Aussie poster campaign hijacked by images of Rolf Harris and ‘Jihadi Jake’

Aussie poster campaign hijacked after posters of Rolf Harris and an Australian Isis recruit have been put up around Melbourne city centre, mocking a popular multiculturalism campaign.

The new images appear alongside original posters proclaiming the “Aussie” heritage of well-known migrants, and appear to imitate the design.

They show headshots of Harris, who was jailed in 2014 for a string of sexual assaults, and Jake Bilardi, also referred to as “Jihadi Jake”, an 18-year-old suicide bomber from Victoria who committed atrocities in Iraq.

The images have been spotted outside train stations, near clubs and on the city’s town hall, according to Buzzfeed Australia.

Many of the posters have been pasted over photos of notable migrants to Australia, including folk hero Monga Khan, with artworks designed by artist Peter Drew as a comment on Australian identity.

The campaign, titled “What makes a real Aussie?” generated a great deal of positive press when the posters first went up around Australia’s major cities.

Speaking to The Age, Drew said he did not think the new posters were put up by people with racist tendencies but those with “puritanical” attitudes to Australian nationalism.

He said: “It is obviously someone who is inflicted by the undergraduate tendency to see all nationalism as something which is bad.

“Apparently we need reminding that Rolf Harris was an Aussie and so was the Bilardi kid, but I’m not bothered in the slightest.”

Drew’s own posters feature Chinese and Indian immigrants, as well as Aboriginal residents, who had to apply for exemptions from the country’s infamous ’White Australia Policy’ which was finally abolished in 1973.

The policy effectively only permitted migrants from Great Britain and European countries to enter Australian shores.