The only legitimate measure of a flag’s ‘goodness’ is the love that it receives from those for whom it waves. Such love has historically been given to flags with complex designs as often as it has been given to those with simple ones, so the idea that simple flag designs are preferable amounts to irrational bias. For new flag designs, simplicity and complexity should be equally considered, a tactic with the best chances of producing a flag that will be widely embraced.

If the citizens of Australia eventually choose a new flag for themselves, that flag should of course be one that a majority of Aussies can love, but the idea that it will need to have a simple design for that love to happen is misguided.

Any new national flag of Australia should be one that is symbolic, sensible, recognisable, and honourable, and one that can be held in high regard by a majority of Australians, but contrary to the views of self-styled ‘vexillonnaires’, there is no need for its design to be so simple that it can be drawn by a child from memory, nor for its curves to be few or none, nor for it to be limited to only two or three colours, nor even for it to have no lettering or seals. There is also no reason for flag designers to count the cost of ignoring such strictures, given that twenty-first century flag manufacturing techniques can efficiently and economically produce virtually any flag design, no matter its complexity.

It is Australians, not vexillonnaires, who are the experts on what a good design for the Australian national flag should include, and they will know it when they see it, instantly and intuitively, without any need for some arbitrary list of insipid criteria. Let other nations please the pedants with their simple and lacklustre banners, but let Australia go its own way, with a new flag that is as vibrant and distinctive as the nation and the people whom it represents.