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The change to Australia's national anthem is a lesson in how not to do symbolic politics

Prime Minister Scott Morrison changed a line in ‘Advance Australia Fair’ from “For we are young and free” to “For we are one and free”. But his edit may make the situation worse.

By Clayton Chin, Varun Uberoi and Geoffrey Brahm Levey
The change to Australia's national anthem is a lesson in how not to do symbolic politics
Demonstrators in Melbourne march in an 'Invasion Day' protest on 26 January 2021, highlighting British colonisation, the killing of Indigenous peoples and the dispossession of their lands | Sydney Low/Zuma Press/PA Images. All rights reserved
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“Change the nation. Then we'll sing ‘one and free’. #TreatyNow.”

It wasn’t what you might expect to read on a church noticeboard. But Leichhardt Uniting Church’s declaration to Sydney passers-by this month expressed what many Australians feel about a one-word change to their national anthem, announced on New Year’s Eve: it’s tokenistic and insubstantial.

In perhaps his final act of 2020, Australia's prime minister, Scott Morrison, announced that the line “For we are young and free” in ‘Advance Australia Fair’ would henceforth be rendered “For we are one and free”.

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0