Australian Cartoonists' Caricatures of Women Politicians - From Kirner to Stott-Despoja

In June 1999, the Labor Party’s deputy leader, Jenny Macklin, argued that cartoons such as the following two of Meg Lees were offensive and demeaning to women politicians because they reflect the cartoonists’ limited and unimaginative view of senior women in politics. For Macklin, women politicians are stereotyped as housewives, or objects for male sexual gratification, rather than depicted as ‘the politician that is the woman’.1 These claims are worth examining and are done so here in relation to cartoonists’ caricatures of some senior women politicians, in particular former Democrat leaders Meg Lees, Cheryl Kernot and Natasha Stott- Despoja; former Victorian Premier, Joan Kirner and the phenomenon that was Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.Pert

The Nuclear Fuel Cycle and South Australian Parliamentary Debates - 1976 to 1982

This manuscript is made available with permission from the State Electoral Office.On the 27 September 1977 Opposition leader, Dr David Tonkin, moved: That this House believes it is safe to mine and treat uranium in South Australia, rescinds its decision taken on 30 March 1977, and urges the Government to proceed with plans for the development and treatment of the State’s uranium sources as soon as possible (SAPD 1978, p.1,204). Enriching uranium was included in his vision for the treatment of the State’s uranium resources and, in this regard, he shared bipartisan ground with Rex Conner who, some years earlier as Minister for Minerals and Energy in the Whitlam Government, argued for constructing an enrichment plant in South Australia. Initially, Premier Don Dunstan supported uranium mining and enrichment but his change of tack presented Tonkin with an opportunity to unsettle an otherwise dominant Premier. The Advertiser and The News were solidly behind mining, while on the other side of the divide a public campaign joined with Labor’s left-wing to demand a moratorium on mining and enrichment activities. Debates over the virtues or otherwise of mining and enriching uranium are at the forefront of public debate today and thus enticing us to revisit the passionate debates that took place in both Houses between 1977 together with Norm Foster’s decision in 1982 to cross the floor to pass the Roxby Downs Indenture Bill. Foster’s move left a legacy of good fortune in train for Labor on the nuclear front. Had he remained ‘loyal’ to the party platform Tonkin would have campaigned at the 1982 State election with his trump card intact, namely attacking Labor’s uranium moratorium. Given the shift in community support in favour of Roxby going ahead, it is highly likely that Labor Opposition Leader, John Bannon, would have struggled to win the poll. The ignominy for Tonkin lies with his losing office after one only term. For Labor, the luck Foster’s move generated remains, oddly, a lasting legacy. The Rann Government enjoys the buoyancy offered by the creation of the largest uranium mine in the world and the jobs Tonkin so often argued to be the mine’s great virtue

Censorship and the political cartoonist

Adelaide, S

Introduction: Controversial Images

© 2008 Copyright is vested in the authors. Apart from any fair dealing permitted according to the provisions of the Copyright Act, reproduction by any process of any part of the work may not be undertaken without written permission from the copyright holders of Comic Commentators.There appears to be a growing sensitivity to cartoons’ potential impact in public debate, and so it is a good time to ask what the role of cartoons is in Australian politics, policy and media. This collection brings together cartoonists, media professionals and researchers all, in their different ways, fascinated by the contribution cartoons make to our public life. The range of backgrounds of the contributors has led to a rich range of writing styles and approaches; as editors, we have not sought to impose a uniform method on the chapters, but have especially encouraged the cartoonists and media professionals to write from their experience rather than in an imitation of academic style.Pert

Hunting the Swinging Voter

This chapter has been made available with the permission of the publisher. Haydon Manning, 'Hunting the Swinging Voter', in Contemporary Australian Political Party Organisations, edited by Narelle Miragliotta, Anika Gauja and Rodney Smith. Monash University Publishing; Clayton, Victoria. 2015. http://www.publishing.monash.edu/books/cappo-9781922235824.htmlThis chapter addresses Liberal and Labor Party efforts to understand swinging voters and how both parties use polling and focus groups to aid campaigning, particularly in marginal electorates. Internal party documents and accounts of interviews with party ‘campaign professionals’ have been used to illustrate the evolution of sophisticated polling methods. My argument questions the obsessive use of polls and the implications for party organisation of the carefully stage-managed nature of modern election campaigns. Arguably the work of campaign professionals tends to foster such a high degree of cynicism among voters that more votes are probably lost than are won by their efforts. The assumptions made by campaign professionals about voters may, however, lack firm foundation. This chapter questions the emphasis that campaign professionals have placed on the swinging voter and further considers how the stress on opinion polls has affected the internal dynamics of modern parties, especially in relation to leadership

Swinging voters in the electoral landscape - from the late 1960s to the present

By looking carefully at a series of surveys covering 40 years of electoral history, a number of enduring views about voter attitudes are seen to be questionable. Importantly, this leads to the observation that less has changed in Australian politics, at least as viewed by the average voters, as distinct from those who comment for a living on politics, than first meets the eye. Voters are no doubt as vocal today as in the past in bemoaning the state of 'politics' but they are neither more cynical nor more apathetic

Australian Election Campaign Cartooning - 1983 to 2004

Cartoons offer a marvellous means of chronicling any election campaign through their capacity to provide a compact and pungent summary of, and commentary on, issues, events and characters. Graphic islands in a sea of words, political cartoons frequently capture a campaign’s ebb and flow. Certainly they can over-simplify complexity, but they can also cut through the persiflage that is particularly abundant during campaigns. The editors of this collection have been analysing the cartoons in Australian federal campaigns since 1996, so it is time to present some broader observations about election cartooning in this country.Pert

South Australia, July to December 2003 [political chronicles]

108 COWLEY RD, OXFORD, ENGLAND, OXON, OX4 1J

Voters and voting

Frenchs Forest NS