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After the national election win of the Liberal National Coalition in March 1996, Australia experienced more than ten years of contentious public debate. Discussions about Australia's history and future raged with an intensity that both highlighted and problematized the very notion of national identity. During this period, the television commercials for tea brand Bushells paralleled changes in Australia's political culture. In various ways, events of epochal significance, both in Australia and abroad, surfaced in the brand's promotions. These campaigns not only showed the increasing difficulty of picturing Australianness; they also showed that, no matter how fragmented Australian culture became, there remained a lingering bias to certain images, ideals and values. As the Australian electorate became more insular, parochial and conservative, Bushells followed suit. This article considers how Bushells drew symbolic markers from popular culture - the worlds of celebrity, sport, cinema and so on - in a bid to remain relevant, endearing and likeable. It therefore shows that, for a commodity as basic as tea, much can be gleaned about the contemporary political mood through the vernacular rhetoric of television advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the national election win of the Liberal National Coalition in March 1996, Australia experienced more than ten years of contentious public debate. Discussions about Australia's history and future raged with an intensity that both highlighted and problematized the very notion of national identity. During this period, the television commercials for tea brand Bushells paralleled changes in Australia's political culture. In various ways, events of epochal significance, both in Australia and abroad, surfaced in the brand's promotions. These campaigns not only showed the increasing difficulty of picturing Australianness; they also showed that, no matter how fragmented Australian culture became, there remained a lingering bias to certain images, ideals and values. As the Australian electorate became more insular, parochial and conservative, Bushells followed suit. This article considers how Bushells drew symbolic markers from popular culture - the worlds of celebrity, sport, cinema and so on - in a bid to remain relevant, endearing and likeable. It therefore shows that, for a commodity as basic as tea, much can be gleaned about the contemporary political mood through the vernacular rhetoric of television advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A cross between a bikini and a burqa, the BurqiniTM reworks a conventional symbol of Australian culture in terms consistent with Muslim modesty. In turn, the Burqini TM stakes a deeply ironic claim to one of the nation’s most revered sites: the beach. This article thus considers its significance in relation to two dominant stereotypes in recent Australian history: the ‘beach babe’, typically blonde, blue-eyed and bikinied; and a view of conservative Muslim culture that had taken shape in mainstream Australian media: as restrictive, regressive and misogynist. By appropriating the traditional bikini design for a contemporary Muslim clientele, the BurqiniTM is both a confronting cultural statement and a bold example of 21st century world fashion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the 20th century history of coffee and tea consumption in Australia. It contrasts the Australian heritage of drinking tea, derived from British culture, with the influence of coffee-drinking American soldiers during World War II. The efforts of Nescafé instant coffee to gain market share at the expense of tea in the postwar era are analyzed in these terms. Advertising culture of the 1950s and 1960s is discussed, and the emphasis on prepackaged and synthetic items is said to be characteristic of that time. The influence of Italian immigrants to Australia on the rise in popularity of coffee is also noted.