Flags normally carry with them nationalistic and patriotic fervor but a recent study showed that display of the same symbol could also mean underlying racism.

Such were the findings of the research team from the University of Western Australia (UWA), which observed that Australian drivers flying the national flag on their cars espouse racist tendencies.

According to The Herald Sun, the UWA team headed by Professor Farida Fozdar based their observations on a poll conducted on 513 persons during the festivities that marked the Australia Day in Perth last year.

That research work showed that 43 percent out of 102 individuals who displayed flags on their cars had affirmed the importance of the 'White Australia Policy', which was the Australian government's informal protocol that gave preference to Europeans during the rush of immigration before the Second World War.

The same respondents also expressed belief that the practice kept Australia free of the same problems that were faced by other nations, with only 25 percent of non-flag carriers hanging to the same belief.

More than half of flag carriers amplified that the true Australian values were being lost through streams of liberal immigration policy now in placed while only 34 percent of non-flag carriers catered to the idea, the survey said.

The new study also showed that a great number of flag-displaying Australian subscribed to the notion that true Aussies are natural born and Christians, with only a handful of non-flaggers believing the same thing.

For immigrants to assume the true Australian identity, they need to shed their old culture, according to some 56 percent of the flaggers while another 91 percent insisted that people opting to make Australia their new homes must adopt the Australian values.

Only 30 percent and 76 percent of non-flaggers respectively adhered to such convictions, the survey said.

The survey also indicated that affinity to the national flag was not exactly a conscious thing for those who unabashedly displayed the Australian symbol, Fozdar said.

"Many felt strongly patriotic about it ... and for some, this was quite a racist or exclusionary type of patriotism," Fozdar said on her team's report.