| Papua New Guinea | |
| Use: | 111110 |
| Proportion: | 3:4 |
| Design: | Divided diagonally from the upper hoist-side corner to the lower fly-side corner: the upper triangle is red with the soaring Raggiana bird-of-paradise and the lower triangle is black with the Southern Cross of four white larger five-pointed stars and the smaller star. |
| Designer: | Susan Karike Huhume |
| Name2: | Naval Ensign |
| Use2: | 000001 |
| Proportion2: | 3:4 |
| Design2: | A white flag with the national flag of Papua New Guinea in the canton |
The flag of Papua New Guinea (Tok Pisin: plak bilong Papua Niugini) was adopted on 1 July 1971. In the hoist, it depicts the Southern Cross; in the fly, a Raggiana bird-of-paradise is silhouetted. The design was chosen through a nationwide design competition in early 1971. The winning designer was Susan Karike,[1] who was 15 at the time.
Red and black have long been traditional colours of many Papua New Guinean tribes. Black-white-red was the colour of the German Empire flag, which had colonised New Guinea prior to 1918. The bird-of-paradise is also found on the national coat-of-arms. The Southern Cross shows that it is a country in the Southern Hemisphere and can be seen in Papua New Guinea.
Prior to independence, the Australian administration proposed a vertical tricolour flag with blue, yellow and green bands, along with the bird of paradise and southern cross, designed by Hal Holman.[2] The blue was said to represent the sea and islands of New Guinea, the Southern Cross was a guide for the traveling peoples, the gold represented the coastlines, mineral wealth, and unity, and the green represented the forested highlands and mainland, with the Bird of Paradise representing the unification under one nation.[3] It had a mainly negative reception, due to its appearance as that of a "mechanically contrived outcome", thus an alternate version attributed to 15-year old schoolgirl Susan Karike was chosen instead.[4]