A proposal

Flag inspired from the Dylan Crawfoot's flag. But the Dylan Crawfoot's one have a wave line. Mine has straight one.

Variation with the blue/green/yellow colours

  

A flag inspired from the Australian South Sea Islanders

The Australian South Sea Islanders flag was a flag created by Tony Burton in 1994 and recognised in 1998 by the Official association of Australian South Sea Islanders , ASSIUC.

This flag takes the frame but with a mix of the current colours of the Blue Ensign: blue, white, red and the National colours, green and yellow.

A good compromise?

A good compromise between the current flag, the Blue Ensign and a tabula rasa with just green and gold, with few links with the Blue Ensign would be Blue and Gold Auspale.

This is like the Green and Gold Auspale, but with blue instead.
This flag is about one third in yellow with on the left top, a blue Commonwealth Star
The two other thirds has got a blue frame with in the centre a yellow Southern Cross.

Blue is indeed the third de facto national colour and people are used to this colour
To mix with one of the two national colours: yellow, the most suitable for a association with blue (as I think green and yellow make dull because they're rather close colours, there is not enough a contrast).

So why not?

A flag from the Cocos flag?

The flag of the Cocos (or Keeling) islands , a dependency of Australai , was created in 2003 by the local administration and adopted in 2004 officially.
This flag is green , has in its centre a crescent , close to the crescent on the right there is the Southern Cross made of yellow stars.
On the top on the left, there is a yellow disc which contains a palm tree, with a detail arborescence and a brown trunk.

This flag, clearly have taken the national colours of Australia, strictly: just green ang gold (just in the yellow there is a bit of brown, but it is unsignificant compared with the rest of the flag).

You can have a look to the Cocos flag: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_Cocos_(Keeling)_Islands

I have adapted this flag for making one for entire Australia.
The crescent has been replaced by a Commonwealth Star and the palm tree by a blue kangaroo.
This is another version adapted from three existent flags which are all a possibility for a national flag:
1970 Papua New Guinea flag, Christmas Island flag and Cocos flag.

Back to basics, the Australian Federation flag?

The Australian Federation Flag is the first official flag for the British colonies in the Australian continent. This was created in the 1830's, as at the origine, precisely in 1831 by the captain Jacob Gronow, master of the Harbour of Port Jackson (the former name of the town of Sydney);

 this was the flag for the main colony, the New South Wales. Let's remind that in 1830, the colony of New South Wales is bigger than the current federated State in Australia, but contained Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and Northern Territory (sure the ACT). For a short time, even New Zealand (from 1840 to 1841).
This flag has a centre blue cross with the Southern Cross inside made of five Commonwealth stars. In the canton, there is the Union Jack.
It has become popular in the 1880's and has been popular as the real flag of Australia in the minds of Australian until the 1920's. After the Red/Blue Ensign took the predominance.

If you want to have a look on the Australian Federation Flag: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Federation_Flag

So I took this flag as model , I have removed the Union Jack and coloured by green and yellow alternatively the white parts and have let a thin white space between the coloured parts and the blue cross.

Inspiring from the Christmas Island flag?

The Christmas Island is a dependency of Australia. The Christmas Island has a flag with yet the national colours of Australia. Why not inspiring from it.
This is the design of the Christmas Island flag: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Christmas_Island
This flag is very current, it was created in 2002.

I have replace the bird buson, the symbol of the Christmas island by the kangaroo, the very representative animal symbol of Australia. There are two versions: on with a white thin line which make a transition from blue to green for having less colour clash and one without it.

Let's try with the koala!

The koala is one of the peculiar Australian animals with the kangaroo, the emu and the platypus.
There are lot of flags attemps with the kangaroo and even one offical, the Australian Air Force Ensign.
I wanted to have a look with the koala.

Incredible!

Did you know that the Australian authorities created a flag with the national colours??
With green and gold? And precisely blue equally.
No?
Well, this flag was created in 1970, for changing the Blue Ensign on the dependency of Papua New Guinea. This was one year before the independence from Australia. As this territory, former German colony from 1884 to 1918 as 'German New Guinea': 'Deutsch Neu-Guinea'.
Then this was a League Of Nations Mandate given to Australia, until 1971 (in fact a kind of protectorate).
This flag is a tricolor flag with vertical bands, in the following order: blue, yellow, green.
On the blue part, in the center, there is the Southern Cross made of five-point stars and on the green part, a white silhouette of lyrebird.
This is clearly the national colours of Australia given to PNG!!
So we can say that the Commonwealth has created without knowing it , a version of the national flag of Australia!

Source: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Papua_New_Guinea

That can be this way for Australia.

At last , my proposal of a people's flag

This flags contains green and gold, of course. But blue equally. There are the two main symbols of Australia: the Commonwealth Star and the Southern Cross, typical from a southern hemisphere country. (As it is the case for New Zealand and Papua New Guinea).
I would add a third symbol, more efficient than the acacia flower: the eucalyptus.

This flag is from Australia (many essences come from the continent-island), it is linked to one the special animals of Australia: the koala. As eucalyptus leaves are often on branches, I decided to represent a branch and the diagonal is the best way to represent it.

To my opinion, the best frame for the Commonwealth Star is the blue (an inheritance of the Blue Ensign), so the Southern Cross is on a green frame. The eucalyptus branch, by consequence is golden.
I have preferred to put the stars in white, because I prefer it! And it because it is the case in the Blue Ensign.

I have called this flag, the 'Golden Eucalyptus Branch'.

So now you have two options: choosing this flag or creating a new one if you want a different one!

What are the national colours of Australia?

How many national colours are there?
Precisely there are officialy, and in the mind of people, generally: two.
Green and yellow ('gold'). Why?

These are the colours of the national flower : flower of acacia (called 'golden wattle').
These colours have been used since a long time. The Australia's cricket team , first, wore them in 1899 (cricket is popular in Australia as in may British-origine countries and even in the US, but it is called 'baseball'-joke  ^ ^ -)
But it has been made official just in 1984 by the proclamation of the Governor General, with the advice of the Prime Minister of that time, Bob Hawke.

Green and gold have been popularised by the athletes who represent proudly Australia!

Is this all?
No, in fact , no. I think there are other national colours for Australia. I would say in priority, blue.
Why blue? Because of the Blue Ensign! And I don't think a people's flag or a new flag is possible without blue.
I would add secondarily, but truly red and black. Red is the second colour of the Blue Ensign and then red and black are colours from the Aboriginal flag. But even more than this. Red of the desert, especially. Don't we call the desertic centre of Australia, the 'red centre'?

Making its own opinion

These are several links to sites who promote a new design for an Australian flag:

-Peter Ballard: the 'One United Southern Land'  (with the theme of Uluru), http://www.peterballard.org/ozflag/index.html

-Fred Rieben: the 'Southern Cross and Boomerang' flag (the boomerang is a typical symbol from Australia) , http://www.flagoz.com/

-Dylan Crawfoot (the Blue Ensign design but with some Green and Gold waves): http://djc9.tripod.com/newflag/index.htm

-Brendan Jones: the 'Reconciliation flag' (mix of the Aboriginal colours and the current flag) , http://bc.id.au/flags/

Which method to use in order to make accept a new flag?

-There are different possibilities: a referendum, but it is not used to convoke the voters for such a issue, which is indeed identitary but unsignificant from important political issues (change of constitution, change of regime,...).

-There is the Parliament debate. Probably at the end the new flag would be adopted this way.
-At last, there is the people's initiative: some citizens have make their own site to popularise a new design as Fred Rieben, Peter Ballard  Brendan Jones or Dylan Crawfoot...

The association Ausflag organise competitions to find a new design and promotes the idea that a new flaf is needed...
Whereas the Australian National Flag Association promotes the maintaining of the Blue ensign as it is linked to Australia's history.
The popular promotion has been made for two flags in Australia: the Aboriginal flag created in Adelaide, SA in 1971 by Harold Thomas as a sign of activism. The Torres Strait Islanders flag was created in 1992 by Bernard Namok in a competition. These two flags are now popular and even taken by no-Aboriginal and no-Melanesian populations, sign of popularity, sign of sucess for these two flags.
So let's make this for the people's flag of Australia! First step: creating a flag just for people, not the State; then if things evolve, why not adopting it as a National flag?...


The debate is not ready to be closed!

Why a new flag?

The current flag: the Blue Ensign,  comes from the the foundation of the autonomous State of Australia, the 'Commonwealth of Australia' , the first design was made in 1901 with six-point star and in red; the Commonwealth Star (seven point) was adopted in 1908.
The Blue Ensign has been made official just since an act of 1953.
So Australia was STILL a colony, autonomous but a dependent territory from Britain.
The real independence (the right to touch the constitution) has been signed just in 1986...

This is not for showing a sign of hatred to Britain. The British people is the friend of the Australian people. But now Australia is independent. This is not forcely to mark a republicanist feeling. The new flag can be and I would say has to be proper whether a constitutional monarchy or a republic.
Let's re-call that a personnal union between two countries , i.e a monarch who has a title overseas in another country doesn't make consider the concerned country 'dependent', 'not independent'.
From 1603 to 1707, Scotland had been independent, eventhough the Stuart dynasty, then William of Orange, and the same monarchs were both kings of England and kings of Scotland.