It’s time for cartooning iconoclasts to take over
After serious political and social change in Australia in the 1960s, the attraction of rebellious leftist ideas danced into the 1970s. Our cartoonists found this era both dangerous and funny.
The Australian is turning 60 and we invite you to celebrate with us. Our first special series to mark the event is: Six Decades in Six Weeks, counting down to the 60th birthday of the masthead on July 15. Every day for the coming weeks we will bring you a selection of The Australian’s journalism of the past 60 years. Today we cover cartoons. See the full series here.
After serious political and social change in Australia in the 1960s, the indulgent attraction of rebellious leftist ideas danced into the 1970s. Punk and disco superseded blues and pop and in the popular imagination it was “time” for a political shift too. Gough Whitlam arrived as Labor leader amid an avalanche of “Mission Brown” decor, Cuban heels and flared trousers.
In the aftermath of Watergate in the United States the political pendulum moved left. The counterculture emerged as mainstream entertainment. This is where Larry Pickering made his mark, working at The Australian from 1976 to 1980. As a born iconoclast, he saw the idolisation of Whitlam as dangerous and funny. Conservative Bob Santamaria saw Whitlam’s defining fault as superficiality; Pickering agreed.
Already a four-time Walkley-award winner, Pickering joined The Australian after Whitlam lost power in the Dismissal. This was a time of profound grief for Labor followers as they tried to “maintain the rage” despite being trounced by Malcolm Fraser’s Coalition. Pickering switched his attack towards Fraser’s apparent inability to take advantage of this demolition of Labor. Confusion and despondency eroded Fraser’s appeal — but made for some cutting cartoons. Pickering also savoured and satirised the larrikinism of Bob Hawke as a Labor leader in waiting.
The witty Aubrey Collette was applauded by his colleagues when he won the 1970 Walkley award for a cartoon that targeted Australians’ strange obsequiousness to the royal family. Michael Lodge joined the brigade with a sharp take on Whitlam’s taste in art.
Bruce Petty kept following his own meandering line and his genius would later be rewarded with an Oscar.
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