Aussie Rugby League Players refuse to sing “Advance Australia Fair.”

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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A growing chorus of voices in Australia is clamouring to alter a lyric from their country’s national anthem, which critics argue is offensive to the country’s Indigenous peoples.

The most recent public display of protest took place Wednesday at the highly anticipated ‘State of Origin’ rugby league match, where at least 11 players appeared to refuse to sing “Advance Australia Fair.”

Many of those players were of New Zealand or Pacific Island heritage.

The players’ silent protests began in February when Cody Walker refused to sing the anthem, saying he felt it didn’t represent his family.

Since then, another league player, Josh Addo-Carr had joined and last week, they were joined by Will Chambers and Latrell Mitchell.

"It doesn't represent my people," Mitchell told Australia’s Channel Seven. "We aren't young and free … we're the longest-living culture in the world."

During an interview with ABC Radio, Liberal MP Craig Kelly argued “these words of our national anthem are not something carved in stone.”

He suggested changing the lyric to “strong and free.”

"If these gentlemen said [they] would be happy to sing the national anthem with changing that one word, I think a lot of Australians would sit down and they would say ‘OK, let's change that word,’” Kelly said.

Labor MP Tanya Plibersek agreed on Twitter, saying if a “small change” was made to recognize long-standing and ongoing Indigenous history, “then just do it.”

The debate in Australia is similar in some respects to one involving Canada’s national anthem, which has seen critics call out the lyric “home and native land.”

They have argued that it denies the history of Canada’s Indigenous people.

Some critics, such as Lakehead University Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux, have argued that the lyric implies that there is a distinction between the land that settlers claimed and the territories that Indigenous peoples have lived for hundreds of years.

In 1990, The Toronto City Council voted in favour of recommending to the federal government to change the line to “our home and cherished land,” but the suggestion was never taken up.

But if Australia’s anthem was changed, it wouldn’t be the first time.

The song was written in 1878 by Scottish-born composer Peter Dodds McCormick. Before it was adopted as the national anthem in 1984, doting fawning references to Brittania and England were removed.