As you will know if you read tweets - and Twitter may be Mr Bandt's primary audience here - he moved the flag of Australia away from the cameras because it represented dispossession and the lingering pains of colonisation for First Nations people.

There's no doubt that this may well be true, but the flag is also the flag of Australia - and all its peoples, including those from the First Nations. It may be that some of them, too, recognise the flag as their own. They are, after all, Australians. You might think that having the three flags alongside each other is an acceptable compromise.

Certainly, the Prime Minister thinks so.

"I just say to Mr Bandt that he needs to think about the responses that have been made and reconsider his position and role to promote unity and work to promote reconciliation," Anthony Albanese said.

"Reconciliation is about bringing people together on the journey that we need to undertake ... it is undermined if people look for division rather than look for unity."

And there we have it. Politics is about changing things. It is about achieving goals which better the lives of ordinary people. In a democracy, it involves winning people over - and grand gestures which please the converted may push away the unconverted.

Mr Bandt was a student activist and lawyer. He is familiar with the world of words.

But shrewd leaders on the left (if green activists are on the left) recognise that there is a crowd of uncommitted ordinary people out there - beyond the campus and chai coffee shops of Melbourne - who must be won over if change is actually going to happen. Grand gestures for the faithful do not help.

Mr Albanese knows that. He has been sure-footed so far on these controversial issues, not betraying his principles but not alienating potential supporters either.

In contrast to Mr Bandt, Mr Albanese added the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags to his media backdrop (in contrast to his predecessor as prime minister, who opted only for the Australian flag).

When King Charles is the Australian head of state, the republic debate will no doubt be reignited. If republicans want to win a referendum, they will need to persuade the great mass of the public. Think of this, Mr Bandt: some of those people may even vote Liberal. Many will not be on Twitter.

The case will have to be put carefully. There will have to be persuasion. Making the flag an issue may well muddy the waters. It is not the hill to die on. There are other more important ones.

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It is significant that four years ago the arch-republican Malcolm Turnbull agreed that the flag was not the big issue. Young Australians did not see the Union Jack as representative of another country.

"That's the one they have on their backpacks when they're travelling overseas, that's the flag that our soldiers have on their shoulder patches, that is our flag," he said.

Of course flags are important. As a Welshman, I mind somewhat that the Welsh flag is not part of the Union Jack. To me, its absence symbolises the relationship between Wales and England. And I mind when Little Englanders try to foist (and hoist) the Union Jack, rather than the Red Dragon of Wales, on Welsh public spaces.

But there are bigger battles to fight. Mr Bandt has made his gesture, and that is nice for him.

But gesture politics is a version of virtue signalling, and virtue signalling is not about effecting change. It is about people feeling better about themselves.