Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to talk about the Gawler rail upgrade. But before I get onto that I want to talk a bit about a story by Charles Miranda which was in The Punch recently. It is about the fact that Waltzing Matilda, one of our great national songs, has now been used for a commercial purpose in a Spanish mobile phone ad. He reports:

The accents on the advertisement are strange and the video clip is downright wacky but online chat rooms and talk back radio in Spain has been inundated with debates about “billy-bongs” and “kooly-bar trees” and speculation about what it was that a man put into a “ta-ka” bag.

I am not really outraged but I am concerned that this great Australian song is being used in this way. It is a great part of Australian culture. It has been sung by diggers at war. On my iPod I have John Williamson and about a hundred thousand other Australians singing it at a concert. I am concerned that this great Australian song is being used commercially overseas. I think it should be of great concern to Australians.

This song has been a big part of our nation’s history. Last year I visited Winton and went out to the Waltzing Matilda Centre museum. The song was written in 1895 about 100 kilometers north-west of Winton on Dagworth Station and since that day it has captured the hearts and minds of many Australians. I would never question the decisions of the Australian people. We know the decision they made in 1977 in the national plebiscite. There were four songs in the plebiscite: Advance Australia Fair; God Save the Queen, the song that represents my heritage; Waltzing Matilda; and the Song of Australia. The only concern I have with the results of that plebiscite is that none of the songs had an absolute plurality. Advance Australia Fair got the most number of votes but still only got 43 per cent, and the rest—the 60 per cent—was split between Waltzing Matilda, God Save the Queen and the Song of Australia, so no song got an absolute majority. I think at that time it might have been better to have either a preferential system or to have required an absolute majority of Australians to agree to a national anthem and then have a run-off election eliminating the two lowest songs, those songs being in this case God Save the Queen and the Song of Australia.

Waltzing Matilda is a terrific Australian song. It is a tragedy to see it commercialised overseas in this way to sell mobile phones in Spain. The Punch, on which I know the member for Mayo writes on occasion, is a great website. It is a pity this story was not reported a bit more broadly. Australians deserve a national anthem that is sung with gusto and not just mumbled along with. In my view Waltzing Matilda would have been that song, so my views are on the public record.

Before I get on to the rail upgrade in Gawler, it is worth noting that the Song of Australia, which got 9.8 per cent support at that referendum—some 652,000 Australians—was awarded the first prize in the song competition held at the Gawler Institute in 1859, so that is when it first came about.

Recently the government announced the electrification of the Gawler train line. This is a state and federal project. It has been done in conjunction with the Rann government. It is a $2 billion plan for South Australia’s public transport system, and the Building Australia Fund has allocated some $294 million to upgrade this line, firstly, by putting in concrete sleepers and, secondly, by electrifying the line. This line will deliver much faster services. It will create 440 local jobs. These jobs are especially important to my electorate at this time. We have seen the effects of the global financial crisis, particularly in manufacturing in South Australia, and so it is good to have a very significant public infrastructure project in my electorate. I commend all those involved, including the state member, Tony Piccolo, who has been a great champion for this project.