Techno anthem has Aussies singing in protest

SYDNEY- You can tell it's the silly season already. In the lead-up to Christmas, Australians are in a lather over their national anthem -- or rather the jazzed-up disco-sounding remixed techno dance version of Advance Australia Fair.

It received an airing this week as a preview to Sydney's New Year's Eve celebration. The disco anthem will play as part of a 17-minute musical ensemble at the fireworks-dominated festivities, but the outcry has been deafening.

Radio talkback stations jammed with calls decrying the "bastardisation" of the national anthem.

Letters to the editor on the subject clogged newspaper columns. Words like "treason" were used.

"If it is an offence to defile the national flag, why should it not be the case with the national anthem? Both should be sacrosanct," wrote Peter Cribb to the Sydney Morning Herald.

If he had his way, it would be a relief at every half-significant sporting event in Australia. The Aussies love to sing their anthem just before kick-off, race start or Glenn McGrath marking his run-up and it is frequently bastardised, defiled and slaughtered, depending on who is singing.

This little problem has been overlooked in the rush to demand rolled heads and resignations over the disco ditty.

Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore will be glad when Christmas is over. She was roundly criticised for Sydney's minimalist Christmas decorations and now she is getting it in the ear over the anthem.

Freshly returned Prime Minister John Howard's healthy position in the electorate wasn't about to be damaged by his entry into the debate.

"I think it sounds terrible," he told a Perth radio station. "I'm not trying to pick an unnecessary fight with the Lord Mayor of Sydney but I think this is just playing around with an important national expression of ours."

However, a few people have pointed out that eight years ago a government department sponsored an a double CD produced by the ABC of 17 different versions of Advance Australia Fair. One version was by the Wiggles, though they don't seem to have been asked to perform it at an international sporting event.

The artistic director for the New Year's celebrations, Leo Schofield, said the decision to include the jazzed-up anthem was his.

"The music track is the bed on which all of the fireworks are timed, every beat of the music is timed with an explosion of a firework," he said at a press conference this week.

"It's an upbeat ending and we chose to do it with a beat underneath it, it is a remix version but there's nothing remotely irreverent or there's no mickey-taking about it."

He said people should wait until they see the whole show before they make up their minds.

The spectacle features a giant spherical sculpture, designed by New Zealander Neil Dawson, which will suspend from the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

An estimated one million people will see the sculpture spin in the wind, reflecting light in its 354 mirrored pinwheels.

Not all are upset over the disco anthem. Country Women's Association New South Wales president Judy Richardson said the remix might help young people learn the words to the anthem.

She thought the uproar might be justified if the remix was being promoted as a permanent version, but it wasn't.

Should the youngsters heed her words, they too might look as bewildered as their parents singing "our home is girt by sea." Girt??

Okay, it's the past participle of gird, but try telling the youth of Australia that.

The Aussies have long wrestled over their anthem. Advance Australia Fair was written by Scotsman Peter Dodds McCormick about 1878.

In 1977 a plebiscite was held on the national song and Advance Australia Fair convincingly beat Waltzing Fair and seven years later was officially adopted as the national anthem.

Critics have criticised it as maudlin. Daily Telegraph columnist Pier Akerman wrote: "It's a mediocre tune, the words are clumsy. It doesn't have the solemnity of the British anthem, the revolutionary vigour of La Marseillaise, or the ceremony of The Star Spangled Banner."

He said it only really worked sung at a major or moving public event, such as "Anzac Day, the Bali tragedy commemoration, when Australians get together overseas or at some international sporting event".

Some, but not all. Nobody here has made the comparison with the bicultural God Defend New Zealand, which is just as well because in the lead-up to Christmas that stoush would be far too exhausting.

Instead, New Zealanders all let us rejoice that Waltzing Matilda isn't their national anthem. They sing it enough already.

- NZPA