When was Advance Australia Fair adopted?

Advance Australia Fair was officially adopted as Australia's national anthem on 19 April 1984, when Governor-General Sir Ninian Stephen proclaimed it on the advice of Prime Minister Bob Hawke's government. The proclamation came alongside the adoption of green and gold as the national colours, both intended to give Australia a clearer non-imperial national identity in the lead-up to the 1988 bicentenary.

The road to adoption began in 1973, when Prime Minister Gough Whitlam ran a national competition to find a new anthem. None of the more than 1,400 entries was judged stronger than the existing Australian songs, so the government held a non-binding plebiscite in May 1977 alongside a referendum on other constitutional matters. Voters chose between Advance Australia Fair, Waltzing Matilda, Song of Australia, and the existing God Save the Queen. Advance Australia Fair received 43.6 per cent of the vote and emerged as the clear preference.

Despite the plebiscite result, the change was not immediately implemented. Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser used Advance Australia Fair for civilian occasions from 1977 but kept God Save the Queen for royal and vice-regal occasions. The Hawke Labor government, which took office in 1983, formalised the new arrangement in 1984 and clarified that God Save the Queen would continue only as the Royal Anthem when members of the Royal Family were present.

The anthem's lyrics were revised in 1984, and again on 1 January 2021 when Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Governor-General David Hurley proclaimed that the line 'for we are young and free' would be replaced with 'for we are one and free' to better reflect the more than 60,000 years of Indigenous Australian history. The 2021 change was the most significant edit to the anthem since its 1984 adoption.