Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Appearing in the Australian and the Melbourne Age today is a story about Melbourne cartoonist Michael Leunig. Virginia Trioli and John Fane—a couple of people at the ABC whose judgment I usually think is fine—have expressed some sympathy for Mr Leunig, as has his own newspaper, the Age, because his cartoon comparing Israeli policies in the West Bank with Auschwitz was entered in an infamous competition being run in Iran by the Ahmadinejad government in order to denigrate the Nazi industrialisation of death that was practised in Europe and which led to the death of six million Jews, nearly the entire gipsy population of Europe, many political prisoners, millions of Soviet prisoners of war et cetera. These people seem to be outraged about the hoax of ‘poor’ Mr Leunig’s cartoon being entered in that competition.

The really sad point is that his cartoon was seen as perfectly acceptable by the ‘Mad Hatters’ in Teheran. Isn’t it a sad indictment of Mr Leunig that the kind of hurt and denigration that was the essence of his original cartoon led those at Hamshahri, the Persian newspaper in Teheran, to accept his cartoon with open arms. The decision of the former editor of the Melbourne Age, Mr Michael Gawenda, who is now in Washington as that paper’s Washington correspondent, originally was not to publish this cartoon, because of the taunt that it gave and the unnecessary hurt it caused the surviving victims of the Nazi extermination camps who live not just in my electorate but all over Australia.

Pro rata, Australia has the highest number of survivors of that paradigm of evil, the Shoah. They came to this country because Australia is such a tolerant and vibrant place. Many of them have had wonderful lives here. When in Melbourne, I have occasion to sit next to a wonderful gentleman who works as a volunteer at that state’s Holocaust centre. He has had an amazingly productive life here in Australia; like me, he is a bit left of centre on some issues. When Mr Leunig’s cartoon was published in the paper, he was so outraged that, after having subscribed to it for 35 years, he cancelled his subscription.

The issue is not the hoax that was pulled on ‘poor’ Leunig; it is the disgusting and loathsome taunt that he made in his original cartoon. I absolutely endorse the view of the former editor of the Age not to publish that disgusting cartoon. It is an indictment of Michael Leunig’s taunting of people and their real-life experiences that the bigots in Teheran welcomed his cartoon with open arms. That is the point, John Fane, Virginia Trioli and Melbourne Age, that you should have reported and not the side issue of some hoax by the gang at CNN&N.