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After a long absence from Australia (20 years) it is interesting and instructive to be here on \u201cAustralia Day\u201d. The day itself was hot and humid (37.5C) as was the perennial arguments about what \u201cthe 26th of January\u201d is or should be all about, when \u201cthe 26th of January\u201d should be held, or even whether \u201cthe 26th of January\u201d should be celebrated at all. I fall into the latter camp since I am a classic example of a \u201crootless cosmopolitan\u201d, as well as a \u201cclassical liberal\u201d.<\/p>\n
I find nearly all \u201cnational\u201d anthems objectionable and usually refuse to stand or sing along at public events. This was sometimes hard to do when we were living in the US as most Americans are very \u201cpatriotic\u201d (their term – mine is \u201cnationalistic\u201d). A study of several national anthems reveals that they often express very violent and chauvinistic sentiments which liberal people should avoid. I have given lectures over the years on \u201cThe Culture of Obedience\u201d in which I discuss the political purpose of these anthems and how similar many of them are. See for example this one<\/a>.<\/p>\n So what follows are some reflections on being \u201cGirted,\u201d \u201cSkirted\u201d, and \u201cAlerted\u201d.<\/p>\n I was not living in Australia in 1984 when, as a result of a referendum, the national anthem was changed from \u201cGod Save the Queen\u201d to \u201cAdvance Australia Fair\u201d. I thought having a folk song known by most Australians would have been a better choice, as it is more of an \u201canti-anthem\u201d than a true, patriotic song designed to inculcate respect for and obedience to a sovereign power. The song \u201cWalzing Matilda\u201d was after all a song about a vagrant who chose to commit suicide than to let himself be arrested for petty theft.<\/p>\n The version of \u201cGod Save the Queen\u201d which we had sing when I was at school had this very objectionable second version, which has since been expunged from popular memory for obvious reasons. It went like this:<\/p>\n \nO Lord, our God, arise, Back in the 1960s cinemas would play the national anthem and we were expected to stand while it was played. My first overt political act was to refuse to stand when the anthem was played, which sometimes incurred the wrath of patriotic old ladies who were sitting behind me in the theatre and who would wave their handbags about in a threatening manner.<\/p>\n In early January the Prime Minister of Australia, Scott Morrison, unilaterally changed one of the words in the anthem to try to appease the critics – we were no longer \u201cyoung\u201d but had become overnight \u201cone\u201d. This seemed rather odd and high-handed in a supposed democracy, so I thought it was now time to read the Australian national anthem from beginning to end to see what the fuss was about. The following words (the original not (politically) corrected lyrics) can be found on Wikipedia<\/a>:<\/p>\n \nAustralia\u2019s sons, let us rejoice, When gallant Cook from Albion sail\u2019d, While other nations of the globe Should foreign foe e\u2019er sight our coast, As far as national anthems go, this would have to rank pretty low down the list because of its stilted language, unimaginative lyrics, and chauvinistic national sentiments. In other words, it is not an anthem I would bother to stand up for.<\/p>\n Satirists like David Hunt have seized on one very stilted expression for his book on Australian history entitled \u201cGirt\u201d and \u201cTrue Girt\u201d. I hope he writes a third, the title for which I suggest should be \u201cGirt Unbound\u201d. Or perhaps he could rewrite the anthem in order to add more trite descriptions of \u201cour\u201d country, such as verses about \u201cour home is domed by air\u201d or \u201cour farms are based on dirt\u201d (\u201cdirt\u201d rhymes with \u201cgirt\u201d).<\/p>\n I wonder if the composer of \u201cAdvance Australia Fair\u201d, Peter Dodds McCormick, realized at the time he wrote the lyrics (1878) that the east coast of Australia was chosen for a penal colony precisely because it was so remote and surrounded by vast oceans and thus created a natural \u201cgird\u201d to prevent the convicts from escaping. A bit like the French \u201cDevil\u2019s Island\u201d (founded 1852) only bigger and with both poisonous spiders and sharks.<\/p>\n Or that this self same remoteness would provide our beloved leader Scott Morrison with another natural \u201cgird\u201d to wrap around us to prevent people flying in and out of the country spreading pestilence and pox. The \u201cTyranny of Distance\u201d now seems to have been replaced by \u201cthe tyranny of hygiene central planners.\u201d<\/p>\n At the moment, I don\u2019t think I have ever felt more \u201cgirt\u201d in my life and so the words of the anthem will have added meaning which its lyrcist (if we can call him that) never intended.<\/p>\n Peter Dodds McCormick wrote another patriotic song circa 1901 called \u201cAwake! Awake, Australia!\u201d which was a call for the new nation of Australia to come to the defence of the Empire. Britain was involved in fighting the South African Boer\u2019s struggle for independence and McCormick thought Australian men needed to be \u201calerted\u201d so they could \u201clead the van\u201d in order to \u201ckeep the Empire won\u201d.<\/p>\n Note also the repeated exhortations for \u201cAustralia Fair\u201d to arise from its slumbers and to lead the fight for the Empire.<\/p>\n \nAwake! Awake, Australia! \u201cAwake! Awake, Australia!\u201d Awake! Awake, Australia! I wonder how Scott Morrison would change some of these lyrics to make it more politically correct. Might I suggest making it more gender inclusive as I don\u2019t think it right for only the men (manhood, sons) to do the fighting for \u201cGod, King, and Country\u201d. Australian women also need to be \u201calerted\u201d to do their patriotic duty.<\/p>\n While we argue about what to call \u201cthe 26th of January\u201d or when in fact we should have \u201cthe 26th January\u201d, or if we should have a \u201c26th of January\u201d at all, most people seem to \u201cskirt\u201d around the issue of convictism. Scott Morrison, bless his soul, tried to rise this issue last week and got blasted out of the water by suggesting that it wasn\u2019t much fun for the soldiers and convicts on board the First Fleet \u201cScott Morrison criticised for saying 26 January \u2018wasn\u2019t a flash day for those on first fleet vessels either\u2019\u201d<\/a>. It would have been more historically accurate to have mentioned the Second Fleet which came the following year and suffered horrendous casualties en route (25% died) and a further 20% died in the immediate months after landing.<\/p>\n A very large spotted gum next door came crashing down early on Boxing Day morning, crushing 2 parked cars, and causing considerable alarm. I tell you this because one of the \u201carborists\u201d who came to clear up the debris told me that his ancestor had arrived on the Second Fleet, which is why I got to reading about it. I asked myself if there had been a \u201cLast Fleet\u201d and if so, would they have called it that? Probably not. And do the descendants of the 2nd, 3rd, and nth fleets gather around the BBQ on Australia Day and boast about their family\u2019s heritage. Again, probably not.<\/p>\n As a side note, in the Third Fleet of 1791 (was this the last of the \u201cnumbered\u201d fleets to arrive in Sydney?) it is important to note that one of the vessels, the Mary Ann<\/em>, had a much needed \u201ccargo\u201d of women, who were in short supply in the male-dominated prison. Ever since, historians have been arguing whether in fact the \u201cMary Ann\u201d was the last ship to arrive of the Second Fleet, or the first in the Third Fleet. I\u2019m not sure this bothered the women cargo as much.<\/p>\n The hyper-nationalism of some conservative groups makes the historian in me want to point out the fact, which they like to \u201cskirt\u201d, that the colony in Sydney was a military run penal colony which had most of the features of a centrally planned socialist economy, with coerced labour, a government controlled and regulated \u201cpublic stores\u201d system for the distribution of essential goods, a barely functioning or even non-existent free market, bans on liquor consumption, controls on what could be produced (to satisfy the requirement of the East India Company monopolies in the region), the leasing of land to favoured individuals, and so on. Thus, the early decades of the colony were hardly the beacon of private property, free market capitalism, and democracy which some conservatives today would like to think. Some of these things might come later, but not for several decades of experiment and failure with military central planning of the economy. On \u201cthe 26th of January\u201d this is what comes to my mind not the sunnier \u201cfor we are young and free\u201d.<\/p>\n Four arrested in Sydney\u2019s Hyde Park after peaceful Invasion Day protest at The Domain – ABC News<\/a><\/p>\n Given the convict and military socialist origins of the colony in Sydney it seems more than fitting that police on \u201cAustralia Day\u201d would arrest and possibly imprison protesters for not maintaining the required \u201csocial distancing\u201d in a public place. (By the way, shouldn\u2019t this be called \u201canti-social distancing\u201d?) Perhaps in solidarity with the founders of the colony (or should we rather call them \u201cinmates\u201d) we should all attempt to get arrested by engaging in acts of civil (or even uncivil) disobedience. We could then protest \u201cIncarceration Day\u201d as well as \u201cInvasion Day\u201d.<\/p>\n Maybe next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After a long absence from Australia (20 years) it is interesting and instructive to be here on \u201cAustralia Day\u201d. The day itself was hot and humid (37.5C) as was the perennial arguments about what \u201cthe 26th of January\u201d is or should be all about, when \u201cthe 26th of January\u201d should be held, or even whether … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_import_markdown_pro_load_document_selector":0,"_import_markdown_pro_submit_text_textarea":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[84,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous","category-propaganda"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/davidmhart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/davidmhart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/davidmhart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/davidmhart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/davidmhart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/davidmhart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/davidmhart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/davidmhart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/davidmhart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On Being Girted<\/h2>\n
\nScatter her enemies,
\nAnd make them fall.
\nConfound their politics,
\nFrustrate their knavish tricks,
\nOn Thee our hopes we fix,
\nGod save us all.`<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nFor we are young and free;
\nWe\u2019ve golden soil and wealth for toil,
\nOur home is girt by sea;
\nOur land abounds in nature\u2019s gifts
\nOf beauty rich and rare;
\nIn history\u2019s page, let every stage
\nAdvance Australia fair.
\nIn joyful strains let us sing,
\nAdvance, Australia fair.<\/p>\n
\nTo trace wide oceans o\u2019er,
\nTrue British courage bore him on,
\nTil he landed on our shore.
\nThen here he raised Old England\u2019s flag,
\nThe standard of the brave;
\n\u201cWith all her faults we love her still\u201d
\n\u201c Britannia rules the wave.\u201d
\nIn joyful strains then let us sing,
\nAdvance, Australia fair.<\/p>\n
\nBehold us from afar,
\nWe\u2019ll rise to high renown and shine
\nLike our glorious southern star;
\nFrom England soil and Fatherland,
\nScotia and Erin fair,
\nLet all combine with heart and hand
\nTo advance Australia fair.
\nIn joyful strains then let us sing
\nAdvance, Australia fair.<\/p>\n
\nOr dare a foot to land,
\nWe\u2019ll rouse to arms like sires of yore,
\nTo guard our native strand;
\nBritannia then shall surely know,
\nThough oceans roll between,
\nHer sons in fair Australia\u2019s land
\nStill keep their courage green.
\nIn joyful strains then let us sing
\nAdvance Australia fair.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n![](\"http:\/\/davidmhart.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Girt.jpg\")
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<\/p>\nOn being Alerted<\/h2>\n
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\nAwake from peaceful ease!
\nThe nations great are calling thee,
\nFrom distant lands and seas.
\nThy dormant days are ended, thy hours of rest are run;
\nNow rouse thee, for a nation\u2019s work,
\nand keep the Empire won!
\nBeneath thy bright blue skies,
\nAustralia Fair, arise!<\/p>\n
\nOld Father Neptune cries,
\n\u201cMy children have to Manhood grown,
\nbeneath the southern skies;
\nMy northern sons have led you,
\nbrave, darling me of old.
\nNow southern seas, bring forth your men
\nof worth and courage bold!\u201d
\nBeneath thy bright blue skies,
\nAustralia Fair, arise!<\/p>\n
\nOld Britain\u2019s bracing cheer
\nIs borne across the waters far,
\nand all her children hear.
\nThe echoes are reply-ing
\nfrom climes o\u2019er all the world
\nAustralia fair must lead the van,
\nwith banner bright unfurled!
\nBeneath thy bright blue skies,
\nAustralia Fair, arise!<\/p><\/blockquote>\nOn being Skirted<\/h2>\n
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