According to The Age, the newspaper is “trialling new cartoonists,” a euphemism for “We are erasing Michael Leunig from the editorial page”. As The Australian reported on Monday, this followed The Age’s decision not to publish his cartoon that compared resisting vaccine mandates in Victoria to the brave Chinese dissident who in 1989 stood alone before a column of advancing tanks in Tiananmen Square.
Having been informed that his cartoons were not consistent with public sentiment, Leunig was unrepentant. “I don’t much want to work for the sorts of readers who are so censorious,” he said. “It seems that at The Age in particular, you can’t go near the Covid story except in a way that’s supportive of the Victorian government’s handling of it.”
Editor Gay Alcorn confirmed this week she had pulled “multiple cartoons” by Leunig because they “expressed an anti-vaccination sentiment”. It would be a mistake however to say that he has been completely airbrushed. As Alcorn explained, Leunig’s cartoons will “continue to be published” in The Age. The only adjustment is his drawings have been relegated from the editorial page to an insert in the newspaper’s Saturday edition that nobody reads.
Leunig’s claims that the newspaper is reluctant to criticise the Andrews government over its handling of Covid has substance. A year ago The Australian reported senior editorial staff at The Age had, during Victoria’s lengthy second lockdown, kyboshed a Leunig cartoon that conveyed disquiet about the state’s arbitrary enforcement of lockdowns. Reportedly the reason for its withdrawal was that it would make readers “unhappy”.
To be clear, I am no admirer of Leunig. His artistic and political philosophy is obtusely simplistic and purist, his serene disdain and self-centeredness insufferable. He is one of Australia’s so-called ‘National Living Treasures,’ an official status that speaks elitist wankery. As his sister Mary Leunig angrily observed in 2019 after he drew a cartoon of a mother obsessing over her iPhone to the detriment of her baby, he enjoys “a bit of feminist baiting”. Okay, so he is not without redeeming qualities.
Lockdown authoritarianism
But Leunig’s artistic warning, albeit censored, about lockdown authoritarianism has been vindicated. Whether it be unlawfully-imposed curfews, overbearing and at times brutal policing, or securing the record for the longest cumulative Covid lockdown in the Western world, the Andrews government has revelled in its new-found powers as much as it has shown contempt for its constituents.
That Premier Daniel Andrews now calls for legislation to enable him to make a pandemic declaration that lasts for a three-month period and can be renewed indefinitely is alarming, as is his proposal to jail citizens for up to two years for “egregious and deliberate” breaches of public health orders. As a supposed check on executive power, the draft legislation provides that “human rights experts” will review any new public health orders. You know, experts like Kristen Hilton, the former Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commissioner who endorsed the Covid-19 Omnibus (Emergency Measures) Act in April 2020, declaring the Andrews government had “given careful consideration to balancing human rights and any necessary limitations during this period”.
Repressive measures
In addition to these repressive measures, Leunig was right to question the extent of vaccine mandates. If he has his way, Andrews will throughout 2022 deny unvaccinated people the right to enjoy civil society. “Whether it’s a bookshop, a shoe shop, a pub, cafe, a restaurant, the MCG, the list goes on and on, said Andrews on Sunday. “You will not be able to participate like a fully vaccinated person because you’re not a fully vaccinated person.”
This decree ignores the fact that 90 per cent of Victorians aged 16 and over will be fully vaccinated well before the end of this year. Conversely, NSW will end restrictions when the state reaches a corresponding percentage. The denial of services there to the unvaccinated applies only in the transition period.
No doubt Andrews’ mandate has support. Those who choose not to be vaccinated are freeloaders, goes the argument, and they do not deserve the same liberties. But public health directions per se that are punitive are an abuse of government power.
What motive for mandates?
And as The Daily Telegraph reported yesterday, former Commonwealth deputy chief medical officer Professor Nick Coatsworth warned Andrews’ stance would likely harden the resolve of the unvaccinated.
Rather than fretting about the effects of Leunig’s cartoons, The Age should explore Andrews’ true motives for his extended vaccine mandates. They hardly need spelling out. As recently as July, Andrews was gratuitously lecturing then NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian on how she should contain the state’s Delta outbreak. “We are in no way triumphant, in no way boastful,” said a triumphant and boastful Andrews. “We have seen off two Delta outbreaks, I don’t think there’s a jurisdiction in the world that has been able to achieve that”. That oversized ego has since been brooding these last three months. And the only way it can repair itself is by again perpetuating the myth that Andrews the strongman makes the hard decisions in order to save Victorians from themselves.
Did I mention the state election takes place in just over a year?
But back to Leunig. “My job is to challenge the status quo, and that has always been the job of the cartoonist,” he said this week. He expressed similar sentiments last year, saying “A cartoonist is pushing boundaries or trying to assert freedom of speech” and “A cartoon in good taste is a contradiction in terms”.
I agree. But I cannot let that go without mentioning the late artist Bill Leak, who in 2016 caused progressives to fulminate and scream ‘racism’ over his cartoon in this newspaper that portrayed a deadbeat Indigenous father and his teenage delinquent son, notwithstanding it conveyed an uncomfortable truth. Speaking at the Newcastle Writers’ Festival in May 2017 just two months after Leak’s death, Leunig played to an adoring audience when asked about the cartoon in question.
“What I find odd is the way many of – many journalists and columnists sort of uphold Bill as a great, you know, crusader for freedom,” said Leunig. “I think we do have constrictions on our freedom … we accept those things and we’ve got lots of freedom anyway, but I think the freedom to hurt – you’ve got to be careful with that one and you can do it accidentally, but it became such a policy in that particular newspaper group … I didn’t like it personally.” Michael Leunig, we look forward to your mea culpa.
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Given the sacking of Michael Leunig, I wonder if Age editor Gay Alcorn understands the difference between (1) supporting vaccines and (2) questioning laws that force them on people.
— janet albrechtsen (@jkalbrechtsen) October 25, 2021
Read related topics:Vaccinations