Axing of Michael Leunig has ‘serious ramifications’ for freedom of expression

but now to another issue that has serious ramifications for freedom of expression in the australian media the cartoonist michael lunig has been axed from the age he says it was over this image that compares victoria's mandatory vaccine policy to the famous tiananmen square tank man fight the cartoon never made it to print but mr lunig posted it on instagram he claims the age has censored a dozen of his anti-dan cartoons this year michael lunig is one of australia's most celebrated artists and commentators his cartoons are featured in the age since 1969 over half a century he's also one of australia's national living treasures he's being described as a non-conformist a maverick and a provocateur and while the labels have changed he's consistently expressed views from a center left perspective and has showed at times a disdain for conservative australia no wonder he enjoyed so much adulation from the self-styled progressive readership and while i do personally have respect for lunik and the work he's done over the years he himself has joined in on cancel culture against those he disagrees with here he is a newcastle writers festival in may 2017 just two months after the death of renowned cartoonist bill leak what i find artists by many of uh many journalists and columnists sort of uphold bill as a great you know crusader for freedom and i i don't know about this a dnc thing i i think we do have constrictions on our freedom we have libel and slander we accept those things and we've got lots of freedom anyway but i think the freedom to hurt you've got to be careful with that one and you can do it accidentally but it became such a policy in that particular newspaper group i i think that i didn't like it personally but no matter how woke you are they'll come for you eventually so what was lunic's crime seeing him axed from the ages monday editorial page well he had become a critic of the andrews government's heavy-handed covet enforcement response and the cartoon satirizing mandatory vaccination policies appeared to be the final straw now cartoons are art whether you agree with them or not and you shouldn't censor art at the very least a newspaper should not be the ones self-censoring but gone are the days where you can poke fun at controversial topics i guess the age will just print pro andrews government propaganda featuring andrews with a chiseled jawline in front of a banner celebrating his perfect and flawless rule let's hope not because as harold's son cartoonist mark knight put it a cartoonist's job is to tell the other side of the story and to poke fun at both power and policies i guess if you look at their editorial line michael is just far too radical for them now he he he has freedom of thought and sort of freedom of speech and i think for all of them down at the age that is just too much to bear and particularly in victoria at the moment where you know i guess dan runs a firm line in this state and if you step outside us then you're in trouble now it is worth noting that although the age has axed his cartoons from the editorial page for some reason they have been deemed still appropriate for its weekly spectrum section the inconsistency is just confusing but here is the worst thing about this entire saga after decades and decades of service to a news organization the moment he doesn't toe the editorial line he's ousted through a phone call i find it cruel disloyal and symbolic of everything wrong with modern media executives pandering to those incapable of independent thought now caleb i'm really interested to hear your thoughts you're in melbourne um so obviously you've been dealing with the administration down there what do you make of the decision to to axe him from monday's editorial pages well it's funny i i joked when i moved here about two and a half months ago that my arrival would almost double the number of conservatives in melbourne and but i'm glad to report that since getting here i think a few more people have converted to my side of politics or at least they're getting a bit more anti-daniel andrews because of course they've just been through another three months of lockdown but but you know you don't have to agree with someone like learning all the time you don't have to agree with anyone all of the time anyone who picks up a newspaper whether it be the age or the sydney morning herald or the herald sun or the daily telegraph and expects to agree with the opinions of the people they find in the opinion section which is of course where you find a cartoon and expects all of the time that they're going to agree with it is an idiot and we should have freedom within a free media to be able to express different points of view there are lots of people who say things i don't agree with including in papers within my stable i mean if we all agreed all the time it would be a very boring world and if we get to a situation where newspapers start you know self-censoring beyond what is obviously dangerous you don't want to incite violence for instance you don't want to incite crime looning was not doing either of those things he was not making a dangerous point he was making quite a valid point about what a lot of people have described as a dictatorial government in victoria if we're at a point where you can't do that anymore then i am seriously worried what do you make of the whole of the whole situation shouldn't you be free to to to provoke some kind of disagreement particularly in a newspaper well i mean of course and i think a newspaper should be in the business not of entirely telling its readership what they want to hear and not just letting them marinate in a warm bath of self-righteousness which i think is what uh the age increasingly provides for its um two or three readers but that said you know there's a lot to unpack fairfax or nine or whoever owns them today um it's uh it is a private company they have the right obviously to say who they do and don't want to be in their pages that's fine but let's put that aside i think it is absolutely fascinating how you played that clip of uh lunig earlier saying oh i don't know about bill leak and free speech but it's really interesting because since then he has i think started to wake up and i think he started to wake up to the fact that there was a real sort of push against cartoonists particularly we've seen that with mark knight we've seen that with a number of other cartoons we've seen with johannes league um you know bill's son who's doing brilliant work at the australian right now um the trajectory that he's gone on and he's taken has been absolutely fascinating you know this is not the first time he's gotten in trouble uh there was that cartoon he did about the woman who was so distracted with her phone she didn't see her baby falling out of the pram and there was this huge feminist outcry that he was attacking motherhood or something like that which was possibly the last time the left defended motherhood before they started talking about people who have babies but that's another issue uh for another day and then he had that other cartoon where he said you know this is an inclusive society and those who don't think inclusively will be excluded you could see that he is starting to wake up to the threats so this cartoon um weirdly the fact that it's the thing that got him cashiered from the age oddly the fact that he got the sack essentially proves the very point of the cartoon so if you know michael luning wants to come over to the side of free speech i am absolutely willing to welcome him and say come on it's a big tent uh it's uh let's let's all you know come together on this issue left or right and i can promise you one thing james uh bill leake if he was still here he would have defended lunik 100 we all know 100 bills