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
