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SPEECH BY THE PRXIME MINISTER, THE HON KEATING, MP
LAUNCH OF ADVANCE AUSTRALIA FAIR, MELBOURNE CONCERT HALL
18 NOVEMBER 199S,
it's my great pleasure to be here tonight to enjoy this
concert and, particularly, to take part in the launch of
8 new arrangement of the AustralianNationalAnthem..
I understand this is a curtain raiser for Australian
Music Day celebrations on 28 November, and that over
1,000 events promoting Australian music and artists have
been arranged by Ausmusic for the month of November.
The adoption of Advance Australia Fair marked a change,
not just in the song we sang, but in the way we thought
about ourselves.
It has to be said that some people are more equipped for
change than others.
It's unfortunate when sometimes those who lack the
imagination for it hold the others back.
Too often in our history Australians have been held back
and the changes that have been made in the last decade
are proof of that.
We have taken on more change in the last decade than
perhaps we did in the previous forty.
we do things very differently.
We are more open to the world than we have ever been,
more a part of it, more a player in its affairs.
We are much more a part of our region.
We are much more open and phobia-free.
But we are no less Australian for the change.
Notwithstanding~ the permanent barrage of American popularculture
that we endure along with most other countries in
the world, we have kept our best traditions.
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In fact I think we have etched them deeper.
And we should continue to.
When the idea of a distinctively Australian National
Anthem was raised in the seventies, the people who
instinctively shy away from change, Cried anarchy and
treason, and sacrilege and blasphemy, and how dare you
cause offence to our past and our cultural superiors.
But those who welcome change when change is due
persisted, and in due course they won bipartisan support,
and now even if a lot of people still don't know the
words we stand for our own national anthem and we are
moved by it.
The words go like this I learnt them a long while ago
in a moment you will hear them recited much more
tunefully. Now it's true that some of the words are a bit old
fashioned.-and so are some of the sentiments.
They come from an age when Australians felt that the
richness and immensity of the land, combined with their
love of it, guaranteed them a golden future.
They are pre-industrial lyrics, and pre-multicultural.
The second and fourth verses are so anglophile and
Victorian they're almost pre-Australian.
But the words of most national anthems are old fashioned,
the British and the French Included.
Both of those prattle on about scheming enemies and
hateful tyrants plotting the overthrow of virtue.
If nothing else Advance Australia Fair is more hopeful
and less paranoid.
It is my duty tonight to thank all those people who have
taken Advance Australia Fair into the realms of a more
modern world, and into, perhaps, the grandeur a national
anthem deserves.
In particular I want to congratulate Ausmusic and Lachian
Wilson. I heard some of Lachlan's music at the recent laying of
the wreath ceremony for Vietnam veterans, and I
understand that that music was actually composed while he
was on active service.
I also know that he is an old rock musician and that he
was drawn to this project by a desire to make such an
important expression of our national life more
contemporary and more widely appreciated. And more
easily played and sung.
I thank Lachlan for his stirling efforts, and also
Ausmusic for its initiative and follow through and
among the latter I have to single out the irrepressible,
inescapable and undeniable Executive Director, Pete
Steedman. it's a great thing to have the new arrangement an even
better one to have it published and recorded on CD and
sent around our schools and other institutions, so that
all Australians may come to know and take pride in the
Australian National Anthem.
So on behalf of everyone here I thank them all.
As we go into the nineties and the next century we will
need a bold and unmistakeable identity.
we will do best if we have no doubt about who we are, and
if we leave the world in no doubt.
A re-vitalised and popularised anthem will help.
There are a lot of Australians, I know, who retain some
doubts about Advance Australia Fair.
I'm not one of those. it touches a patriotic chord in me,
as I think it does in most Australians. It is
unmistakeably our anthem.
I share with many Australians a sentimental attachment to
Waltzing Matilda.
But it is hard to sing solemnly about a jumbuk.
if Advance Australia Fair is our National Anthem,
Waltzing Matilda Is our national song and I think we
should make it clear that it 1ia our national Song.
There is nothing unusual in this. The United States has
the Star Spangled Banner as its anthem, and God Bless
America and America the Beautiful as its national songs.
God Save the Queen is the British anthem, but Rule
Britannlia and Land Of Hope and Glory, among others, are
equally well known and inspire no less popular sentiment.
So to those who say Waltzing Matilda is the definitive
Australian song, I would say there is no reason why it
shouldn't remain so.
And no reason why it should not sung and played more
often on public occasions.
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We can have both the formal anthem, and the popular
song.
And if those who have done such great works with the
anthem feel there is something to be gained from doing
much the same with waltzing Matilda, I'm sure all
Australians would be delighted if they took on the task.
Let me thank Ausmusic and Lachlan Wilson once again and
all the performers the Australian Girls Choir, the
Melbourne Youth Music Council and the Percy Grainger
Youth Orchestra.
We look forward to hearing the new improved Advance
Australia Fair.
And we look forward to singing it.
Thank you.