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How would you set about rebranding Australia? It's a question being asked of the country's most innovative marketing brains, following the decision by the Rudd government in February to dump the "Where the Bloody Hell Are You?" tourism campaign.

Some considered it too coarse and foul-mouthed. The Brits and Canadians banned it, of course, prompting criticisms that the catchphrase had generated more heat than heat-seekers.

Meanwhile, potential visitors in the vital Japanese and Chinese markets apparently found it unfathomable. The larrikin-style slogan was lost in translation.

For all the criticisms of the "Where the Bloody Hell Are You?" campaign, the latest figures show that Australia has posted the strongest tourist spending in almost a decade. Holidaymakers injected $A85 billion into this $A1 trillion economy. And this at a time when the strength of the Australian dollar has made it more expensive to come here, and the environmental lobby is encouraging people to holiday closer to home.

Nonetheless, Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson wants a new, three-year campaign touting Australia as a "mature, inviting country". The recent proposed something similar: a "greater international understanding of Australia as a mature, creative, innovative society".

More "cool Australia" than "Koala Australia" seems to be the aim.

After deciding that the global image of Australia's most populous city needed a facelift (see previous blog), the Sydney Magazine approached a few advertising companies for inspiration. One of them came up with the slogan "Sydney. Proudly UnAustralian". You can see it .

It features that great staple of Australian tourist brochures, the Sydney Opera House, but with a twist - it's white-tiled roof is emblazoned with the words "NO WAR" in bright red paint. Another image features two butch rugby players locked in a passionate embrace. "We're a City which gets lumped with the clichéd view of Down Under," says the website. "But we're not like that."

And how about the "All that and more" campaign from JWT? Here's a taster.

"Sydney, it's a bit like London. Classic Museums, Rich History, Hyde Park, Paddington, the Queen on Our Coin. It's just lacking the miserable weather, miserable people, pasty faces, snobby bitches, soggy chips, warm beer, cold winters, teens pushing prams, lager louts, slappers, geezers, madcow diseases."

Nifty stuff: fight stereotype with stereotype.

When the internet-based political action group GetUp launched a nationwide competition to sum up "Oz in thirty seconds", .

"We're young and free. This is what we Australi-are. We're clean and green. Down to earth and healthy. You might say we're ground-breaking and outspoken. We're diverse. We're sorry.

And this is what we Australi-aren't.'
Victims. An old boys club. We're not scared. And we're definitely not American, colour blind or gullible."

There seems to be growing agreement that its time to ditch the clichés.

Here, it perhaps helps that Kevin Rudd is, in the traditional and stereotypical sense at least, fairly "unAustralian". He says he has only been drunk on a few occasions in his life, is clearly more fluent in Mandarin Chinese than "larrikin Australian" and doesn't appear on daily power walks dressed in green and gold tracksuits. His idea of fun seems to be a two-day brainstorming session rather than a one-day cricket match.

It's all a far cry from when Paul Hogan was Australia's most prominent government-sponsored front man.

Kevin Rudd clearly believes that "Brand Australia" needs to be revitalised. It appears to be one of the overriding aims of his prime ministership, with echoes of the "Cool Brittania" stuff in the early days of the Blair years.

What the bloody hell do you think?

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This week I got to witness the modern-day gold rush that is Australia's resources boom.

I paid a flying visit to an iron ore mine in the , a massive hole carved into the landscape where those giant yellow "Tonka" trucks work through the day and night to feed China's almost insatiable demand for Australian resources.

The drivers of these beast-like vehicles work 12-hour shifts, and when they need to take a meal break they are replaced at the wheel by fill-ins.

The production schedules are so intense, so tight and so relentless that there is no time for even the smallest halt in the production process.

A train full of iron ore leaves one of Rio Tinto's mines every hour - and the trains are over a mile long. The Anglo-Australian mining giant expects to double its iron production over the next five years to meet the growing demand from China.

At present, about half of the iron ore exports from the Pilbara head in the direction of China. It helps construct things like the , an amalgam of Swiss design, courtesy of Herzog and de Meuron, Chinese ambition and, in parts, Australian materials.

Western Australia is the beneficiary of geological endowment and geographic convenience - Chinese companies have decided its easier to import coal from here than Brazil.

Its economy is growing at 6.3% a year, twice the rate of growth for Australia as a whole. Productivity in the region should give Australia some welcome protection from the worst effects of the global downturn.

China has just overtaken Japan to become Australia's biggest trading partner, which is partly why the arrival of the Olympic flame throws such an interesting spotlight on Canberra's relationship with Beijing.

Kevin Rudd faces the most tricky and potentially perilous of balancing acts.

During a , he has already deployed his fluency in Mandarin to criticise Chinese human rights policy in Tibet - though he said he delivered his rebuke as a friend.

The arrival of the torch, and the demonstrations that will greet it, has once again tested his steadiness and poise.

The prime minister has said the police will come down "like a ton of bricks" on any unruly protesters, and has seemingly been happy for the authorities to construct a wire fence - the Great Wall of Canberra - on the streets of the capital.

But at the same time, he has decided that the role of those tracksuited , who Sebastian Coe described as "thugs", will be limited.

After much confusion over exactly what they would be allowed to do, the late, breaking news is that three 'flame attendants' will always be near the torch but have no official security role.

Rudd is also leaving town for the day, perhaps to disassociate himself from the whole event.

Whether the Chinese security guards will follow the Australian-imposed ground rules is anyone's guess. The Chinese ambassador in Canberra has already said they'll leap from the coach if the torch is threatened.

Rudd's approach to China is a matter of careful and closely measured calibration. Has he got the balance right? Is that fence over the top?

Was he right to limit the role of the Chinese security guards? And when it comes to human rights in China, should Australia follow its conscience or follow the money. Or can it do both?

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Having first set out to make peace with the past, in his deftly-worded apology to indigenous Australians, Kevin Rudd is now in a hurry to make the future.

In Canberra this weekend, about a thousand of the country's sharpest and most forward-thinking minds will meet for the much-vaunted - a two-day brainstorming session to map out the country's trajectory over the next twelve years and beyond.

To many, it will be seen as a gimmickry talking shop - a glitzy and headline-grabbing one at that, especially since the prime minister has asked the Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett to chair the Creative Australia panel, one of the 10 discussion groups.

Others will see it as a much-needed confab to discuss how best to modernise Australia.

Perhaps historians will come to view it as an attempt by Rudd at the outset of his term in office to fashion what might be called "the new Australian consensus - a country, to borrow a phrase from his predecessor John Howard, that's 'relaxed and comfortable" both about its past and future.

Here are some possible topics for discussion, in no particular order:

• how to provide state of the art telecommunications in a country with the sixth largest land mass but only the 52nd biggest population; and how to do so in a way that doesn't create a three-tier digital divide between urban, regional and rural Australia.

• how to address the overlapping problems of chronic water shortages and disruptions to food supply in a country where droughts will most probably become more frequent and more severe.

• how to protect its vital tourism industry from the effects of climate change, which poses an existential threat to must-see destinations like the Great Barrier Reef and which might ultimately make it "environmentally incorrect" to fly all the way to this far-flung corner of the planet.

• how to modernise the constitution: deciding on how power should be best divided between the federal government and the states, and the long-term role of the British monarchy.

• how to repair the breach between black and white Australia in a way which eventually eradicates the disparities in the quality and length of life.

• how to revitalise 'Brand Australia' in a way which avoids old-fashioned stereotypes, like Paul Hogan's "I'll slip an extra shrimp on the barbie for you" television campaign, or its more recent incarnation, "Where the Bloody Hell are You?"

Seems to me, at least, that Australia is better placed than many liberal democracies to confront tomorrow's challenges.

Its plentiful mineral resources should protect its economy from the worst effects of the global slowdown, and secure its prosperity well into the century whoever is in charge in Canberra - that old "Lucky Country" argument.

There's also no shortage of people wanting to live here, and new arrivals usually have a renewing and energising effect. That said, the impact of global warming is likely to be more severe.

Part of the aim of the 2020 summit is to spark a national conversation among Australians living both near and far (of course, non-Aussies are welcome to weigh in too).

So what do you think are the big challenges, and what would you do to go about addressing them? Or do you think that 2020 is a complete waste of time, money and emissions?

Should Kevin Rudd trust in his own brain, rather than bringing together this Brain Trust?

PS As you may have noticed, we've revamped our blogs. Now you need to register to comment, but it doesn't take much time.

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So no bow to the Queen, a cowboy-style salute to the president and a pointed finger at the Chinese.

It's all been happening on Kevin Rudd's 17-day world tour, a trip which has emphasised once more how his tenure in office continues to be defined by gestures - symbolic, bodily and linguistic.

After entering Windsor Castle through the Equerries Entrance rather than the Sovereign's Entrance, which is reserved for heads of state, the republican prime minister offered the Queen his out-stretched hand, a hearty "good morning your majesty" and some polite commentary on an unseasonably cold snap of British weather.

But the one thing missing, according to the protocol-minded critics, was "the customary neck bow". At the risk of mixing metaphors - or confusing bodily motions - .

Before that, to George W Bush at the NATO summit in Bucharest had already raised a few eyebrows (ok, enough). He had just walked into the crowded room, clearly did not know who to speak to, and then saw the president across the way.

Phillip Coorey of the takes up the story: "With a combination of nervousness and forced familiarity, Rudd flicked the president a mock but friendly salute and gave him a cheesy smile." And remember, John Howard was supposed to be the American president's "deputy sheriff".

Afterwards, Mr Rudd tried to laugh off the episode - although by "laugh" I really mean a weird and slightly manic giggle.

"I was just saying hi to the President of the United States," he said, in a voice which was more Revenge of the Nerds than Rawhide.

Meanwhile, back home in Australia, a po-faced Brendan Nelson, the embattled leader of the Liberal Party, called the greeting "conduct unbecoming of an Australian prime minister".

But it was the way that which seems to have gone down particularly well here. Not only did he display once again his impressive mastery of Mandarin, but he deployed it to rebuke his host on the question of Tibet. "There are significant human rights problems in Tibet," he told students at Peking University.

Here's the hard-to-impress Alan Ramsey, a columnist with the Sydney Morning Herald. "To say it took courage and no little risk only parrots the obvious. What it took was leadership of the most dramatic kind."

Mike Steketee, a columnist with the Australian, noted that the China trip had "disposed of the conservative criticism that he is Australia's Manchurian candidate".

With this fast-paced world tour, Australia's global rebranding continues apace - and seems relentless. On his arrival home, Mr Rudd announced the appointment of Quentin Bryce as the country's first - and possibly last - female governor general, the Queen's representative.

What did you think of the regal handshake, the presidential salute and the Mandarin putdown? And what do you make of the new diplomatic face which Australia is presenting to the world?

PS. Thanks for your kind messages ahead of the wedding. My wife, Fleur, and I had a ball. A snap is included above.

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