Former Lord Mayor of Melbourne Sally Capp has reignited debate over whether the City of Melbourne flag should be scrapped, saying the colonial-inspired design no longer reflected modern Melbourne.
The little-known flag, based on the city’s 1843 official seal, was first adopted in 1970 and features a white background divided by the red cross of St George. It has four quadrants representing the industries that drove Melbourne’s early economy—wool, cattle, shipping, and whaling.
Capp, who served as Lord Mayor from 2018 to 2024, said the flag’s symbols appeared across the city in stained glass, brass plaques, and pavements, hiding in plain sight.
“Once you start seeing it, you can’t unsee it,” she said.
The flag has been embedded throughout the streetscape. As part of the City of Melbourne’s $10 million restoration of Princes Bridge between 2024 and 2026, the emblem was incorporated into each restored lamppost.
The emblem has been incorporated into lampposts on Princes Bridge. Image: Harry Robertson.
Capp said Melbourne deserved a symbol that reflected what the city was today.
“I don’t think the current flag is one that represents who we are as a city and a society,” she said.
“There are elements of it that we have to acknowledge, parts of our history like whaling that we’re not necessarily proud of.”
Whaling was one of the first major industries in colonial Victoria. Whaling stations operated along the coast before Melbourne itself was formally established, according to the State Library Victoria.
When Melbourne’s official seal was chosen in 1843, the City of Melbourne recorded whale oil as one of Port Phillip’s chief exports; significant enough to earn its place on the city’s official flag alongside wool, cattle and shipping.
The tall ship on Melbourne’s flag honours the Enterprize, the vessel that carried the first European settlers to the city in 1835. One of the few places Melburnians can see the flag is on the mast of its replica, which was built in 1997 and continues to sail on Port Phillip Bay.
Capp joked that some people have suggested a “giant coffee cup” as Melbourne’s symbol, but said a redesigned flag could instead reflect the city’s multiculturalism, arts and culture, and its parks and gardens.
“It’d be great to have a go at reflecting our past, our present, and our future in a flag,” Capp said.
Ralph Bartlett is a vexillologist—someone who studies flags—and secretary of Flags Australia.
Bartlett said flags should be clearly identifiable at a glance, and that Melbourne’s current flag carried too many symbols to be effective.
“A good flag should be simple in design, and you should be able to distinguish it from a few hundred metres away,” he said.
Bartlett said a broader discussion about a redesign was warranted, while the historical origins of the current design remained worth considering.
“The flag isn’t distinctive from our British past; people don’t feel connected to it,” he said.
Another flag expert, Tony Burton, is the editor of flags journal Crux Australis and author of Vexillogistics: An Illustrated and Practical Guide to Flag Design.
Burton described the Melbourne flag as “boring” and “rather clumsy”.
He said it carried the further sin of unoriginality, as it looked “the same as the flags of Perth and Adelaide”.
Indigenous artist Aretha Brown said the current flag failed to connect with most Melburnians and that its Christian and British symbols no longer reflected the city.
The City of Melbourne flag flying from the mast of the replica of the Enterprize. Image supplied.
“I think it’s time for a change for the Melbourne flag,” she said.
Pointing to the Australian Aboriginal Flag as an example of stronger artistic design, Brown acknowledged that Melbourne’s flag represented “industry” and “the working class”.
She said the flag should be updated to reflect the city’s Indigenous ties and represent “a Blak Australia”.
City of Melbourne councillor Olivia Ball said no formal process was currently underway to review the design.
“I am not aware of any formal discussions to change the flag,” Ball said.
According to Capp, any serious community conversation would require a formal council motion and significant investment in stakeholder engagement, neither of which was achieved during her tenure.
She said awareness of the flag among everyday Melburnians remained remarkably low.
“If you ask 10 people in the street what’s on the flag of Melbourne, they’d say, ‘What flag of Melbourne?'” she said.
“For such a distinctive city, that could be something fun to change.”
