Senator Cash says she is "disgusted" and "horrified" when people burn the nation's flag.

Countries like New Zealand, Germany and Türkiye have laws that criminalise the act of vandalising their country's flag.