‘Racist’ cartoon strokes debate over abuse of Australian natives

An Australian newspaper cartoon widely slammed as racist has renewed a national debate on the discriminatory treatment of the country’s native people amid a scandal over the abuse of Aboriginal minors in prison cells.

Despite the broad criticism, cartoonist Bill Leak defended on Friday his new caricature in The Australian of a drunk Aboriginal father forgetting his son’s name after the government’s Indigenous affairs minister slammed the “racist stereotypes.”

In defending his cartoon, Leak dismissed his critics as “toddlers who were suffering from chronic truth aversion disorder,” claiming all he was doing was trying to tell the uncomfortable truth about “Indigenous misery” which is rooted in the failure of native families in raising decent children.

The cartoonist, however, failed to justify the widespread abuse of native teenagers at the hands of prison guards, and to explain how the systematic discrimination across the country over the years has attributed to the miserable condition of Aboriginal families.

He made the comments after Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion described the cartoon as “particularly tasteless,” given that it was published on National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children’s Day.

“Although Australian cartoonists have a rich tradition of irreverent satire, there is absolutely no place for depicting racist stereotypes,” he said. “I would urge the Australian to be more aware of the impact cartoons like the one published today can have on Indigenous communities.”

This is while some major advertisers in The Australian, including SunCorp Bank and the Adelaide festival, have tried to distance themselves from the cartoon by canceling or reviewing ads in the paper.

Late last month, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) aired video clips showing prison guards beating teenage detainees, teargassing them and keeping them in solitary confinement for hours.

SS