Happy Australia Day, everyone. A chance to celebrate the great privilege we have to live in this magnificent country; the best country on earth.
I mean it. Why would you want to live anywhere else?
I note that the campaign is on in earnest to unseat ‘Advance Australia Fair’ as the national anthem. Two years ago I could see the beginnings of a slow, steady marketing campaign for ‘I Am Australian‘ to be installed as the new national song, and I’ve been wary of it ever since.
It’s a nice song, and all, but it’s no anthem. It represents us well; trying to squeeze in as many multicultural groups as it can and give credit to the aboriginal people as the original inhabitants. It doesn’t sound *too* forced.
Problem is, it describes no vision. It says who we are, but not what we want to be. It says nothing much other than ‘here we are; we want to make a go of it together’, which is a tad too wishy-washy for my liking.
‘Advance Australia Fair’ isn’t perfect, but it does call us together to a higher goal for the country: to advance it; not just sing together about how great it is to be singing together.
I know what you’re doing, Howard Government, and I’ll be fighting against it.
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BONWAG 
By the way; it was written by Bruce Woodley (of the Seekers) and Dobe Newton (of the Bushwackers). The original Advance Australia Fair was written by Peter Dodds McCormick around the 1900s sometime.