Circus Oz 2018

Spare a thought for the editor of Australia’s annual political cartoon anthology who regularly finds Australian politics imploding right on deadline.

Cover, Best Australian Political Cartoons 2018

This is the 16th edition of Russ Radcliffe’s annual survey of Australian politics, as drawn by the nation’s cartoonists. Russ writes a handy introductory essay on the year that was, and includes a liberal helping of political quotes to accompany the collection of cartoons.

Available in all good bookshops etc, or via the publisher Scribe.

Cartoon, Lord of the Flies in the Liberal Party room Cartoon, Liberal Party mutiny

And one more, drawn after the anthology deadline, to complete a leadership triptych…

Cartoon, Cirque du Scomo

(The Canberra Times, 24, 25 August, 6 November, 2018 | Gallery of most recent cartoons)

The politics of panic

Peter Dutton has joined sections of the media in kicking off the new year with a new “racialised moral panic”, doing burnouts in the new modified Home Affairs Department to prevent any clear-eyed analysis of crime in Victoria.

Cartoon: gang hysteria

Cartoon: doing burnouts in the modified Home Affairs Department

On the theme of making stuff up, we also began the new year learning the government ignored advice from Treasury in order to whip up fear around proposals to trim negative gearing.

What better metaphor to use than the stuff made up by satirist Ben Ward about the US President’s obsession with a Gorilla Channel?

Cartoon: inside the Trumble whitehouse

(The Canberra Times, 5, 6 and 10 January 2018 | Gallery of most recent cartoons)