SYDNEY SIDE WITH JANET PARR Aust. seeks own identity

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33092, 6 December 1972, Page 7

SYDNEY SIDE WITH JANET PARR Aust. seeks own identity

It was a Sunday night when the Australian Leader of the Opposition (Mr Gough Whitlam) said we should have a new one. Next day the Prime Minister (Mr McMahon) said we really needed two; that we should keep the old one and have a new one as well.

It was during the election campaign and they might have been speaking about anything from rocket defence systems to satellite towns. The topic was, in fact, the national anthem. “The choice of the Australian people and not the musical tastes of George II should determine Australia’s national anthem,” said Mr Whitlam.

He promised Australians — if Labour were elected — their own national anthem within three years and certainly in time for the Montreal Olympics in 1976. (Playing “God Save the Queen” for Australian gold medal winners in Munich was something that many Australians found a bit hard to take.) It was time, said Mr Whitlam, echoing his own party’s election slogan, that Australians had their own symbols of nationhood, time they adopted purely national thinking. Nobody could argue much with the idea that for some of Australia’s population — the European migrants — the ties with Britain and allegiance to her Queen are fairly frail. But, countered Mr McMahon, there are on the other hand an “enormous number” of people who want to keep the present anthem for national days and other ceremonies connected with the Queen. He said he had been considering a second anthem, something distinctly Australian, which could be played on occasions such as the Olympic Games.

NEW FLAG Neither party appeared to have any specific ideas of a change of flag. But even so, Mr J. K. Lavett is delighted. For Mr Lavett is a man of equally strong conviction that Australia has assumed nationhood and should create a national identity. “We are not anti-British,” he says, “But we assumed nationhood in 1901, we are equal partners in the Commonwealth. We are not a subservient partner, and we want our own identity. Australia is not a part of Great Britain.

“I am,” he says, “an Australian and not anything

else. My great-great-grand-parents were both convicts who came to Australia with the First Fleet. They had nine children and one of the daughters married another convict. “I’m descended from them, so I have three convict ancestors. “I’m not proud that they were convicts. But I am proud of what they did when they got here. At that time it was a question of sheer survival. They had to survive and then start building up.” SENSE OF PRIDE So from that sense of personal pride Mr Lavett some years ago tackled the then Premier of New South Wales about the Government’s giving a lead for Australia Day, January 26, to be properly observed as a national day. “There was no official leadership," he says. “The only function seemed to be a Government one at the Wentworth Hotel in Sydney.” But the Premier of the day replied that he considered everything that could be done was being done. Mr Lavett did not agree and the next year tackled the Premier again, pointing out that it was not a

question of a couple of hundred politicians and local bigwigs going to some local event but what people were doing in Albury and other places in the state. And if the Government would not do anything about it he would. So the Fellowship of First Fleeters came into being, made up of descendants of those who arrived here on January 26, 1788. Today he says it has a membership of just on a thousand. Three months later the 1788 to 1820 Association was formed for descendants of those who arrived here between those dates. Today members of that total about 400.

Between them, says Mr Lavett, the two organisations have acted as a rallying point for an Australia Day movement which through 156 interested organisations such as the churches, political parties, and youth movements have involved two or three million Australians in a proper recognition of the day. Yet another outcropping has been the formation of the Australian National Anthem and Flag Quests Committee, of which he is chairman.

Starting on August 1, last year, and ending on Australia Day, this year, the committee organised quests for a new flag and a new anthem. Over 2000 designs came in for a flag, and about 400 suggested anthems. From the flag designs the committee chose what it considered the 10 best. “It was easy," says Mr Lavett, “because we had the designs to look at made up by one of Australia’s leading flag makers.” They have since been going the rounds on tour of capital cities and major towns so people can have a look at them. They are still travelling.

The anthem, says Mr Lavett, was more difficult to assess, but the committee finally chose 10, and to them added four more established songs, “Advance Australia Fair,” “Waltzing Matilda,” “God Bless Australia” (which is “Matilda” with new words by Jack O’Hagan) and “Song of Australia.” The 14 have been made up as a sheet music album by a Sydney music publishing house so that people can play and hear them themselves. Negotiations are going on for a well-known Sydney company to sponsor an L.P. record of them which it is hoped to put on sale soon.

Later on people will be asked to vote on their preference. “And the result will be communicated to the Government of the day,” says Mr Lavett. He has been keeping in touch with the Prime Minister and his department and Mr Whitlam all through and wrote again after they had raised the idea of a new national Australia and the opportunities there had proved false. He is adamant that Australia’s national anthem is not “God Save the Queen." CHILDREN’S CHOICE

“There is no Act of Parliament,” he says, “that says it is. When I was a little fellow after federation, ‘Advance Australia Fair* was assumed by us children to be our national anthem. It was sung at school; played at theatres. A subsequent Liberal Government made It so that the British national anthem was the Australian national anthem. We’re trying to get back to some sort of national consciousness . . .” And to that end he has promised help to both Mr McMahon or Mr Whitlam by supplying all his committee’s material and findings and anything else of assistance. The Flag Act appears to be more specific from what Mr Lavett says. “It states that the Australian national