CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND - JULY 17: (L-R) Richie McCaw, Kieran Read, Dan Carter and Keven Mealamu during The Rugby Championship match between the New Zealand All Blacks and Argentina at AMI Stadium
CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND - JULY 17: (L-R) Richie McCaw, Kieran Read, Dan Carter and Keven Mealamu during The Rugby Championship match between the New Zealand All Blacks and Argentina at AMI Stadium
Time to have courage and change national dirge, writes Grahame Sydney
Okay, let's get one thing clear for a start: I know there are far more important things to worry about, like global warming, TPP, the sell-off of our farms and houses to foreign buyers, brokering peace in the Middle East and the ratings demise of Paul Henry.
Of course I know that.
But something in me still insists that the National Anthem issue matters too.
Attention has been focused on the flag, and a lengthy process will soon allow a handful of selected New Zealanders to decide a short list of designs from which the rest of us will be allowed to decide which of those short-listed designs we will then be allowed to decide might replace the present flag, if that's what we decide.
I've never cared much about the flag. A flag is just a logo, an insignia which acts as a label, a symbol for us.
It could be anything - a silver fern, a kiwi, a fantail, a native flower, and we'd all recognise it as ours.
The fact that the present flag, with its Union Jack and four Southern Cross stars looks like several other flags and doesn't distinguish us at all has never stopped it being a repository for plenty of emotion and historical pride.
For all its inadequacies, it stands for us. That's what logos do. Identifiers, is what flags are. Symbols for something larger.
Very few are interesting, most are nothing more than a few bands of colour, in themselves meangingless.
But National Anthems are different. National Anthems can do much more, can express more. The anthem can, and should be, an expression of national identity - who we are, what we are, what we value, what we are proud of, what we love, and what makes us different.
If the flag is a logo, then the National Anthem is a mission statement. And ours is depressingly, embarrassingly deficient.
What does it say about us? Does it reflect our values, what we are proud of? What makes us different? Not a bit of it.
Little wonder so few sing it with the enthusiasm and gusto the French bring to theirs - or even the Aussies, for that matter.
While they can bellow "Let's Go! The Glorious Day is here!" or rejoice in being young and free, we poor Kiwis beg the fabled God for help. Along with the majority of our countrymen, any reference to the Invisible Friend is no longer appropriate for what I believe.
We are now a predominantly secular society, and within the Believer Community there is a far wider range of religious preferences and cultures than there was in 1876 when Thomas Bracken penned the hymn which was to become our national song.
Sure, his lyric has a couple of nice lines - "in the bonds of love we meet" and "make her praises heard afar" etc - but the overwhelming sentiment of Bracken's hymn, of which we habitually sing only the first of five original verses, is a declaration of commitment to Bracken's Christian God and a plea for divine intervention and assistance in our helplessness.
Being asked, expected, to sing such sentiments with honesty and pride is simply not possible for many of us: that becomes an exercise in hypocrisy which those who think about it are not prepared to engage.
Many sing the Maori translation with more obvious exuberance - but would they if they knew what they were actually singing?
The Maori lyric begins " O Lord, God of nations and of us too. Listen to us, cherish us, let goodness flourish. May your blessings flow. Defend Aotearoa."
No thanks. And what about the English version's "Guard Pacific's triple star" - what does that mean? The Southern Cross has four stars, just like the flag. So it's not that.
Can it be the three main islands? Who knows? Maybe its a cheeky reference to the Speights logo - Bracken was, after all, a Dunedinite, and JJ Woods, who wrote the melody, was a Southern Man too.
Nobody, except in church, says "thy" any more, or ever uses "entreat" or "afar".
Time to get real.
Anthems focus our attention at high points of pride: Olympic medal ceremonies, international sporting clashes, solemn gatherings where the patriotic focus is paramount.
They provide an opportunity for a sense of separate identity and values to be be communally expressed and enjoyed.
Our anthem fails miserably. Its time for something more appropriate to C21st NZ society to be reflected in the national song, and for the Victorian hymn to be consigned to the historical record.
We need something all New Zealanders can sing together without embarrassment, something about us, about the things we know the words "New Zealand" mean to all who love the place as it is today.
But how to change it? And while it's the verbal content which falls so short, should we go the whole hog and change the melody too?
Change can be made more simply than the flag method: appoint a non-travelling panel ( no public meetings!) including the Poet Laureate, ask for public submissions over a given period, select five or six finalists and have an on-line vote, or if need be, a referendum at election time.
If we keep the melody, only the lyric changes. If there is a majority call for wholesale change, a total rebranding, then that's a little more complicated. But not impossibly so, and the public's preference will quickly become clear.
The flag issue is criticised for costing so much, twenty-something millions. I don't like it much either, but such sums are nothing to Governments: far more was dished out to team New Zealand for a yachting regatta; about half of that was recently spent on an apartment for a Kiwi diplomat in New York; Rio Tinto cheerfully accepted far more to stay a little longer in Bluff. Certain Ministers spend that much upgrading their Wellington kingdoms.
The anthem is for the next 150, as long as Bracken's dirge has lasted.
As a focus of national pride, an expression of our aspirations as a nation, it is surely worth millions to get right. It's not as if the Bracken poem is sacrosanct. After all, it only became "official" in 1977, alongside God Save The Queen.
Remember, the past is a separate country: they do things differently there. We are not the immature, culturally cramped, Christian nation we were in Thomas Bracken's day, when Otago was the dominant province in every way, and Dunedin the major city; when the embers of the Land Wars were still warm, and the country had just switched from Provincial Government to the new notion of centralised administration in Wellington, of all places! Yet we are expected to respect and sing a relic of that distant era as if we mean it today.
Sorry. It just doesn't work any more. It's time for some meaningful political courage. Time for a change.
Grahame Sydney is a major New Zealand artist from Central Otago and its landscapes feature in much of his art. Sydney has also authored and co-authored several books featuring his art and photography.
