A Short Essay in Favour of a New Flag

For a long time now, many of us have thought that we need a new Australian Flag. I am one of us. While we pay the greatest respect to the flag which has served us throughout the twentieth century, surely the time has come for it to join the honoured ranks of history. A new century - a new millennium - a new Australia - deserves a new flag. One that reflects who we are and how we understand ourselves. A flag like no other for a nation like no other.

Why should we change the flag? Mainly because it is subservient to another. The symbolism of our flag clearly states: Britain Is Our Master. This is simply not true, and has not been true for more than one hundred years. The current flag is a relic of a colonial past which is no longer directly relevant to Australia as an independent nation.

It's an inescapable fact that exactly one quarter of the current Australian flag is a foreign flag. How can we continue justifying this to ourselves, let alone the rest of the world? Jerry Seinfeld - of all people - really drove the point home when he described our flag as "Britain by night". Ouch.

If you remove all the stars from the current flag, you have a British blue ensign, which is the flag authorised by Britain for public use at sea. Yes, the design basis of our current flag is that trivial. The British ensign also now forms the design basis (or has in the past) for the flags of New Zealand, Fiji, Canada, the Cook Islands, the Falklands, Montserrat, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Bermuda, Saint Helena, British Solomon Islands, Gilbert and Ellice Islands, Hong Kong, Dominica, Tuvalu, Hawaii, Manitoba, Ontario, the Seychelles, and - surprising for some - the United States of America. Canada changed her flag to the current simple, beautiful and striking design in 1965. The United States did so in 1777 - a single year after the Revolution.

This brings us to the second compelling reason to change the Australian flag. Suppose we took the twenty-plus flags mentioned above and placed them in a row, and then challenged non-Australians to identify as many as they could? Do you suspect that the results might be quite embarrassing to us? Australia deserves a flag which is utterly distinctive. Ours is a land like no other on earth, and we are a people like no other on earth. Our flag should be a reflection of this. The current flag quite clearly fails in this respect.

We now have some revolutionary work before us.

However, we shouldn't just grab a kangaroo or a sprig of wattle and hope for the best. We should rather proceed by a logical process of deconstruction and reconstruction.

Nor should we steal an existing design. Leave the Aboriginal and Eureka flags alone.

Keep the height to width ratio (1:2) and the blue ground; there is no reason to change these.

And now the rest is easy...

Constructing a New Flag

	First and most obviously, remove the Union Jack. No further explanation needed.
	Second, remove the Southern Cross. It doesn't stand for Australia any more than it stands for Brazil, Western Samoa, Papua New Guinea or New Zealand - all of whose flags feature the Southern Cross. It's also a fussy and complex device. Keep It Simple is an excellent principle of graphic design, particularly in relation to flags. Perhaps more importantly, though, the cross is a predominantly Christian symbol. Given that only 52% of Australians identified themselves as Christian in the 2016 National Census, including a cross in our most important national symbol would effectively exclude almost half the Australian population.
	That leaves us with the seven-pointed Commonwealth Star, which is a uniquely Australian symbol. (Just for the record, there is only one other national flag which features a seven pointed star - that of Jordan. The two designs could not be more different). Enlarge the star, since it's now the only device on the flag. Place it in the only possible spot - left of centre. This allows for maximum visibility when the flag is fluttering in the wind.
	The design now irresistibly suggests our island continent in the middle of a blue sea. Therefore make the star red - symbolic colour of the land.
	But the land is not empty (Terra Nullius was a lie), and here is our chance to acknowledge the original Australians. Place a black star inside the red.
	Proceeding with this symbolic logic, we need another star inside the black and red to represent all the latecomers. It has to be white, not as a symbol of white settlement, but as a symbol of multicultural Australia. White is a mixture of all the colours. The star sizes have been calculated to present equal areas of colour; no colour takes up more space than another.
	The star, standing on two points, appears somewhat static. Unlike Australia. Rotate the star ninety degrees anticlockwise, so that it is moving dynamically. This makes the flag impossible to fly upside down, and also visually pleasing when hung vertically. It can also be precisely described in a handful of words and numbers (see How to Make an Australian Flag).

This design has several other virtues - it will be easy to create variations for State and Territory flags, as well as civil and state ensigns (see Suggestions for State and Territory Flags and Ensigns). It will be easy for children to draw. It will be economical to produce fully stitched flags. It also acknowledges the relationship between the land and the people, especially that the original custodians (black) are now recognised as intermediaries between the land (red) and the dominant culture (white). Furthermore, it will be almost impossible to confuse with any other national flag.

And it will look beautiful when it flies.

David Gillings
March 3 2018

PS. Just for once, can we please do this before New Zealand does?