Its adoption in 1984 was after a cultural politics struggle between the Whitlam and Fraser governments about which song best represented Australians’ collective sense of identity.

According to Wikipedia, the 1977 referendum settled it: Advance Australia Fair received 43.29 per cent of the vote, defeating the three alternatives, Waltzing Matilda (28.28 per cent), Song of Australia (9.65 per cent) and the existing national anthem, God Save the Queen (18.78 per cent).

Since then, both the lyrics and the music of Advance Australia Fair have been criticised for being pallid and underwhelming.

Again, as Wikipedia notes, National Party senator Sandy Macdonald said in 2001 that Advance Australia Fair is so boring that the nation risks singing itself to sleep, with boring music and words impossible to understand. Craig Emerson argued the lyrics suggested mediocrity.

Think of the great national anthems – they are blood-soaked political manifestoes: France’s La Marseillaise, USA’s The Star-Spangled Banner, Japan’s Kimi Ga Yo and Russia’s former The Internationale. And there’s God Save the Queen of course.

All national anthems, as Kit Kelen points out in his 2014 book Anthem Quality, are sung, performed, reiterated, invoked in different contexts and are variously manipulable to rouse, placate, control the nation. They are both inclusive and exclusive.

An earlier draft of Advance Australia Fair marginalised women by referring to sons – this has now been changed to “all”.

Our current verse two – the better one, in my opinion – is an amalgam and updating of three earlier verses that were suffused with European colonial masculinist and religious views.

Joe Williams is perfectly reasonable in his interpretation of Advance Australia Fair as favouring European settlers: it may not be the only or the main meaning but it’s clearly there. (Meaning is nearly always inferential: a word comes to mean what it’s taken to mean as much as what it’s intended to mean).

So “fair” can be seen as suggesting “white” Australia in that European/colonial/missionary sense of the “white man’s burden”, where “white man” came to mean any worthy character (Henry Lawson uses the phrase in this way).

What makes Joe Williams’ stance just and inclusive, and likely to help healing, is his sense that meaning is complicated and often conflicted, whereas what makes Paul Funnell’s faux-outrage divisive and harmful is his pretence that the national anthem has only one meaning and should be acknowledged in only one way.

Australian national identity (if such a thing can be defined) is a complex and constantly changing phenomenon – different now from what it was 50 or 100 (or more) years ago. It needs to acknowledge the ambiguities of culture (and race), gender, belief – and their underbellies.

The best way forward is an inclusive, tolerant and intelligent conversation as started by Joe Williams – not a half-cocked rant.

JOE Williams is a true Australian sportsman, and the community work he has done made him stand out in the local community.  

For these efforts he was rewarded and made Wagga citizen of the year – well done Joe.

Australia has a national anthem that represents all Australians. I am at a loss to understand Joe’s actions to then disrespect all Wagga residents, including those who voted to give him this great honour.

Joe, you have a right to be proud of your heritage, as the rest of us Australians also have the right to be proud of our heritage.