THE hurly-burly of a State of Origin clash seems an unlikely starting point for a national conversation on anything, let alone our choice of national anthem.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
But the public declaration from of a number of indigenous players taking part in Wednesday night's match in Brisbane that they would not join in the singing of the anthem prior to kick-off has got many questioning the relevance of the national song.
It's hard to believe it was only in 1984 that Advance Australia Fair, first performed in 1878, formally replaced the outdated God Save The Queen as our national anthem.
That followed a referendum in 1977 that asked voters to nominate their preferred national song from a list that also included Waltzing Matilda and the largely-forgotten Song Of Australia.
To be fair, it was probably the best of a bad bunch at the time but a look at the lyrics through the prism of 2019 Australia certainly casts the anthem in a new light.
And it is concerns over some of the anthem's lyrics that have prompted a silent protest from some of rugby league's indigenous stars - among them the Blues' Cody Walker, Josh Addo-Carr and Latrell MItchell, and the Maroons' Will Chambers.
Their concerns - and the concerns of the communities they represent - must be taken seriously.
The first concern is the anthem's second line - "for we are young and free".
When written in the 1870s, "young" referred to just a century of European settlement. That period offered no recognition of the 40,000 years of indigenous settlement that predated the arrival of the First Fleet, but it's no longer appropriate for our anthem to perpetuate that lie.
"For those who've come across the seas, we've boundless plains to share" also denies the experience of indigenous Australia.
And so a national conversation on the anthem is not out of place at this time.
Perhaps I Am Australian or My Island Home - either in their current form or with modifications - might be better choices, or maybe we should call a national competition to find something new all together.
We will never find an anthem that pleases everyone, but we should no longer blindly tolerate an anthem that disregards Australia's first inhabitants.
And if it takes a rugby league match to start that conversation, then so much the better.
