Boxing great Anthony Mundine has slammed a one-word change to Australia’s national anthem as “tokenistic”, saying the whole song needs to be rewritten to incorporate Indigenous Australian heritage.
It comes as the federal government is due to release a long-awaited options paper regarding an Indigenous voice to parliament next week.
SBS News understands the interim report on the voice to parliament options is expected to be released within the next week and will trigger the next stage of public consultations.
Australians woke on Friday to discover the second line of lyrics of the national anthem had been changed from “for we are young and free” to “for we are one and free”.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the move late Thursday night, saying Governor-General David Hurley agreed to the government’s recommendation to make the amendment to Australia’s National Anthem, Advance Australia Fair.
“Changing ‘young and free’ to ‘one and free’ takes nothing away, but I believe it adds much,” Mr Morrison said.
“It recognises the distance we have travelled as a nation. It recognises that our national story is drawn from more than 300 national ancestries and language groups and we are the most successful multicultural nation on earth.
“It reaffirms our resolve as one of the world’s oldest democracies’ while honouring the foundations upon which our nation has been built and the aspirations we share for the future.”
But Mr Mundine, a former NRL star, slammed the move as “tokenistic”.
“The core of the anthem is white supremacist,” he told reporters on Friday.
“The core of this song is racist and the core of this song is … white supremacist.”
“We need to make change and just one word is not going to cut it. We need to rewrite the whole song and have black history and white history and sort of combine it together… so we can unite and move forward as a one, one nation.”
Labor’s spokeswoman for Indigenous Affairs, Linda Burney, said while the change was welcome, what really needed to be altered were the words in the Constitution.
“The Constitution does not recognise First Nations people. Labor has been extremely clear for a very long time, we support the three aspects of the Uluru Statement and one of those aspects is a constitutionally enshrined voice to the Parliament,” she said.
Some Indigenous Australians embraced the change, including Olympic champion Cathy Freeman.
Some within the government also disagreed with the move, such as Nationals Senator Matt Canavan.
