VICTIMS OF TISM SUPPORT GROUP
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Give Up For Australia

May all our young Aussie swimmers
Be resigned to failure
May our nation's state
Be always second rate
'Give up! Give up! Give up for Australia!'

May Timorese fisherman
Evade the Aussie sailor (1)
May we do as history teaches -
Die on Middle Eastern beaches - (2)
'Give up! Give up! Give up for Australia!'

Hands up who wants to die! (3)
Go and get lost

We produce a Norman May (4)
Not a Norman Mailer (5)
May this land's vast distance
Always treat us with indifference (5)
'Give up! Give up! Give up for Australia!'

Annotations

1. This is a reference to the problem of Timorese fisherman poaching in Australian territorial waters.
2. A reference to the death of over 200,000 soldiers on the beach at Gallipoli (which is in Turkey, not the Middle East) in the first World War. It is widely believed that Australians accounted for the majority of these deaths, but in fact, this is not the case - 8,700 Australian soldiers died (and 60,000 Australian lives were lost in the war as a whole). Britain and France suffered most of the losses, with India and New Zealand involved as well.
3. This is Nick Cave's opening scream to the Birthday Party song 'Sonny's Burning' on the Bad Seed EP. Birthday Party / Nick Cave references are also made in Morrison Hostel and Existentialtism.
4. Norman May is an Australian sports commentator.
6. Norman Mailer is a novelist, essayist, and filmmaker, whose work has sparked both controversy and applause.
6. This is a theme explored in Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey's The Tyranny of Distance, St Martins, 1968.