This month, Austrade is due to unveil the new Brand Australia, the culmination of an eight-month process of tendering for and creating a new communications campaign for the nation. The advertising agency selected to create the $4 million a year, four year project is M&C Saatchi....

"The idea was to explore ways to further build bridges between India and Australia and enhance people-to-people networks to recommend best practice creative partnership strategies to enhance economic and cultural ties between the two countries," said Serafina Maiorano, chief executive officer of Advance.

Australian resources are helping to power Asia - and the federal government should use this clout to gain more political power in the region, experts say. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) is urging "resources diplomacy" in its latest paper.

Former Tourism Australian and Tourism New Zealand advertising agency M&C Saatchi has won the job of building brand Australia for Austrade. The agency, which has also been involved in nation-branding and tourism projects in the US and the Middle East, will assume the $20 million project to market Australia as an export and investment nation.

Austria regarded its participation in the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai as an opportunity to showcase a real and whole Austria to the world, Austrian Minister of Economy Reinhold Mitterlehner said on Monday.

An Austrian official says the upcoming Shanghai Expo 2010 is very important to his country's development and "therefore we can't be absent" from the international event.

A new website was launched yesterday to bring together human rights advocates in an online network to share advice and best practice, and provide a one-stop-shop for information on international human rights treaties relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

In my recent book touring travels down under, I was struck repeatedly by the sense in which New Zealand and Australia seem for a North American at once remote yet accessible, exotic yet familiar. They are in, but not of the Global South.