Change The Fuckin Anthem: It’s Dumb.

I know a lot of people are fond of our national anthem. Like the flag, which so many men with Southern Cross tattoos (or Southies, if you are a certain kind of cool) reject changing because their grandfathers died under it, it is beloved- but super out of date. But, you say, my grandfather killed and died for that anthem. That song of our people, that call to arms, that chorus that is us and belongs to us.

Well, no he didn’t. The anthem was adopted in 1984 and, I say, 31 years is within the window of arseing a bad idea. 

The song though was written in 1878 which means a 106 year disparity between composition and performing. How can we willingly sing a song that dates back to ankle-length skirts, the racial hierarchy and land-owners with the vote.

Let me break it down, to highlight how shit it is:

“Australians all let us rejoice,

For we are young and free;

We've golden soil and wealth for toil,

Our home is girt by sea”

"Girt is...Surrounded? OK, if you say so.

Australia is an ageing country, the ABS stats support that. http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/1CD2B1952AFC5E7ACA257298000F2E76?. Hard to say we are old, but suffice to say we are not young.

Though we are certainly free, our prison population is just proud of thirty thousand and, by most standards,per capita, that is free.

We also have wealth for toil, the average Australian miner earns over one hundred grand a year for dangerous toil. To see real toil talk to the KFC employee on fifteen bucks an hour.

“Beneath our radiant southern Cross,

We'll toil with hearts and hands;

To make this Commonwealth of ours

Renowned of all the lands;

For those who've come across the seas

We've boundless plains to share;

With courage let us all combine

To advance Australia fair.

In joyful strains then let us sing

"Advance Australia fair!" “

I have no major issue with this verse. Oh, I do actually. ‘For those who’ve come across the seas, we’ve boundless plains to share’. Apparently we don’t. We do have boundless cash to throw at prisons within which we keep these people. But our ‘boundless plains’, they are all ours baby. And so they fucking should be, what right does anyone have to take the land we took a bunch of time ago?

I do love this country. Or certain things about it. I love the Australian humour and how anything is a joke to us, I love the Australian language half born or creativity most born of laziness and I really love the Australian people one Xenophobic, Racist and Intolerant mass- fucking love that.

NP.