The National Anthem is starting to look pretty whitewashed, colonial and irrelevant if you ask me. So when some genius made the pretty reasonable request to change it to Outkast’s Hey Ya, I expected nothing less that old mate Turnbull to jump for joy at the outstanding initiative of his countrymen.
Alas I was disappointed, rather than celebrating the opportunity to mix it up, the Australian Government made the safe play to retain our ode to exclusion and solidarity.
The response reads:
“Thank you for your letter dated 20 March 2017 regarding petition EN0094, which requests that the Australian Government
change the Australian National Anthem to the 2003 song ‘Hey Ya’ by Outkast.
“The words and tune of the Australian National Anthem were adopted only after exhaustive surveys of national opinion,
starting in the 1970s, and were proclaimed by the Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia on 19 April 1984.
“The Australian National Anthem is widely accepted and popularly supported by a majority of Australians. The Australian
Government has no plans to change the Anthem.
“Thank you for bringing this petition to my attention. I appreciate the important work of the Standing Committee on
Petitions in putting community concerns before the Parliament.”
Frankly we at Happy feel like we were robbed of the opportunity to have every primary school child learn the lyrics to this global banger. Morning assembly would never have been the same.
Original source found here.
