Diana Wichtel: New anthem could well be a winner

In the aftermath of the America's Cup - in the aftermath of most of our major international sporting competitions, come to think of it - one finds oneself wondering how it is our national teams are so adept at choking, falling at the last hurdle, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and generally coming second.

Yes, I know the theories. We're a small country, we can't compete with big, overseas money and our rugby players eat too much pasta.

But I wonder if enough attention has been paid to the persistent drain on the collective will to live that is our national anthem.

It's not so much the music, but then I would say that. It was written by John Joseph Woods, my mother's great-great uncle. A man of some tenacity (he was county clerk for Tuapeka County Council for a punishing 55 years), he dashed off the tune in response to a competition to find music for verses written by poet Thomas Bracken.

The result was first performed in Dunedin's Queen Theatre in 1876, sung by a terrifying-sounding assemblage called the Lydia Howard Burlesque and Opera Burle Troupe.

Okay, the music is a little dirge-like, but the anthem sounds good when sung in Maori. So the problem must be with the words. "God Defend New Zealand." That roughly translates as "God help us!", which is not a promising start.

"God of nations, at Thy feet, In the bonds of love we meet" - only two lines in, and were already bound and prostrate.

"Hear our voices we entreat" - it's not enough that we're grovelling like whipped dogs, now were begging like an organ grinder's monkey.

No wonder the haka has become such an essential part of our international sporting contests. You'd need something with a bit of vitality and passion to psyche yourself up with after droning through that lot.

As for guarding "Pacific's triple star", God only knows what that means. At least I hope he does, because no one else seems sure.

The rest of the verses are, mercifully, seldom deployed. "Make our country good and great"; "Put our enemies to flight"; "Give us plenty". Never mind the cultural cringe. This is the anthem of a nation barely able to blow its own nose without some sort of divine intervention.

The song does unintentionally capture something of the inverted arrogance our colonial dislocation has bred in us. In verse four we're beseeching the Almighty to busy himself with guarding our allegedly "spotless name" from "dishonour and from shame". As if he hasn't enough to do.

God Defend New Zealand became our official anthem only in 1976. Until then there was something even worse. Our other national anthem, God Save the Queen, in which, even more outrageously, we beseech God to protect the inherited wealth of some over-paid figurehead half a world away.

Although I like the feisty, if poorly rhyming, lines in verse two where we call upon God to "arise" and "scatter her enem-eyes". Altogether now:

Confound their politics,

Frustrate their knavish tricks!

If there were paparazzi in 1745, they must have been quaking in their tights.

To be fair, hearing the national anthem can bring a tear to my eye. Only it's usually someone else's anthem. Naturally, I'm fond of Oh, Canada, the song of my former home and native land. The soaring

With glowing hearts we see thee rise,

The true north, strong and free!

never fails to stir the latent North American in me.

As for the US, whatever you think of its foreign policy, it's fuelled by some great ditties:

O say, does that star-spangled banner yet hp+2wave,

O'er the land of the free and the home of the hp+2brave?

Brilliant.

They also have that unofficial anthem, America the Beautiful, with its "amber waves of grain" and "purple mountain majesties, Above the fruited plain". How come we can't manage one good song, and they have two? Are our mountains any less purple, our plains less ... fruited?

Most galling of all, I get choked up by Advance Australia Fair. I know. But at least its message - move ahead, beautiful Australia! - shows a bit of mongrel in the forward pack.

Though the first line - "Australians all let us rejoice" - appears often in those lists of misheard lyrics. Some Australians, it seems, labour under the misapprehension that their anthem begins "Australians all are ostriches".

And the anthem's "Our home is girt by sea" is apparently often sung as the less lyrical, but nevertheless unarguable, "Our home is dirt by sea". Oh dear. Still, the anthem's second line, "For we are young and free", captures something of the magic of living down here at the ends of the Earth.

And the Australian manages the near-impossible, a good second verse.

For those who've come across the seas,

We've boundless plains to share,

With courage let us all combine

- a generous sentiment, even if the practice has often fallen short.

I'm not really pushing for a whole new New Zealand anthem, though a movement favouring the Split Enz song Six Months in a Leaky Boat almost took off after our maritime mishap.

But updated words would definitely be in order - something less passive and whiny with which to face a scary new millennium. Something that shows the will to take responsibility for ourselves and let God get on with whatever it is he does these difficult days. Who knows, we might even start winning again.