James Valentine has this argument.
“No, my fellow oi oi oiers, it is the state flag of NSW that I suggest today is in need of attention. It is as colonial and archaic as a stiff upper lip and as purposeful to today’s world as a doily.
Meet the NSW flag
For many, this is perhaps the first time you’ve been made aware that we have an NSW flag — along with the other states and territories — and at first glance, it looks much like the fair dinkum national one.
It’s a Blue Ensign, Union Jack in the canton again but instead of the stars, there is a disc described in heraldic terms as argent on a cross gules a lion passant guardant between four stars of eight points.
In language used outside the Guild of Heralds, that’s a silver disc with a red cross. On the cross is a gold lion walking forwards looking at the viewer. There are four gold stars on each point of the cross.
The flag of NSW. Union jack in the top left corner and a circle with a red cross on it, with a gold lion and four stars on the r
The flag of New South Wales features a Blue Ensign, Union Jack in the canton and a silver disc with a red cross, a lion and four stars.(Wikimedia)
This flag contains not one, not two, but three core elements all of which came o’er the seas from Albion: The Union Jack, mandatory unless the flag designers of the day wished to be flogged; the Gold Lion walking forwards while keeping an eye on us is the symbol of the British government, all powerful, all seeing, all consuming; and the Cross of St George, the red cross that’s already in the Union Jack so a touch redundant. The stars — taken from the state crest — apparently represent the Southern Cross, but not in the clear way we know it elsewhere.
This is a flag from a British colony dating from the 1860s. It is pre-federation and represents a political entity that no longer exists. The symbols are those which exert British authority.”
So there’s no need to erect a new flagpole. Just chuck away the aged and irrelevant NSW rag