Olympic sportswoman Cathy Freeman has broken her long-held silence on the Australian national anthem debate by voicing her agreement with campaigners to change “disrespectful” lyrics.
Freeman is part of a growing number of Australian sports stars who are rallying behind a movement to change a lyrics in Advance Australia Fair, out of respect to Indigenous people.
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The song contains the words “we are young and free”.
Indigenous Australians are objecting to the word “young” because they have been on the land for thousands of years.
Campaigners are calling for the words to be changed to “one and free”.
Victorian Supreme Court judge Peter Vickery QC founded the Recognition in Anthem Project to change the words.
And on Tuesday Freeman publicly announced her support behind the project, telling The Australian: “I agree with Peter Vickery that the national anthem doesn’t acknowledge indigenous existence in Australia.”
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Several indigenous NRL players, including Cody Walker, Josh Addo-Carr and Will Chambers, refused to sing the anthem before State of Origin last year in an act of protest.
Advance Australia Fair was chosen in a 1977 plebiscite by just over 8.4 million voters who chose the song over God Save the Queen, Waltzing Matilda and Song of Australia.
The song was composed by Scottish-born Peter Dodds McCormick who first performed it in 1878 and was sung in Australia as a patriotic song.
Later it was used at the start of official functions and the ABC used the melody to announce its news bulletins until 1952.
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Cathy Freeman first made her mark on a national scale when she became the first Indigenous Australian person to become a Commonwealth Games champion at just 16-years-old in 1990.
Ten years later she won gold in the 400m at the Sydney Olympics.
