Steve Price: Why new minted premier Jacinta Allan’s reaction to cartoon is a joke
Premier Jacinta Allan this week provided a worrying glimpse into Victoria’s future when she kicked up a fuss about how she was depicted in a political cartoon. But was it just a timely diversion?
Opinion
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Australia’s best cartoonist Mark Knight once drew me as a deranged bulldog barking into a radio microphone.
He had me wearing a studded collar snarling and looking angry. I was flattered and asked for the original and had it framed. How anyone could seriously be offended by the art of cartooning is beyond me but that’s exactly what happened this week.
Victoria’s newly minted Premier Jacinta Allan — revealing a worrying glass jaw — accused Mark of using sexualised imagery in a cartoon published on Tuesday. What a joke. Her reaction offered up a clear picture of what Victoria will be like post Dan Andrews.
Despite his faults Andrews never publicly showed he was annoyed by media criticism – clearly, I don’t know what happened behind closed doors – and Knight, Australia’s best cartoonist, even drew the former Premier naked himself. It was during Covid and depicted Daniel as the character baby from a Nirvana album cover.
Harmless fun as Tuesday’s drawing was. Only problem for Mark is Jacinta is a woman and the gates of hell opened. Jacinta, as we know, was the anointed one, a factional warrior and child of the ALP Left. She was also the Minister in charge of delivery of the ill-fated and disgracefully cancelled 2026 Commonwealth Games abandoned by her government by order of the former Premier.
Allan is refusing to appear before a parliamentary inquiry into what happened – another worrying sign for Victorians desperate for accountable Government something the Andrews administration wasn’t ever interested in.
The new Premier – true to the former Premier’s manifesto on how to spin yourself out of trouble — seized upon the cartoon she was so upset about and used it as a welcome diversion.
A diversion from the continued debate around the cancelled Commonwealth Games and even the Voice referendum result and talk of Victoria’s horrendous debt levels.
The cartoon blow up also came on the day one of her own former MP’s Will Fowles was arrested and interviewed by the sex crime squad police over what they describe as a “serious” assault allegation. Interesting timing indeed.
Mark drew the new Premier as a catwalk model – as it’s Melbourne fashion week – with the attached caption reading “From the Commonwealth Games cancellation collection … the Premier’s new clothes.” Jacinta was naked aside from some conveniently-placed pixilated strips covering up you-know-what. As Mark himself explained it was a take on the notion of the emperor’s new clothes.
This was of course a reference to the Hans Christian Anderson fable. It was a classic case of a talented cartoonist using his drawing as political comment something Knight does with that rare ability to puncture the egos of public figures including weekly on this page.
Cue the outrage machine. Let’s start with the way the ABC reported what then followed. Premier Allan fronted the media with the ABC describing reaction as “a significant backlash from prominent women in politics.”
The Premier declared the cartoon was not an appropriate way to depict a woman. Presumably that’s why she didn’t complain when Mark drew Daniel Andrews with no clothes and a pixilated penis.
She wasn’t done with attacking Mark. “It’s not the 1950s. It’s 2023 and I think it’s pretty reasonable for women, regardless of profession or background to be able to have themselves represented in a way that doesn’t use sexualised imagery,” she said. “All women deserve to be able to open the paper, look at images that are there for public consumption and not see sexualised imagery being used to represent them.”
Look at the drawing and convince me anyone looking at that sees “sexualised imagery” seriously! The ABC wasn’t letting Mark off the hook that easily though and next up on the conga line of outrage was someone called Niki Vincent who is Victoria’s Public Sector Gender Equality Commissioner – who knew such an office existed but of course it is Victoria.
Niki said too often women leaders have their bodies focused on or their clothing. She must have missed Mark drawing Liberal leader Peter Dutton naked except for a loin cloth holding a spear or the dozens of times Mark drew former Liberal leader Tony Abbott wearing only red budgie smugglers. We didn’t hear from the office of gender equality back then.
She went on to describe the cartoon as another example of how to make fun of a woman leader and accused Mark of using sexism.
The ABC then publishes a range of reaction from what it says are women in politics who decline to be named. I would point out Mark Knight doesn’t draw anonymously his name adorns all his work.
One faceless political woman said, “this shit doesn’t happen to men”. One Liberal MP Jess Wilson described the cartoon as being in poor taste while Victorian Greens leader Samantha Ratnam took to X (formerly Twitter) and pushed the outrage button. She called the cartoon disgraceful and then said: “It says more about the old guard establishment that can’t cope with women in leadership, so they try to ridicule, sexualise and minimise us. Yet another reason we need more women in power.”
Really!
Our ABC wasn’t done with though, even quoting Melbourne Lord Mayor Sally Capp – who hasn’t walked past a microphone or camera in her life – adding to the debate: “This is an incident we can’t walk by. We can’t accept that this is a standard of professionalism, that is appropriate in our community in this day and age and it’s important that we call it out.”
Presumably Lord Mayor Capp will also request Mark to stop drawing her wearing oversized coloured glasses. Perhaps Mark could stop drawing her in his cartoons at all which I am sure would inflict on her more damage than the Jacinta drawing.
A spokeswoman from the Victorian Women’s trust, Mary Crooks, made the bizarre and incoherent claim that the Abbott budgie smuggler cartoons were OK because they were “in a weird, kind of perverse way a subliminal appeal to manliness and alpha male, testosterone male, so it was a different subliminal intent.”
As I said, complete illiterate nonsense.
The ABC at least let Mark defend himself in the middle of all the confected outrage. As he pointed out it is his job to mock people in power regardless of their sex and that’s exactly what he was doing this week. To call him sexist is ridiculous and the multi-Walkley Award winning cartoonist wouldn’t be as great as he is without pushing the boundaries.
He survived another bout of pile on back in 2018 drawing tennis legend Serena Williams throwing a tantrum. He was accused of not just being a sexist but a racist as well.
Complaints were made to the Australian Press Council and were dismissed.
Mark Knight is a cartooning legend. Victoria, the Herald Sun and this column are lucky to have him.
Keep drawing Mark and keep poking the politically-correct bear. Life would be so much duller without you.
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