Just yawning over our anthem
FOR the past couple of weeks I’ve been debating how to respond to a note we got recently from our local primary school explaining that a number of the parents were unhappy with the children being made to sing the national anthem each week at school assembly.
In its place, the note explained, it had been proposed that the kids instead sing something called the Future National Anthem penned by Kutcha Edwards and Judith Durham of The Seekers. Now, I realise of course that as a harrumphing columnist of mature years it is my professional duty to become outraged at the latest example of political correctness gone mad.
But truth be told, I’ve never really liked Advance Australia Fair. It isn’t much of a tune and the lyrics are trite — our home is indeed girt by sea — but so bloody what? And what does girt even mean?
So, actually, my first thought was that, given poor old Judith didn’t write any of the Seekers’ hits, she could probably use the money.
And I quite fancy the idea of Daniel Andrews sending her quarterly royalty cheques in the autumn of her years. After all, he’s blown a lot more of our money on dumber things than that in the five years he’s had his hands on the tiller. And on what grounds exactly should I object? You can’t possibly argue that the words to Advance Australia Fair are sacrosanct, because in 1984 when the Hawke government made it the national anthem, it changed the opening line from “Australia’s sons” to “Australians all”.
If you can rewrite the lyrics once to make them more inclusive what’s to stop you doing it again? And when you think about it, even the title of the song is “problematic” as we like to say in the inner north. I mean what exactly is meant by “fair”? Might not that be taken as code for “white”? Is it any wonder it’s on the nose?
The surprising thing, as I later learned, was that, far from being at the vanguard of progress, it turns out that our school is dragging its heels. The award for most progressive primary school in inner Melbourne must surely go to the mob up the road that binned the anthem earlier this year.
That, I should add, was at the initiative of the children themselves, rather than their parents, and ended an earlier, no doubt uneasy, compromise that had allowed them a choice to either stand up and sing or sit down in silence as their consciences dictated.
The other reason I can’t really get worked up about this is that it rather amuses me to think that some of the oldsters who are annoyed about the changes to the lyrics are no doubt the same Leftists who in their youth drove people like my grandmother nuts with their insistence that we get rid of God Save the Queen.
Which, whatever else you think about it, has one big advantage over AAF in that it is considerably shorter.
The other irony of these anthem wars is that it was none other than prime minister Julia Gillard who wrote to all the schools in Australia asking that the kids be made to sing AAF. Alas, as was the case with her opposition to gay marriage, which you will remember was against her upbringing, time makes reactionaries of us all.
Finally and I confess, somewhat lazily, I suppose I can’t be fagged getting into a fight about this because, well, it hardly seems worth it. Because you just know in your bones that the rewrite-the-words brigade are going to win. They always win.
You could argue of course that that’s exactly the reason why they win: because indolent people like me can’t be bothered making a fuss.
But if I don’t like living among people who don’t like the national anthem, I can always move to a place where they do. Or I can pay to send my child to a school where they sing the post-1984 version. Since I’m not inclined to do either, I’ll just have to let this one go through to the keeper.
But the reality, as this local debate shows, is that the sort of progressive policies that give the rest of Australia the tom-tits are actually reflective of the views of those communities who simply cannot understand why everyone doesn’t see the world as they do.
It isn’t really clear to me that there is a comfortable halfway point between a community that thinks it’s cool to encourage preps to sit down during the national anthem and a community where people fly the Australian flag on Australia Day.
Which, of course, would be the flag most of my neighbours would like to see changed and the holiday they would like to see abolished. James Campbell is a Herald Sun columnist.