Kiwis leave Australian national anthem dazed and bruised

It became clear yesterday at ANZAC ceremonies and sporting events around the country. In terms of a rousing, patriotic paean, New Zealand’s God Defend New Zealand leaves Advance Australia Fair dazed and bruised on the highway.

Once all the official ANZAC functions were over and the last sporting match was underway, I put the question to social media and the response was overwhelming.

Advance Australia Fair was derided and mocked while the New Zealand anthem was extolled.

God Defend New Zealand did have some critics among New Zealanders, many of whom disliked the invocation of a supernatural being as their nation’s protector. I replied with the obvious point that no one else would defend New Zealand, especially since the Kiwis snubbed the Americans and the ANZUS Treaty in 1986.

These odd criticisms aside, New Zealanders love their national anthem while we feel ambivalent about our own.

We have been flogged by New Zealand routinely in sport and now in naked patriotism. This cannot stand.

Now, before I go on, I must advise a potential conflict of interest. In the wake of the S44 shenanigans I found myself to be a dual citizen. At the time I discovered I was a New Zealander of the Barnaby Joyce type, an inadvertent and involuntary citizen of the Land of the Long White Cloud due essentially to the fact that my mother was born in Invercargill, a place that, as the saying goes, isn’t the arse end of the world. You actually have to back up twenty kilometres or so to get a good look at it.

Last night I pulled up the lyrics and sang the national anthem of New Zealand, including the Maori verse at the beginning and I have to say while it might not have sounded flash, it felt pretty good. But I am an Australian born and bred who only remains a New Zealander begrudgingly and due to a stubborn reluctance to pay the Kiwis NZD$300 to have me taken off their books.

It was 42 years ago when we hit upon the idea of changing our national anthem from the one we shared with England, God Save the Queen.

In 1977, voters trudged off to complete a four-question referendum. Three of which were answered in the affirmative, setting the retirement age for judges in the federal jurisdiction at 70, permitting residents in the territories to vote in future referenda and requiring state and territory legislatures to replace casual senate vacancies with members of their own political parties only.

The question of holding simultaneous elections for the House of Reps and the Senate was shouted down from Western Australia, Queensland and Tasmania. Three out of four ain’t bad.

Tacked on at the bottom was a non-compulsory plebiscite (although that is possibly an oxymoron) which offered four potential national anthems, including God Save the Queen.

Advance Australia Fair won the contest although it only received majority support in New South Wales. Across the nation it received the thumbs up from 43.3 per cent of voters ahead of the second placegetter, Waltzing Matilda (28.3 per cent). God Save the Queen came in third (18.8 per cent) and the soporific Song of Australia finished outside the placings unable to make it into double figures, although it did win the favour of South Australians from whence the song came.

Waltzing Matilda carried the majority in ACT but everywhere else, Advance Australia Fair won the chocolates and shortly afterwards was endorsed by act of parliament as Australia’s new song.

One of only two intrinsically Australian songs on offer were, in the case of Advance Australia Fair, more geography lesson than anthem while Song of Australia was a weather bulletin performed to music. Both were cobbled together in the 19th Century and Australians had to wait for the invention of the gramophone before they could tap their toes to them.

Advance Australia Fair was not our preferred anthem. It was merely the best of a poor lot.

This brings to mind an amusing story where then Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser paid a visit to China within weeks of the referendum/plebiscite being held.

Chinese officials arranged a banquet with too many courses to count by way of welcome for the Prime Minister, DFAT staff and a gaggle of Australian media.

There was a problem. The Chinese did not have a recording of Australia’s shiny new anthem to play at the official function. The Chinese were embarrassed and apologetic.

No worries. Three drunken journalists (who are all deceased but shall remain nameless) touring as part of the media pack stepped forward obligingly. They would sing it. Relieved officials ushered the trio to the microphone. The heavily refreshed journos belted out both verses of the memorable ditty, “I like Aeroplane Jelly” to the delight of the Chinese contingent and the cold stares of Malcolm Fraser and his staff.

From 1978 onwards, Australians have lip-synced badly to Advance Australia Fair, rousing only at the chorus, like a nation of awkward, self-conscious Milli Vanillis. The mumbled warbling remains largely in place today, not driven by ignorance born of novelty, but I think because we don’t like our anthem very much.

I suppose we could ask Australia’s great songwriters, many of whom coincidentally are New Zealanders, to come up with something new but that, I think, would be repeating the mistakes of the past.

We must know the words and have on occasions sung the song en masse with passion in the past. Lyrics don’t matter as much as the ability to sing along.

The chosen tune must dispatch the notion that we, as a nation, are not inclined to sing like say, the Welsh or the Mongolians with their eerie throat singing. Our best efforts might be tuneless and off key but performed with gusto.

Our anthem should also tap into the idea that the best patriotic ditties are the ones born of blood-soaked revolution like La Marseillaise and Star Spangled Banner without us having to go to all the trouble of violent tumult.

My personal choice is AC/DC’s Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap not so much for its lyrical content but because the chorus sung in unison would really send excited shivers up our spines with Khe Sanh played only at Vice-Regal functions. A little decorum on these occasions is required after all.

This column was first published in The Australian on 26 April, 2019.