'Operation Boomerang' Lamb Ad Insults Indigenous People, Say Critics

The commercial for Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA), released online on Sunday, highlights SBS newsreader Chin driving a military operation to extract stranded Australians from around the globe, bringing them home for an Australia Day lamb meal.

It highlights popular Australians including the previous 'lambassador,' Sam Kekovich, the Wallabies captain, Stephen Moore and the retired cricketer Mitchell Johnson. The ad has been condemned for various reasons including the depiction of Australians militarily attacking outside nations and the appropriation of the indigenous word 'boomerang' to commend the entry of European settlers.

Australia Day, additionally referred to as Invasion Day or Survival Day, routinely pulls in protests against celebrating the arrival of the first fleet and the start of indigenous dispossession, colonisation and massacres.

Celeste Liddle, a trade unionist and social commentator on indigenous and women's activist issues said while boomerang is a normally known word, it is still an aboriginal expression and its utilisation felt like misappropriation ahead of planned national protests by indigenous groups and their supporters on Australia Day. The complaints were principally about the violence showed when a man's table is torched with a flame-thrower. The ASB was optimising its hearings for the complaints given the short run for the ad.

The group marketing manager for the MLA, Andrew Howie, said it was natural for a brand or product to have a competitor. 'For us, its non-meat-eaters,' he said. 'Last year we had a light-hearted jibe at the gluten-intolerant and the year before there was a vegetarian gag.'

Howie said the commercial had been generally welcomed and resonated with a lot of Australians who had spent extended periods abroad and been homesick on specific days and dates. Howie included that he had been uninformed of feedback from indigenous individuals and making the promotion did not consider utilising the word boomerang would be controversial.