Scott Morrison seems determined to piss away every one of the advantages that won the Coalition an unexpected, thumping victory in 2019. The latest is his surprise unilateral decision to tinker with the national anthem, Advance Australia Fair.
Australians will declare themselves “one and free” from January 1 under a key change to the national anthem being made by Prime Minister Scott Morrison to better reflect the nation’s ancient roots and the experiences of its First Nations people.
The line will replace “young and free”, in a minimal change Mr Morrison said would better recognise the “timeless spirit of the ancient land we call home” and Australia’s place as the “most successful multicultural and immigration nation on Earth”.
“Scotty from Marketing” might be a leftist jibe, but, once again, the prime minister proves why it’s so barbed. Too often, Morrison approaches problems as if they’re just another PR campaign. Throw out a few focus-group-tested cliches and everything will be fine.
Even if the advertising slogan bears no relation to the lived reality of the product.
Mr Morrison said the update to the anthem’s second line was being made for “all Australians” and came following a year in which Australians showed “grit, ingenuity and forbearance” in enduring the coronavirus pandemic.
“Most of all, in a period of unprecedented isolation, we found each other,” he said. “Over the past year, Australians have demonstrated through our actions that we are indeed ‘one and free’, as NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has suggested.
“So I believe the time has now come for us to proclaim in our national anthem what we have lived as a nation, especially during this past year.”
This is arrant garbage.
In fact, the past year has shown with brutal clarity that Australians are anything but “one and free”. Whole cities have been plunged under military curfew and state borders have been shuttered for months at a time. Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk declared that Queensland hospitals were for Queenslanders only.
What this change is really about is trying to placate a noisy minority of perpetually-offended leftists and Aboriginal activists. Their risible claim is that “young and free” somehow “excludes” Aboriginal Australians.
Mr Morrison said the words “young and free” were aimed at capturing the “energetic spirit of liberty that drove Australia towards nationhood” but needed to better honour “the connection to this place of Indigenous peoples who have cared for our country for thousands of millennia[…]During a time when communities around the world are splintering and identity politics concentrates on our differences, this change affirms our shared national story and shared destiny”.
Morrison shows the vacuity of his own argument. “Young and free” is an acknowledgement of the Australian nation. A nation which included everyone, from the newest immigrant to an Aboriginal person. Indeed, this was explicitly addressed in the last change, made in 1984, to the very first line of the anthem: “Australians all”.
Far from countering identity politics, Morrison is explicitly pandering to it.
Morrison’s change is not just redundant and self-contradictory, it’s dangerous.
Firstly as various failed putsches from the republican referendum to attempts to change the Australian flag and national day have shown, Australians keep their national symbols close to their hearts – despite decades of assiduous leftist social-engineering. The suddenly-announced change has generated widespread anger among Australians. Not least because it is seen as yet more elitist white-anting of our national institutions.
Governor-General David Hurley has signed off on the proposal after cabinet approved the overhaul, with state premiers and governors having been consulted as well as speaker of the House Tony Smith and Senate president Scott Ryan.
The Australian
Notice the complete absence of non-elites. Not once were the Australian people asked, let alone given any notice of this change.
And they can see quite clearly what Scott Morrison either cannot or will not admit to: that this is just the beginning.
If Morrison really thinks this change will placate the activists lined up at the Complaints Counter, he’s a bigger fool than he looks. In fact, “Indigenous Activists” have a laundry list of things they hate about our anthem. Aboriginal boxer and professional loudmouth Anthony Mundine responded to Morrison’s gesture by declaring that the anthem is a “white supremacy song”. The “Recognition in Anthem project” is demanding more changes, including two entire new verses.
Time again, self-deluded conservatives like Morrison imagine that, if they just give in to the left this time, they’ll finally be satisfied. Which is garbage, of course. All it does is encourage them.
And pisses off everyone else.
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