QandA debates changing Australia’s national anthem

Should Australia change its national anthem to “reflect all Australians” and “not just the first settlers”?

Should Australia change its national anthem to “reflect all Australians” and “not just the first settlers”? That was one question posed on ABC’s QandA on Monday night.

The panel — which included Chinese-Australian journalist Cheng Lei, TV personality Osher Gunsberg, singer Anthony Callea, LGBTQ advocate Todd Fernando and Liberal Party advisor Charlotte Mortlock — debated whether it was time to finally ditch Advance Australia Fair.

“We were talking about the Voice before ... if we compare the lyrics of Advance Australia Fair with I Am Australian, one mentions First Nations, the Anzacs, the first settlers, bushrangers, the stockmen that keep the beef on our tables, the other is only from the perspective of the first settler alone,” audience member Sue Nami said.

QandA audience member Sue Nami. Picture: ABC

“How can we help the Indigenous people when we need to change the national anthem to I Am Australian so it reflects all Australians, not just the first settlers that came here. It has to respect every single culture that is in our country, we need an anthem that we can be proud of.”

Gunsberg agreed that the anthem was a “dirge-y thing” and joked that for entertainment purposes “at least put a key change, put a pyro cue in there, let me know when to let off the fireworks”.

Ms Mortlock suggested “we keep the anthem but we could add more stuff into it”.

Dr Fernando, a Kalarie man and the outgoing Victorian LGBTIQA+ Commissioner, said he didn’t engage with the anthem anyway.

“Truth be told I just stand during most anthem singings and I don’t really sing,” he said. “That’s my version of taking a knee, essentially. I respectfully stand and let others sing it.”

Callea said he felt an anthem was “meant to unify people, and yes it’s a tricky one”.

Singer Anthony Callea says the anthem should be ‘reworked’. Picture: ABC

“I think the anthem needs to be reworked — we’ve already slightly tweaked it in the last couple years,” he said.

“But it was only I think in 1977 that’s when there was a plebiscite for the actual anthem, and we’ve only had that national anthem since 1984. We can make changes to it. I feel as though we all know the tune, it is anthemic, that’s what an anthem is meant to do, but we can advance it, and let’s be fair — it’s in the title.”

Lei, was freed last month after spending three years in Chinese detention, said songs “can mean so much in incarceration”.

“I still remember teaching my cellmates Amazing Grace and the song just would bring everyone to tears whether they knew English or not,” she said.

“If enough people feel that the words of the anthem don’t reflect what they feel about being Australian then I think sure, change it.”

In a surprise late-night announcement on New Year’s Eve 2020, then Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced that he had unilaterally changed the lyrics of the national anthem starting January 1, 2021 onwards.

The second line of Advance Australia Fair was changed from “For we are young and free” to “For we are one and free”.

Australians are no longer ‘young and free’. Picture: Max Mason-Hubers

“While Australia as a modern nation may be relatively young, our country’s story is ancient, as are the stories of the many First Nations peoples whose stewardship we rightly acknowledge and respect,” Mr Morrison said at the time.

“Changing ‘young and free’ to ‘one and free’ takes nothing away, but I believe it adds much. It recognises the distance we have travelled as a nation. It recognises that our national story is drawn from more than 300 national ancestries and language groups and we are the most successful multicultural nation on earth.”

The change had been pushed by not-for-profit group Recognition in Anthem, which subsequently called for new verses to be added to the anthem to “finish the job”.

Proposed new verses would reference “first peoples of this land” being here “for 60 thousand years and more”.

“Our quest is quite simple — to make the song whole and finish the job that we started, including verse two, which talks about our peoples, and verse three, which talks about our values,” Recognition in Anthem chairperson Peter Vickery told The Sydney Morning Herald in 2021.

Advance Australia Fair was written in 1878 by Scottish-born composer Peter Dodds McCormick.

It replaced God Save the Queen as the national anthem in 1984 following a 1977 plebiscite.

I Am Australian, written in 1987 by Bruce Woodley of the Seekers and Dobe Newton of the Bushwackers, has often been floated as an alternative national anthem.