Bloke Suggests Five Inclusive Alternatives For The Australian Flag

A bloke on TikTok has gone viral on the social media platform for suggesting five alternatives for the Australian flag.

The current red, white and blue flag that incorporates the Southern Cross constellation, the Commonwealth Star and the Union Jack has been around for more than a century.

While it is very much part of our national identity, Jack Toohey has highlighted other versions that would up the ante on inclusiveness.

He has put forward designs that have been proposed over the years to a modern audience to see what we could have hanging atop Parliament House and at sporting events.

The five designs he personally selected are The Reconciliation Flag, The Down Under Flag, The Sunburnt Flag, The Golden Wattle flag and John Joseph's Untitled Flag.

Up first is the design created by John Blaxland in 2013 and still features the Southern Cross, but with a red boomerang separating the blue background, with a slice of white, and the black background.

The Reconciliation Flag also features a yellow Commonwealth star that has loads of dots on the inside that represent all the Indigenous languages in Australia.

"Placing the black, red and yellow colours from the Aboriginal flag at the leading edge gives due recognition to the original inhabitants and the land itself," a description reads.

"The red band, shaped as a boomerang, also symbolises local ingenuity and adaptation and, along with the dots, pays homage to Indigenous artistry."

There are still remnants of the Union Jack in the red, white and blue colours, but it focuses mainly on the Indigenous heritage of Australia.

Next up is the Down Under Flag, which was designed in 1984 by Friedensrich Hundertwasser.

It also keeps the red, white and blue concept from the Union Jack, but features an upside down outline of Uluru.

The idea was that because Australia is referred to as Down Under, it was fitting to have Uluru upside down.

John Joseph came up with the Untitled Flag in 2006 and is inspired by Indigenous art.

It has the Southern Cross as its normal iteration but the Commonwealth Star has been replaced by a dot painted circle, with a much darker blue background.

However, it's mildly problematic because, according to Jack, there's no evidence of Joseph being Indigenous.

Jeremy Matthews' Golden Wattle is the most recent design, having been published in 2015, and features our other official colours: gold and green.

It's based off the Golden Wattle, which is Australia's national flower, and it also highlights the seven states and territories that make up our country.

It also has the Commonwealth Star in the middle, which is pretty neat.

Finally, Stephen Berry's 1998 design, titled The Sunburnt Flag, borrows from a lot of elements of the other submissions.

There is still the Southern Cross, the red, white and blue, and two-thirds of the Aboriginal flag, with the red bottom third and the yellow sun in the middle.

Jack's video on TikTok has been liked by nearly 40,000 accounts and has been viewed more than 200,000 times.

Loads of people think it would be awesome to adopt one of these designs to modernise Australia's look.

Featured Image Credit: Jack Toohey/TikTok

Topics: Australia

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie is a Trending Journalist at LADbible. His first job was as a newsreader and journalist at the award winning Sydney radio station, Macquarie Radio. He was solely responsible for the content broadcast on multiple stations across Australia when the MH17, Germanwings and AirAsia disasters unfolded. Stewart has covered the conflict in Syria for LADbible, interviewing a doctor on the front line, and has contributed to the hugely successful UOKM8 campaign.

@stewartperrie