Australia’s Crocodile Dundee says publicity behind release

Paul Hogan, the actor made famous by the Crocodile Dundee films, said the bad publicity surrounding his dispute with the Australian tax office had forced it to lift travel restrictions on him.

Mr Hogan, who was banned from leaving his homeland in mid-August after returning Down Under for his mother’s funeral, arrived back in the US late Sunday and immediately launched another attack on Australian tax officials.

The 70-year-old said tax bureaucrats had only allowed him to leave because of the negative publicity generated by their travel ban.

“It was because of the bad publicity around the world,” he told ABC radio from Los Angeles.

“It was sort of, ‘What? You get kept in there (Australia)? Guilty until proven innocent?’.”

Mr Hogan, a comic in Australia who was catapulted to global success as the knife-brandishing bush hero of the Crocodile Dundee movies, has been embroiled for five years in a dispute with tax officials allegedly worth millions of dollars.