Peter Goers: We have no reconciliation with Aboriginal people and we continue to insult them in bloody ‘joyful strains’

We are a second-hand nation of little minds and hearts. We have no reconciliation with people we continue to insult, writes Peter Goers.

We are girt by sea and pissed by lunch. It’ll be even easier when booze is delivered with takeaway food.

It ain’t fair to say Advance Australia Fair is the worst national anthem in the world. The good folk of Western Sahara sing in “joyful strains” in their national anthem that they’ll “cut off the head of the invader”. The Congolese sing “and if we have to die what does it really matter?” Japan’s national anthem extols a pebble growing into a boulder covered in moss.

Across the ditch they have “God Defend New Zealand” and he has. At least the NZ dirge has a much-loved verse in the Maori language.

I’m partial to the bellicose US national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner, which celebrates a revolutionary war but not the main one. Its tune and lyrics are as high-flown as the flag it reveres and “twilight’s last gleaming” rhymes with “gallantly streaming”. We can all relate to that, having spent the pandemic “gallantly streaming” TV.

Like the country it celebrates, Advance Australia Fair is a colonial relic. Its archaic language is ludicrous. Every time I sing “girt by sea” I mutter under my breath “poor old Girt” and the best “joyful strain” is the one we hope to have every morning in the loo. I can’t get Shane Jacobson’s parody lyric from the film Kenny out of my addled brain: “Australians all let us ring Joyce/For she is young and free”.

National anthems should be inclusive of all and provide a national vision. Ours excludes our First Nation peoples and mocks them. Singing that we are “young and free” is just the hateful “terra nullius” in song.

How can our nation, which has the oldest living civilisation on Earth, be “young and free”? How is our nation free of our colonial masters with a foreign head of state? Then there’s the hypocrisy of “boundless plains to share” while we deny or imprison refugees.

We need a new national anthem. It can’t be The Song Of Australia with its “thousand dyes” (impossible to sing) and “laughing corn”.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian suggests “we are one and free” as a replacement line in the national anthem. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Dylan Coker

I love the Waltjim bat Matilda by Val McGuinness and sung by Ali Mills – the Gurindji-Kungarakan Kriol version of Waltzing Matilda – because it’s jaunty, heartfelt and brings a smile. I love The Seekers’ I Am, You Are, We Are Australian.

The beloved Judith Durham and Kutcha Edwards have re-written Advance Australia Fair and have done a fair job but most of us barely know the old lyrics and that’s telling. We’ve had this national anthem for 36 years and most of us don’t know the words. It’s unendearing. Unloved.

John Schumann and Shane Howard, both of whom have written great songs of national importance, are having a go at writing a new anthem and good luck to them.

There was a movement to change “young and free” to “peace and harmony” but that failed. Now NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian wisely suggests “we are one and free”. That’s better but will it fly?

We are the only nation divided not united by national symbols; flag, anthem, national day and foreign head of state.

We are a mess. We are a second-hand nation of little minds and hearts. We have no reconciliation with Aboriginal people and we continue to insult them in bloody “joyful strains”.

Peter Goers can be heard weeknights and Sundays on ABC Radio Adelaide.