Australian Surf Life Saving Flag Colours - a dangerous mistake?

Tourists see these as warning flags
Our small survey of a few European tourists regarding the red and yellow surf flags revealed something interesting, if rather obvious. We asked two questions:

1. What do these flags stand for?
2. If you see red and yellow flags on the beach, do you go to swim?

All of the people we talked to gave a similar answer:
1. These are warning flags / there is something dangerous there.
2. I would avoid swimming between those red and yellow flags and rather swim outside that area.

This is what I was thinking too when I first came to Australia. 
Red and yellow are the international warning colours. It stood to reason that these bright flags had been put there to show a dangerous place where one shouldn't be swimming.

Is this why so many tourists drown in Australia?
Instead of trying to educate the rest of the world that the warning colours mean safety in Australia, why not simply start using the colour which most people in the world would immediately understand as a colour of safety; green?

Red and yellow are, perhaps, good colours for the surf lifesavers' clothing, but not so good to indicate a safe place to swim? If a red flag indicates that the beach is closed and that you should not enter the water, and a yellow flag that there are potential hazards in the water, it may be logical to assume that a red and yellow flag combines those two warnings.

Anja McGifford
Proprietor
Artelina Sewn Flags
19th January 2010