Fed: Advance Australia Fair to stay for good: PM

AAP General News (Australia)
04-21-2008
Fed: Advance Australia Fair to stay for good: PM

SYDNEY, April 21 AAP - Prime Minister Kevin Rudd hopes a number of changes will come
out of the weekend's 2020 Summit, but that a change to the national anthem will not be
one of them.

Mr Rudd said the debate over whether the sometimes unpopular anthem, Advance Australia
Fair, should be replaced was settled a long time ago.

He said he would never want to change it because its lyrics spoke of an Australia we
should aspire to.

"I think the anthem says what we aspire to as a nation," Mr Rudd told ABC Television tonight.

"It does (stir me) and the reason it does is when you've got verses like, for those
who come across the seas we've boundless plains to share.

"That should be the resolve of any Australian government, unlike the one that we replaced
which seemed to pull up the shutters when it came to our proper international obligations,
particularly to refugees who found themselves in real strife."

Mr Rudd said Australia had bigger issues to consider for the future than changing the
national anthem.

"When it comes (to) constructing Australia in the 21st century, I think there are bigger
challenges ahead of us like fashioning the Australian republic ... than rewriting with
a team of musicologists a new national anthem," he said.

AAP kaj/goc/mn

KEYWORD: SUMMIT ANTHEM

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