My Daily Advertiser Op Ed column for Tuesday 12 January 2021

by ray goodlass

No amount of tweaking will make Advance Australia Fair acceptable

To mark the New Year Scott Morrison’s government replaced the words “young and free” in the national anthem to “one and free”, picking up an idea floated earlier by NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian.

Morrison said the change was being made “for all Australians. It is time to ensure this great unity is reflected more fully in our national anthem.”

In a pitch to some conservatives who may be wary of change, Morrison emphasised that the planned rewording of the anthem was not radical. “Changing ‘young and free’ to ‘one and free’ takes nothing away.”

Of course, it could just as accurately be regarded as Scotty from Marketing doing nothing more than exercising the old advertising trick of changing the look of a product that isn’t selling very well by changing its image.

Truth be told, ScoMo’s symbolic change comes at a time when Indigenous Australians still face significant hurdles in achieving equal opportunities.

For example, the life expectancy of First Nations people is far lower than that of their non-Indigenous peers.

ScoMo’s government has disappointed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders by ruling out changing the constitution to enshrine the concept of an Indigenous “voice to parliament”, as recommended by the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

Morrison was also highly critical of people participating in Black Lives Matter protests in Australian cities in June, arguing against “importing the things that are happening overseas to Australia”.

Presumably he skipped school when the history of the first fleet was taught.

He also must have been asleep when multinational mining company Rio Tinto destroyed 46,000 year-old artworks in the Juukan Gorge caves in Western Australia in May 2020.

The ABC reported that the PM claims to have been encouraged by the strong response to the change made to the wording.

True, Pauline Hanson, and some Indigenous leaders have welcomed the new wording. First Nations Foundation chairman and Yorta Yorta man Ian Hamm said the fresh line was important because, “‘One and free’ brings us together.”

Wagga local, Wiradjuri Elder Aunty Isabel Reid wasn’t quite as fulsome when she told the Daily Advertiser that “the change will be the start of meaningful change for Aboriginal people”.

Another local, Uncle Joe Williams, appropriately commented that “We aren’t all one, we certainly aren’t treated as one, and many, sure as hell, aren’t free”.

“To me, changing just one word with the view of inclusion does very little for actual inclusion, and does next to nothing for the hope of uniting a nation.

“I have long been an advocate of changing three things – the date, the song, and the flag.

Composer Deborah Cheetham is a Yorta Yorta woman who said the new wording was long overdue but changing the anthem “one word at a time is probably not the right way to go”.

She said Kutcha Edwards and Judith Durham’s 2009 anthem, Lyric for a Contemporary Australia, was more appropriate.

It includes the words: ” Our land abounds in nature’s gifts to love, respect and share, And honouring the Dreaming, advance Australia fair. With joyful hearts then let us sing, advance Australia fair.”

It is certainly an improvement, though for my money The Seekers’ “I am Australian” fits the bill very nicely. If we must have a national anthem at all, that is, a point I’ll come back to later.

But federal Labor leader Anthony Albanese, said “Changing a single word in the national anthem while First Nations people aren’t even recognised in our national constitution is simply not good enough.”

MP Linda Burney, the first Aboriginal woman to be elected to the House of Representatives said “The real issue is a constitutionally enshrined voice.”

Australian Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe tweeted, “Replacing ‘young’ with ‘one’ in the anthem is straight up claiming the ancient, intimate connection between First Nations on this continent and their lands for the imperialist, land thieving nation of Australia”.

I also wonder if the emphasis on ‘one’ isn’t problematic because urging any population to be ‘one’ historically has been the work of fascism. Far better to celebrate diversity.

Which leads me to question the need for a national anthem. They have traditionally been used to ramp up populations for war, hardly something to be encouraged. _______________________________