It is true that Australia has far more pressing issues on its plate than fixing the national anthem just now, but it would put a song in my heart to know we were not stuck with it forever.

The words are meaningless, uninspiring and outdated, make no mention of indigenous Australians and are wrung out of me parrot-fashion through sense of duty rather than true pride.

I will stand tall when the children sing it this Anzac Day to honour the diggers, but the emotions that will inevitably stir will do so on the reminder of the incredible sacrifices made so our young can live as they do, not through any special poetry.

Their deeds transcend words.

Advance Australia Fair was probably not a bad little ditty in its day, back when Scottish-born Peter Dodds McCormick first penned it.

It struck a certain chord in the colony, gaining its first public airing in 1878 and used at the inauguration of the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901.

He was apparently awarded 100 pounds by the Australian government for his composition, and it seems we have been paying ever since.

It’s not Mr McCormick’s fault. He couldn’t have possibly foreseen the far-reaching implications of his work when he put quill to paper and, among other things, resurrected the word “girt” which must have been thousands of years out of fashion even then.

I imagine that with the arrival of the song, girt may have become one of the first recorded buzz words of the bureaucratic elite – one which left the battler scratching his head in the same way he does now.

Picture this scene.

It’s 200 years ago and the police have surrounded Glenrowan Hotel where the Kelly gang is holed up inside.

The commanding officer bellows across the cold Victorian air: “Surrender scoundrels, for you are totally girt”.

Completely unimpressed by being called totally girt, Ned dons a suit of armor and engages in his infamous last stand, determined to take as much of the establishment down with him as possible in the bloody shootout.

Or maybe don’t, it’s up to you.

The point is, it’s a ridiculous word in a ridiculous song that should never have gained the currency that it did.

It’s a bit like when the Swingers recorded Counting the Beat in 1980. It was harmless enough in its day but I think even the band would have to agree now that enough is enough.

Our daughter Clementine is a proud, six-year-old Australian. She was singing the national anthem as I walked her to school the other day.

This is her version of the opening line, sung honestly and without hesitation.

“Australians all have ostriches.”

Now, I’m not saying we should change it to that but it does have a certain ring to it. And what kid couldn’t relate to a land so free that we could all own gigantic flightless birds?

She injected the sense into that she needed, which is more than can be said for me when I was in her shoes, back when our national anthem was God Save The Queen and even harder to relate to than this one, if that’s possible.

I always had a mental image of our queen falling from the heavens with an umbrella – Mary Poppins style – when I sang the lines: “Send her victorious, happy and glorious, along with the rain over us”.

Words are hard to remember when they mean nothing. The band Weddings Parties Anything said that. I can’t forget it.

Journalist Kerry O’Brien raised the question about the national anthem to Kevin Rudd on the 7.30 Report this week. He asked the Prime Minister if it stirred him.

The PM replied: “It does 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.”

This was a fabulous answer, it has to be said.

I did notice, however, Kevin didn’t make reference to line four of the song which makes the important observation of how the sea arranges itself around our home.

On that point I guess he sensed that his interviewer had him … what’s the word? ... encircled.