Mike O’Connor: John Farnham’s ‘Aussie’ Voice anthem being used to divide us

Unfortunately the Voice referendum has created Them and Us and no amount of ad nauseam playing of John Farnham’s anthemic song will change that, writes Mike O’Connor.

It’s not often that pearls of wisdom, unintended though they may be, slip from the lips of pop singers, but we must be grateful to Tim Wheatley for giving us the benefit of his views.

Tim, you may be aware, is the singer-son of Glenn Wheatley who is John Farnham’s manager and a friend of the singer who has decided to lend his voice to the yes campaign for the voice referendum by allowing it to use his song You’re The Voice.

“You’re The Voice. It’s a song for all Australians. Always has been, always will be,” he said.

That, Tim old son, is precisely the point. It is a song for all Australians. I’ve may even have warbled the chorus myself after a particularly long lunch on our balcony.

What is most certainly not for all Australians is the voice as proposed in the referendum which you might surely have appreciated if you had paused for thought.

John Farnham (right) and manager Glenn Wheatley

Unlike Farnham’s song, the voice is for a very small percentage of the population.

Would Farnham have ever recorded a song and then announced that he was only singing it for less than four per cent of Australians and that no one else was allowed to listen?

This would never happen, but it is just such a divisiveness along racial lines that we are being asked to support.

There will be Them and Us and no amount of guitar strumming and ad nauseam playing of Farnham’s song will change that.

It is worth noting in passing, before we all get misty-eyed and start chanting the lyrics of this – dare I say it – Aussie musical icon, that it is as about as Australian as warm beer.

It was written in London by a team of British songwriters led by Chris Thompson, lead singer in Manfred Mann’s Earth Band and inspired by a protest march for nuclear disarmament that took place in that city’s Hyde Park on October 25, 1985.

Thompson planned to record it but his publisher talked him out of it, telling him protest songs were old news.

A demo tape made its way to Australia via the song’s co-writer Andy Qunta, who was working with Australian band Icehouse – and that’s when Farnham heard the song.

Aussie music legend John Farnham has lent his anthem You’re the Voice to the Yes camp’s TV commercial in support of the Voice to Parliament. Picture: Supplied

True-blue, fair dinkum, good as gold, no worries, made-in-Australia unofficial anthem? Not really, mate.

Tim, through naivete, supreme optimism or an unhappy combination of both has declared that using the song did not align it, or by association Farnham, with any political party.

Apparently he is unaware Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been barnstorming around the country, all but purple in the face as he bellows at the electorate to support the Voice and that Peter Dutton (he’s the Coalition Opposition Leader, Tim) is urging the electorate to vote No.

Farnham then, is with the Yes camp, good news for all those people who have been waiting to see how a 74-year-old pop singer is going to vote before making up their minds.

When not taking our lead from Farnham, we can turn to the ABC for guidance where presenter Leigh Sales has announced that the Uluru Statement is one page and not 26 and lectured the corporation’s journalists on how to deal with people who might suggest otherwise.

ABC journalists are apparently incapable of carrying out their own research and must rely on Ms Sales’s world view.

Glenn Wheatley with wife Gaynor and their son Tim. Picture: Supplied

I’ve downloaded it, after a degree of difficulty, from the National Indigenous Australian Agency’s website. You’ll find it at www.niaa.gov.au/sites/default/files/foi-log/foi-2223-016.pdf

Have a read and you may find that the totality of what we are dealing with here is much greater than any warm and fuzzy, let’s-all-hold-hands one-page statement.

As Farnham sings, “you’re the voice, try and understand it”.

It is also worth noting that the full text was only released by the agency after a Freedom of Information request.

I’m now taking the coward’s way out and going overseas for three weeks.

It’s an expensive way to escape Farnham’s song, but to stay is to risk insanity.

We’re paying about 50 per cent more in airfares than we paid for the same trip pre-Covid so thanks PM for your wildly successful efforts in protecting the Qantas market share at the expense of Aussie battlers, some of whom may have grown up in public housing and whose best interests you hold so close to your heart.