If being Australian cricket captain is as important a job as Prime Minister, then carrying the Australian flag at the Olympic opening ceremony must be on the same level as winning a Gold Logie. Well, maybe not quite.

So it was an event of Major National Significance on Friday morning AEST when Chef de Mission Green (an title almost as important as being Australia's Masterchef) announced who would Carry The Flag twenty four hours hence. After a week of Heated National Debate over gender, the identity of the Official Carrier was revealed: basketball legend and fourth-time Olympian Lauren Jackson.

And just how Australian is it that Jackson appeared at the flag announcement looking the spitting image of Cate Blanchett as Galadriel?

It's hard to think of a more fitting candidate to be carrying the Australian flag for London 2012 - especially if you put $31 on her before the late, scandalous, betting plunge.

But, really, how unique an honour is it to Carry The Flag when Aussie athletes are routinely draping the flag over their shoulders in Channel Nine promotions like it was a National Beach Towel? Especially when it is done with the soundtrack of an emotional rendition of a song about a sheep stealer who commits suicide to avoid capture?

Embedding is disabled for this ad but Channel 9's jingoistic Waltzing Matilda Olympic promotion is my Youtube do Dia. Throughout the London Games I will undertaking the tricky challenge of posting a daily video despite the fact that posting of actual footage of the Games is verboten.