Another referendum
LATE last week prior to the kick-off of the NRL’s All Star match in Melbourne on Friday night, it was reported that the anthem was set to be sung in the local Murundjeri language, but these plans were scuppered when it emerged that no translation existed.
Before retiring, I spent the last 12 years of my working life as a chief executive officer in indigenous communities in the Torres Strait, Far North Queensland, NT and WA.
There are numerous Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s languages and even more dialects of those languages.
In some larger communities one end of the community cannot communicate with the other end of town because either the language or dialect were different.
As some of these do-gooders want to put the onus on to mainstream Australia to have a referendum on the issue of the anthem, it would be my suggestion that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait peoples decide themselves what would be an appropriate language, dialect and wording for what they want and only then put that to the Australian public. Tom Phillips, Mount Sheridan 1987: US artist Andy Warhol (above) dies in a New York hospital, aged 58, after undergoing gallbladder surgery. 1991: US President George Bush demands that Saddam Hussein begin unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait by noon of following day or risk ground war with allied forces. 2006: US scientists say that the planet Pluto, for 30 years believed to have just one moon, has two more orbiting satellites, P1 and P2. 2015: Following the release of a report into Sydney’s Lindt cafe siege, Prime Minister Tony Abbott vows to tighten Australia’s visa and citizenship processes. PRIVACY POLICY: Our privacy policy www.apnarm.com.au/privacy includes important information about our collection, use and disclosure of your personal information (including to provide you with targeted advertising based on your online activities). It explains that if you do not provide us with information we have requested from you, we may not be able to provide you with the goods and services you require. It also explains how you can access or seek correction of your personal information, how you can complain about a breach of the Australian Privacy Principles and how we will deal with a complaint of that nature.