Advance Australia Fair

Words by Peter Dodds McCormick

Bob Hawke changed our anthem from God Save the Queen in 1984. ‘Advance Australia Fair’ was proclaimed Australia’s national anthem following 10 years of ongoing debate, a national opinion poll in 1974, and a plebiscite in 1977. NAA.

In 2021 the Prime Minister Scott Morrison took it upon himself to change a word in our National Anthem; “For we are young one and free.” It was a move to acknowledge that ‘we’ includes Aborigines. It came into effect, not on January 26th, but the 1st.

“It is understood Morrison consulted with the federal cabinet, state premiers and the Speaker of the lower house and the president of the Senate on the planned change to the national anthem. [The Governor General David] Hurley also advised state governors of the plans.” The “idea [was] floated earlier in the year by the New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian” who sought to include Aboriginal history. It “won support from across the political spectrum, including from the federal minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt, and even from the firebrand rightwing One Nation party leader, Pauline Hanson.” “The opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, also backed the proposal.” The Guardian.

There were some criticisms not just from Aborigines, but Christian churches (ABC) of tokenism and that it didn’t coincide with Australia Day.

Why the PM chose the 1st is a mystery at least to me at this point, but hopefully it had something to do with Federation Day. There was no plebiscite, most likely because the PM sought to avoid controversy over a single word. But Scott Morrison’s legacy is one of exceeding his authority. Personally, I think the office of PM and parliament itself holds too much unchecked power, but that is another debate.

So What’s Ludicrous?

Confidence in quantitative growth is deeply rooted in our historical psyche. Some of Advance Australia Fair’s lyrics are at odds with the reality of the limitations of our continent’s ecology. It is very laudable that our love of the environment comes through strong and clear in the anthem. However, we sing of ‘boundless plains to share for those who’ve come across the seas’ that are mostly barren. In fact all signs point to our endless-growth economy hitting the limits of a healthy operating capacity on our continent. Since 1996, six Australian Commonwealth State of the Environment Reports have all described how the environment is degrading, with population growth as a primary driver (Big Thirsty Australia, SPA, p.60). With less available water per person and a more inhospitable climate ahead, we are looking at a more precarious future.

There is hope, however. In the 1977 plebiscite to choose the “national song” Australians preferred “Advance Australia Fair” over Waltzing Matilda. Of the two, the latter is without a doubt the more rousing melody. But I believe the lyrics of the preferred choice won out. We sing to the beauty of our natural environment and our most famous poem waxes lyrical over it, the first lines of which Australians can recite from memory like Americans can recite the first lines of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address;

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!

My Country

Dorothea Mackellar’s “poem dramatically contrasts the bucolic ideal of England’s mild climate, plentiful water, green vistas and rich soils with their Australian antithesis”;

The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

(Big Thirsty Australia, SPA, p. 6)

An Anthem of Happy Harmony?

That we sing to the environment is admirable and also a clarion call to the increasingly urbanized Australian who is disconnected from nature in high-rise apartments.

As it stands, our anthem is dignified and well-rounded – except for a few things. Why are we ‘toiling’ for wealth on a land of ‘golden soil’? Surely a sensible people would enjoy a good work-life balance under such circumstances? We can indeed afford to reward work much better than we do – and we should. There is no reason for low wages or wage slavery. But ‘toil’ is an unfortunate choice of word to rhyme with ‘soil’.

Our ‘golden’ soil is limited to a very small proportion of the continent:

Our continent’s flat landscape is also the oldest, the most weathered and eroded, with the poorest soils and the most ephemeral rivers and streams. Our geomorphology has minimal surface water resources but
extensive groundwater basins. We have the world’s oldest river channel (Finke River).

Big Thirsty Australia – SPA

Better we sing to the fact that we are the ‘First ever nation continent‘. This is our forefathers most spectacular and significant achievement; the creation of the Commonwealth uniting an island continent – a first in human history. It is extraordinary how little we recognize and celebrate it.

Our land does have nature’s gifts of beauty, rich and rare – it’s among the most biodiverse in the world. But they are rare indeed – as in sparse – and getting rarer. We have a species extinction crisis on our hands. It hardly ‘abounds’ in them. The hubris and exuberance in the lyrics about our natural environment belies a spiritual disconnect between people and land. ‘Our land‘ is better referred to as ‘God’s Dream‘ in recognition of our religions and Aboriginal spirituality that is otherwise absent from the anthem.

‘Toiling with hearts and hands‘ speaks to our hard work ethic. Australia was built by hard workers; convicts and former convicts, poor and not-so-poor people from the British Isles and people from other countries; all striving to make a better life for themselves. Australia rewarded them. The labour movement was instrumental in shaping the Commonwealth union. It grew out of the experience of the British aristocracy criminalizing its working class and sending them here out to do the dirty work of encroaching on Aboriginal land to expand the empire. The working class and especially the Irish have had an ambivalent relationship to authority and its use of their labour. However, after civilizing the continent, these opposing forces achieved some reconciliation in a young, progressive democracy that is one of the most stable in the world. The longevity of our oldest political party, the Australian Labor Party, is a testament to the centrality of the theme of work and the fight for fair conditions, reward and recognition for workers. We have all been working hard… to achieve better conditions, so that our descendants have a better life. So that they don’t have to work as hard but rather pursue happiness and their potential. Technology has developed and replaced many workers and menial jobs. Labour is no longer the central theme in our national psyche. Division, unity, diversity, inequality, cooperation and competition are the themes that define Australia now.

Better we sing ‘We’ll gather and join hands‘.

END AUSTRALIA’S IMMIGRANT STATUS

Seventy percent of Australia is arid or desert. So we really don’t have ‘boundless plains to share’, do we? The fact that a disproportionately high proportion of immigrants live – along with 90% of the rest of the population – in the big metropolises testifies to that. Perhaps some people would be happy for some Middle Easterners to colonize the desert areas not already staked out as Native Title. Bringing in big desal infrastructure is something the petro-dollar rich Arabs could afford and it seems far more advizable than colonizing Mars. I jest, of course.

At some point, Australia will have to stop growing its population. Pick a number, any number, but there has to be a limit. We will then stop being an immigrant nation for ‘those who’ve come across the seas’. All the evidence is that at more than 27 million, we’ve already passed the long-term natural carrying capacity of the continent (Footprintnetwork). Maybe one day, when Australians properly appreciate their environment fully the irony of the anthem’s current lyrics will become apparent to them. Then we’ll sing ‘We treasure liberty and love, All creatures great and small‘.

I first suggested these changes in May, 2025.

Alternative ANTHEM – Waltzing Matilda

God Bless Australia

God Bless Australia was a proposed 1961 Australian national anthem by Australian songwriter Jack O’Hagan who provided patriotic lyrics to the traditional tune of Waltzing Matlida. It’s a more joyous melody and the lyrics to God Bless Australia are simpler than Advance Australia Fair’s.

Here in this God given land of ours, Australia
This proud possession, our own piece of earth
That was built by our fathers, who pioneered our heritage,
Here in Australia, the land of our birth.

REFRAIN

God bless Australia, Our land Australia,
Home of the Anzac, the strong and the free
It’s our homeland, our own land,
To cherish for eternity,
God bless Australia, The land of the free.

Here in Australia, we treasure love and liberty,
Our way of life, all for one, one for all
We’re a peace loving race, but should danger ever threaten us,
Let the world know we will answer the call

REFRAIN (×2

While atheists might not warm to these words, an agnostic like me can roll with it. Similarly, the line ‘That was built by our fathers, who pioneered our heritage’ can encompass history before 1788, even if the author didn’t intend it to. Change ‘fathers’ to ‘forebears’.

Bob Carr, former NSW Premier, Foreign Minister and patron of Sustainable Population Australia prefers Waltzing Matilda.