What is this about? Where I come from we still talk the way you think died out 30 years ago. "She'll be right, mate" is what our open laid back country is all about bloke.

Tourism Australia is selling a product. This product has some geographic resemblances to Australia, but the rest of the message was created inside a conference room in a major city somewhere, simply in order to attract the attention of potential tourists.

The cry "we're not like that, really" has absolutely no relevance here (or anywhere, for that matter, but let's stick to the topic for once), because the promotion is a figment of an ad-man's imagination.

If you are selling Australia as a tourist destination, what would you show? Eveleigh Street Redfern? Who would you use to make the invitation? Bobo the chef from Fat Pizza?

What a campaign promoting Australia says and portrays is designed to chime with what visitors want to hear. In fact, it says far more about the people who we believe should be attracted to spend their vacations here than it does about us.

Presumably the agency has done their homework, and has identified the population with the profile that combines the largest average spend with the broadest numerical constituency. These are the people who hopefully are attracted by the images in the campaign.

We of course know the truth about Australia, don't we? And we wouldn't want any of THAT getting into an advertising campaign, would we?

Get off your high horse.

That is Australia, we can sip lattes and go to the opera anywhere in the world, why would we try to conduct a campaign with no point of difference.

We are a backwater, and this is product association. We are known for that, lets use it. We are a friendly mob with our own slang jargon, that is half the fun of coming to visit us.

Putting aside your cultural protectionism, I can't see this campaign appealing to my overseas connections, some of whom travel often.

But a bigger issue to me is why is the government spending $180m on this campaign? I know that tourism spending is spread quite widely in the economy, but surely it's the responsibility of the industry to promote its own product? Is an agreed industry-operated levy on turnover too hard to arrange? You can be sure if the campaign money comes from the industry, it will be pitched in the way, and to the markets, where it will generate the most return. That's unlikely to be the case when government is funding and bureaucrats are deciding.

I agree with Faustino I don't believe the advertising industry would come up with something so 'dated' for overseas markets. I believe there is a bit of a political agenda behind the campaign which I still believe could only be created by Baby Boomers and would warm people of this generation heart moreso than potential tourists from overseas. Australia has many natural geographical attractions which are more likely to bring in visitors and yes the openess of the people is a bonus but I believe that openess is part of the character of most Australian's wether it be 'A,B or X,Y or Z and 'ocker' or not. I also take Realist's point that their are many Australians that do still identify with the 'iconic' Aussie image, half of my relatives are like this! This is many people's reality but I don't think the younger generations would identify much with this image. I can't speak for potential overseas visitors but wonder if it makes much sense to the U.S. market and apparently it was completely lost in translation for the Japanese market.

The old saying is, "90% of advertising is useless". Well, we're never likely to find out if our $180 million is giving us a good return or not. I'm inclined to think that we won't show a profit on the cost, otherwise it would be shouted from the rooftops.

I came here from England nearly 44 years ago, because I wanted to live near the beach in a good climate. Think I was on my own in that respect? My favourite holiday destination is Bali, because I want to holiday near the beach in a good climate. I have friends from teenagers to people of around 80 who also go to Bali for that reason.

So why not go [from Perth] to Coral Bay or Broome instead of Bali? Well, for a start a holiday of similar standards would cost me about four times as much. I like Coral Bay, the coral reef snorkeling is marvelous and straight off the beach. But nothing else to do and exorbitantly expensive. And Broome is basically a big country town with a nice beach. Incidentally, both Coral Bay and Broome have legal free beaches [clothes optional], but the tourism people haven't got the sense to even mention that, despite the huge interest in nude bathing in many European countries, including England and Germany where we have tourist offices.

For those who cringe at our traditional laid back image, well what would you promote instead? We haven't got the culture, art or history of Britain and Europe and never will have. So why is it that so many of us from those areas wouldn't live anywhere else but Australia? Well, no-one has ever asked me. Has anyone ever asked you?