JohnJ
I agree we need a new flag, sooner not later.
All we need to do is remove the 'jack'
Move the Federation Star up to the centre between top & bottom and slightly enlarge it
Maintain the Southern Cross as is

Thus the blue field represents our clear skies and clean waters
The Southern Cross our position on the globe
The Federation Star the coming togeather of the original six colonies under one federation, hence the seven pointed star - our history

John L:

Your 'big star flag' will look like so many others. Big stars are a monotonous feature of countless national flags.

Also, the history of this continent did not start with Federation, as you suggest.

Perhaps you were a student at the Ray Martin School of History? Ray was once suspected of being a follower of that crepuscular history revisionist, Paul Keating.

Yes Australian history didn't start with Federation - it started 50,000 or so years ago with the first migration of homo sapiens out of Africa. However, the point is, what aspects of Australian history are worth symbolising on a flag - surely not the place becoming a colonial outpost of the British empire, a dumping ground for convicts? Instead, we should wish to celebrate, in our flag, in a unifying manner: Australia being a nation where one of the oldest living cultures on Earth has survived, which became independant and prosperous despite such inauspicious circumstances in 1788; which was one of the first true democracies on Earth (along with NZ, as one of the 1st nations to give women the vote), with a great egalitarian tradition (one blot being the failure to give Aborigines the vote until 1967).
These are the sorts of things we should look to incorporate in our flag. I don't disagree that the Federation star and the southern cross could also stay on it. Some imagination people please...we need a new flag to represent Australia in the 21st century which celebrates things about Australia worth celebrating.