Oh, gawd! Here comes a rant on an old hobbyhorse of mine that I’ll regret the moment I press upload.

And why? It’s because it always make me sound like a racist, which I definitely hope I’m not. Not much of one, anyway, for an Aussie. Okay, ready for it?

I really do wish that decent, good-minded people with hearts of gold would cease this bloody obsession with trying to come up with a new Aussie flag with a First-Nations theme!

Such a design is never, ever, going to be accepted by the Australian public. There … I’ve said it. Let the abuse begin.

My return to this topic has been sparked by a totally reasonable person on Twitter who uploaded the design (at top) and declared it the best he’s seen to date.

It’s lovely. But trust me. Maybe I am a racist. It’s just never going to be hoisted up an Aussie flagpole.

What does the design tell us? That Australia’s Aborigines live under the Southern Cross. And have done so brilliantly for a bloody long time until the British came along and fucked everything up.

We should all be very proud that our country boasts the world’s oldest ongoing human culture. What they have achieved over 60,000 years (and counting) is truly remarkable.

But there are many millions of Australians who will baulk, and rightly so, at a flag design that appears to celebrate only that amazing culture and none of the others that have contributed to modern multi-cultural Oz. Keep digging, Donnie. You’re almost there.

Some years ago, some professor came up with a new flag design that took my breath away. My immediate reaction was how could someone so smart and so learned come up with something so stupid. From memory it had all these circles or rings recognising some 200 plus Aboriginal dialects around the nation. Anyone who could have interpreted that design would have earned an immediate doctorate in Australian anthropology.

Apart from the flaw mentioned above that our First Nations people must be the focus of any new ensign design, the prof’s muddled idea also complete ignored the KISS principle of flag design. A schoolkid might have graduated university before drawing it properly.

Now don’t get me wrong, as I pause digging and rest briefly on my shovel. I would be absolutely delighted to have some Aussie aboriginal blood surging through my aging Anglo-saxon veins.

I love the Aboriginal flag. And if I had to chose between that flag, or the one above, over our revolting current design that I detest with an almost visceral hatred because it’s dominated by that dreadful Union Jack, I’d tick their boxes any bloody day of a referendum weekend. But millions of Aussies wouldn’t.

My deepest held belief is that any new design capable of getting the public’s nod must be all-encompassing of our nation’s rich multicultural tapestry. Or none at all! Racist? Moi!

How does that song go that many think would be a much better anthem than Advance Australia Fair?

We are one, but we are many
And from all the lands on earth we come
We’ll share a dream and sing with one voice
I am, you are, we are Australian.

Aside: Sadie the Cleaning Lady would be a better anthem than what we’ve got at the moment but that’s a debate for another rant.

Those who became Aussies on or around Invasion Day last Thursday now proudly own roughly one-twenty-five millionth of this amazing country along with our First Nations people, the descendants of First Fleeters, the Greeks and the Italians who helped modernise the joint in the 50s and 60s; our no-longer-newbies from south-east Asia with their amazing appetite for great foods and academic success. Real, true-blue Aussies from so many other places as well.

Keep digging, Donnie. You’ll be offered a Herald-Sun column before you know it.

So where is this rant heading as my head disappears below ground level? I’m a dreadful Anglophile – daddy was English – but I want the fucking Union Jack off the flag before I cark it. And time is running out.

I loathe the fact it’s all you see when a drunken yobbo does a lap of honour at the cricket with it draped around his shoulders. Or that the Union Jack is all you see on a fallen Digger’s coffin.

I’ve thought long and hard about a new design. And wouldn’t it be great to beat the Kiwis at something noble and ditch the Union Jack seeing they couldn’t? For fuck’s sake, even Britain probably won’t have that Union Jack much longer with the blue bits likely to go.

Our new flag needs to be simple and something so typical Aussie. The Eureka flag, seeing it’s so, so anti-establishment? Enjoying the taste of lead, you redcoat bastards!

The Qantas flying kangaroo tail, once our national carrier goes into liquidation and needs it no more?

Some other fauna. The platypus? The koala? Bluey?

Flora! A sprig of wattle to match Canada’s maple leaf. Want to know how long they’ve had that, just to get really depressed? Please note: the Maple Leaf doesn’t scream Canada’s First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. The silver fern that the Kiwis should have gone for does not scream “look at Maori!” So, yeah! The wattle? Why not?

Under the Southern Cross I stand,
A sprig of wattle in my hand,
A native of my native land,
Australia, you fucking beauty!

Thinking of cricket, the ball Shane Warne took his 700th Test wicket with?

I’ve even come to the conclusion that even using a bit of red, black or yellow in the design as a nod to our amazing First Nations people – Warnie’s red ball centred on a plain yellow background, perhaps? – could upset the Pauline Hansons of this world to the point of rejection.

Don Bradman’s silhouette? Too far right wing? Keep digging, Donnie. Not far to go now. Get ready for that call from the SMH saying I’m replacing Parnell Palme McGuinness.

While I don’t think Oz is as racist as some make out, we must face the fact that Aunty Pauline’s White Indigenous One Nations tribe roams among us in numbers too frightening to even contemplate.

They’d vote to retain our current flag even if the alternative on offer was a stylised image of a deep-fried battered cod with small chips.

If I’m even remotely right about this obsession with would-be-flag designers for an aboriginal motif and the failure it portends, it means I will very likely go to my grave without a new flag – or the chance of seeing in an Australian republic. My two big bucket-list items.

Shit, is that what I’m digging right now ? A grave? Because the soil is sure as hell getting pretty hot down here!

Don Gordon-Brown