Pizza Hut, through local subsidiary Tricon Restaurants Australia Pty Ltd, sought an injunction against Potter's airport advertisements. It has since dropped the case.
"Wholly Australian owned" family firm Herron Pharmaceuticals irritated SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals by saying in an ad that Australia's number-one painkiller, Panadol, owned by the US heavyweight, was not Australian at all.
SmithKline Beecham went to court but Herron won.
Herron chief executive Euan Murdoch said the company's market share in painkillers climbed to 32 percent from 25 percent before the ads, and public support was "huge."
But the nationalists are not simply irking the foreigners.
Dick Smith has had run-ins with former deputy prime minister Tim Fischer, ambassador of the "Australian Made Campaign," a body set up by national and state chambers of commerce to promote locally manufactured products and not just pure Australian firms.
"It's fortress Australia, it's ultimately devastating to the longer-term future of Australia," Fischer said back in March, criticizing Smith's "xenophobic" twist.
The campaign's executive director, Jenny Da Rin, says there is no proof that foreign investment is bad for the economy. The latest government study found that 97 cents of every dollar invested by foreign firms remained in Australia, she says.
Da Rin says she is not against promoting ownership. But ownership does not always mean a firm's products are made in Australia.
Ultimately, consumers should make decisions based on price and quality, and not just nationalism, she says.
The Consumers' Association is careful not to take sides in the Australian-made or Australian-owned debate, but on that point it agrees.
"Don't let the desire to buy Australian get in the way of normal shopping best practice," it says.
RSS