Andrew Bolt: Gladys Berejiklian’s push to change our national anthem is a con

This debate Gladys Berejiklian’s has kicked off over our national anthem is another sad excuse not to discuss how best to help many Aboriginal Australians, writes Andrew Bolt.

I would love Gladys Berejiklian’s change to our national anthem to work. I’d love to hear race activists finally sing that “Australians all” are — yes! — just “one”.

But the NSW Premier’s plan to change the words “young and free” to “one and free” is a con. The people she’s trying to please don’t want us to be “one” at all.

Just listen to their silence.

Has one activist who refuses to sing our national anthem today said they’ll sing it tomorrow if Berejiklian’s change is made?

I’ll make a deal. Let me hear the NRL’s Indigenous All Stars promise to start singing our anthem if it’s changed to “one and free”.

Then I’ll back that change, too.

Sure, the Premier already has plenty of white supporters when she babbles that the word “young” must go to “recognise the tens of thousands of years of the First Nations people of this continent” and get “unity”.

But this is the first con in Berejiklian’s plan. In fact, “young” refers to how recently we were united as a nation. And, no, there never was a “First Nation” before.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian wants to change our anthem to be more inclusive. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Damian Shaw

What’s more, our anthem could hardly be more inclusive, declaring “Australians all” have “boundless plains to share” with “those who’ve come across the seas”.

No, this push to remove the word “young” as “racist” is based on a fraudulent misunderstanding.

Replacing it with “one” to get more “unity” is an even bigger fraud. You can tell that from the reception to Berejiklian’s plan.

Not one race activist has said they’ll drop their ban on the anthem if “young” is scrapped. Instead, they are frantically shifting the goalposts, as they do after every win.

NSW Labor leader Jodi McKay, for instance, says, yes, change the anthem, but let’s go further and fly the Aboriginal flag permanently on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Yes, let’s not be “one” but divided by race, each race with its own flag.

Greens politician David Shoebridge says let’s go further and do “actual reform like self-determination”.

Let’s not be “one” but have different political rights, depending on race.

Other activists don’t hide the real agenda. They openly declare that the word “one” is no more acceptable than “young”.

Short Black Opera artistic director Deborah Cheetham, who refused to sing our anthem at the 2015 AFL Grand Final, complained: “We’re not just one, we’re many.”

NSW Aboriginal Land Council chairwoman Anne Dennis claimed we could only become “one” if we also agreed to the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

That’s what federal Labor wants, too. But that statement actually divides “Australians all” by race, demanding effectively an Aboriginal-only advisory parliament. No more “one”.

No more “Australians all”.

Replacing one word in our anthem will just be a fresh whitewash over the terrible truth of Aboriginal Australians’ unfree lives.

That’s the real agenda of many Australians who hate our anthem. It’s for a land where “one” becomes “many”, with one race — Aboriginal — singled out for different rights.

If it were Pauline Hanson, not Berejiklian, asking us to sing that we were “one”, you’d hear even more activists being upfront about this.

As it is, Greens senator Lidia Thorpe, another race divider, said we “will need to do more than change the national anthem, we need to change the nation”.

So, don’t think changing one word of our anthem will unite us. Our race activists are tribalists who don’t want to sing of us being “one”.

Berejiklian must know this, just as she must know this debate she’s kicked off is one more sad excuse not to discuss how best to help many Aboriginal Australians.

Changing our anthem won’t make more Aboriginal children go to school, more Aborigines employable or more Aboriginal women escape being bashed.

But it will let thousands of lazy activists speak for thousands of lazy hours about anthems, symbols and grievances, and not do a stroke of useful work — especially for Aboriginal children living in hopeless homes.

Yes, many Aboriginal children, particularly in urban areas, do very well.

But statistics tell us hard truths that few activists confront. Truths that are much harder to change than a word of our anthem.

Aboriginal children are more likely to miss school. Aboriginal children are 10 times more likely to need to be removed from dangerous homes. Young Aborigines are four times more likely to kill themselves.

And that should tell us the biggest con of all about this debate over our anthem.

“Australians all” includes these Aboriginal children, too, and singing “one and free” will just be a fresh whitewash over the terrible truth of their unfree lives.

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