Australia has changed one word in its national anthem to reflect “the spirit of unity” and the country’s Indigenous population.
- The amendment, which was announced by the Prime Minister Scott Morrison on New Year’s Eve, came into effect on January 1, 2021.
- The second line of the anthem, Advance Australia Fair, has been changed from “For we are young and free” to “For we are one and free.”
- Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt, the first Indigenous Australian elected to the federal Parliament’s lower house, said the one-word change was “small in nature but significant in purpose.”
- The change comes less than two months after New South Wales state Premier Gladys Berejiklian expressed support for Indigenous Australians who said the national anthem did not reflect them and their history.
- ‘Advance Australia Fair’ was written in 1878, but it became the official national anthem only in 1984.
- Critics say the words in the second line that reads “for we are young and free”, obliterate more than 50,000 years of indigenous history and is an attempt at historical revisionism.
- They also say the word “young” in the national anthem had implied that Australia’s history only starts with colonisation.
- Australia marks January 26 as the date when the “First Fleet” sailed into Sydney Harbour in 1788, carrying mostly convicts and troops from Britain. But many indigenous people in the country refer to Australia Day as “Invasion Day”.
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