Tom Elliott responds to latest company name controversy

An Australian beer company looks set to change its name amid public backlash and bottleshop boycotts.

The Colonial Brewing Co said it had undertaken a “process to review and understand the options to approach the name” after Melbourne-based writer Shaad D’Souza put pressure on bottleshops to stop stocking their products, given the historical significance of colonisation.

The Blackhearts & Sparrows chain of stores will no longer be stocking Colonial beer.

Colonial Brewing, which is based in Margaret River and has a brewery in Port Melbourne, said it acknowledged the “significant stress and angst” around the Black Lives Matter movement.

Managing Director Lawrence Dowd told 3AW Drive the company was reviewing the name and where to go from here.

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Tom Elliott said it was ridiculous.

“It is unbelievable,” the 3AW Drive host said.

“This is the sort of stuff they did in China during the cultural revolution where people who were deemed to be enemies of the revolution had to sit there and perform an act of self-criticism and say how they’d ‘failed’ the people of China, failed yourself and failed the revolution and then go and chuck yourself off a bridge or something.

“It was a period of madness.”

Tom Elliott said Australia was quickly losing its sense of humour and sense of what’s important and what isn’t.

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