Councillors on Monday night endorsed a motion by Cr Brian Adamthwaite that mayor Cr Kay Fraser write to the Prime Minister requesting that the government review the wording of  Advance Australia Fair to change the word “young” in the second line of the first verse to “strong”.

Cr Adamthwaite said: “When we sing the words ‘for we are young and free’, we ignore more than 40,000 years of culture, tradition and history. Australia has one of the longest continuous civilisations on the planet.”

Cr Adamthwaite said when Advance Australia Fair was adopted in 1984 as our national anthem, a word was changed in the first line.

“Until that time we all happily sang, slightly unaware of the significance, ‘Australia's sons let us rejoice’.”

That line was changed to “Australians all let us rejoice”.

“This one word change was not a reaction of political correctness, it was to make it inclusive, to be a song to represent our whole nation,” he said.

“In the same way I believe we are now mature enough to revisit the wording of the second line of the national anthem.”