We choose as our friends those we feel we don't have to lie to, those who share with us a common set of assumptions on music, morals, reading, sport and entertainment options.

We choose as our philosophy or our religion or our creed a set of rules that makes us comfortable, that doesn't when it's articulated make us cringe.

And it's for similar reasons we all hate, I think, we all inwardly hate the Australian National Anthem. We give way to untruth every time we stand for it. We give way to untruth every time we sing it. We are not stirred when we hear it at the Olympic Games. We feel vaguely shamed by it, as the Canadians, French and Finnish are not by theirs.

Their songs enlarge them. Ours makes us feel, however slightly, like dickheads. Though 'I Am, You Are, We Are Australians' brings us to tears of pride, especially when sung by children, 'Advance Australia Fair' makes us cringe. And when we stand up for it, we are usually, inwardly, lying.

Every one of the first six lines rings false. We are not young. We are not free. Our soil is not golden. Wealth does not come from toil here, but from birth or short-selling or real estate. And though we are 'girt by sea' so are all islands, and we are an island, and this is scarcely worth noting. And our land does not 'abound with precious gifts', it is two-thirds desert. Unless you count uranium I suppose, and the immensity of coal that is currently choking the planet, it does not abound, it is a desert waste.

The very first line, 'Australians all, let us rejoice', rings as false as 'I did but see her passing by' or 'tough but humane'. In real life you rejoice or you do not, you cannot be asked to rejoice. You can be asked to give thanks, for that is a form of words. You can be asked to bow your head in prayer. You cannot be asked to rejoice, for that is a spontaneous emotion, and you have it or not.

When Mrs Thatcher said 'I say unto you: rejoice' at the end of the needless Falklands War, she was as falsely tuned as we are when we are called upon to fill with joy at the thought of the oldest and driest land with one of the cruellest colonial histories, of poisoned flour and stolen children, and not one Indigenous person or immigrant Vietnamese, or Sudanese, or Palestinian in our Senate or House of Representatives, and give vent to our pleasured excitement. This is a problem to work on, not a victory to rejoice in.

The second verse 'For those who come across the seas/We've boundless wealth to share' is an especially big lie. Our wealth is not boundless, and BHP Billiton does not like to share it. And boat people coming here across the sea if detected are towed back to Indonesia, or, until quite recently, imprisoned in Woomera, Baxter, Port Hedland, Villawood or Nauru.

The image of easy prosperity, true for some who buy their way in for a million dollars, is not, however, true for those Kosovans who fled here from ethnic cleansing and were soon sent back to the neighbourhoods their families were killed in.

Nor those Hazaras fleeing the Taliban who were accused of being Taliban themselves, and charged a million dollars for their incarceration.

A national anthem should above all not lie to us; not lie to us clumsily, or even smoothly. It can avoid certain historical subjects, for we all have ugly national secrets, but it should not say things that are not true.

'Young and free' was not true of Aborigines for our first 189 years and it is not widely true of them now. Outback squalor, infantile deafness, poor education, child-betrothals, incest, wife-beating, frequent gaolings and Third World levels of health outcomes, do not add up to freedom.

Nor can the world's oldest continuing cultural traditions, 40,000 or 50,000 years of them, be called young. This country is only young if we ethnically cleanse from our national memory our original people, and the half million we murdered or brought through trauma and grief to death by kidnapping, alcohol, unjust imprisonment and centuries of mockery.

Canada has a history as abominable as ours but has a good national anthem that does not slither into lying.

O Canada (it says)

Our home and native land!

True patriot love in all thy sons command.

With glowing hearts we see thee rise,

The True North strong and free!

From far and wide, O Canada,

We stand on guard for thee.

And so, in a more rousing way, does (amazingly) New Zealand.

God of nations! at Thy feet

In the bonds of love we meet,

Hear our voices, we entreat,

God defend our Free Land.

Guard Pacific's triple star,

From the shafts of strife and war,

Make her praises heard afar,

God defend New Zealand

Men of every creed and race

Gather here before Thy face,

Asking Thee to bless this place,

God defend our Free Land.

From dissension, envy, hate,

And corruption guard our State,

Make our country good and great,

God defend New Zealand.

Ours, alas, is very different and, on most grand occasions, dismaying. What should we do about this bear-trap of denial, untruth, bad poetry and poor music?

Well, Gough Whitlam had a National Anthem Competition in 1973 (and I, not that it matters, was one of the six finalists), which was abandoned after the Musicians' Union demanded payment every time the new song was broadcast, but it wasn't, inherently, a bad idea, and we could do the same thing now, and get Bill Shorten to negotiate with the relevant union thugs.

New words to our best tune 'Song of Australia' wouldn't hurt. Or 'I Still Call Australia Home'. Or 'Waltzing Matilda' ('Sing for Australia, work for Australia, pray for Australia at sunset and dawn', and so on). Or we could ask Bruce Woodley, as he did for the Marysville fires, to rewrite or condense the words of 'I Am, You Are, We Are Australian'.

Or simply sing it as it is, a celebration of our multiculturalism, our convict past, our Aboriginal heritage. There is no law that says a national anthem can't be three minutes long. An orchestral truncation of it would suffice at the Olympic Games when we win gold medals. But at football games, and cricket Tests, and State funerals, and parliament openings, it could be sung in full, with the crowd joining in at the chorus, and stir us, as an anthem should, to love of country, pride in ourselves, community forgiveness, an extended hand across differences.

I came from the dream-time, from the dusty red soil plains

I am the ancient heart, the keeper of the flame.

I stood upon the rocky shore, I watched the tall ships come.

For forty thousand years I've been the first Australian.

We are one, but we are many

And from all the lands on earth we come

We share a dream and sing with one voice:

I am, you are, we are Australian

I came upon the prison ship, bowed down by iron chains.

I cleared the land, endured the lash and waited for the rains.

I'm a settler, I'm a farmer's wife on a dry and barren run

A convict then a free man, I became Australian...

And so on. I can't see any argument against this; can you?

Or perhaps you'd prefer to stand up for the rest of your life singing 'girt by sea'.

It's not healthy, I think, to give roaring voice at public events to a pack of lies.

Or perhaps you disagree.