Fiona Katauskas' work has also appeared in ABC's The Drum, New Matilda, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian, The Financial Review and Scribe's Best Australian political cartoon anthologies.
Topic tags: fiona katauskas, Eureka Street, Mabo, Adam Goodes, ape, Eddie McGuire, racism
If there's one thing that the recent election campaign and its outcome demonstrated, it's the depth of the divisions that exist in our Australian community.
Our politics is focused on point-scoring, personalities, and name-calling across party lines. The media, for the most part, don't help, driven by the 24-hour news cycle and the pursuit of advertising dollars into a frenzy of click-bait and shallow sensationalism.
What does it mean to be an Australian in times like these? What are the values that unite us?
Eureka Street offers an alternative. It's less a magazine than a wide ranging conversation about the issues that matter in our country and our world; a conversation marked by respect for the dignity of ALL human beings.
Importantly, it's a conversation that takes place in the open, unhindered by paywalls or excessive advertising. And it's through the support of people like you that it is able to do so.
Fiona, unless they understand you to be deploying irony here, some of aboriginal heritage could be quite offended by this cartoon and its language. Just as some didn't grasp the ironic intent behind Maguire's remarks and heard them as racist, whereas, like you here, he was actually attempting to attack racism.
And not only those of aboriginal heritage, HH. I certainly do not regard this cartoon as an attempt at irony and am surprised and saddened that it is in Eureka Street.
Excellent cartoon, Fiona! Cutting to the chase as usual. Pity some people don't get it (the racism and the cartoon!)
Onya, Fiona! You can see the tension build in the Aboriginal after each thoughtless jibe. You chose to have him leave the scene in frustration, but left them none the wiser. In real life, if he had reacted to the overwhelming prejudice, then the spotlight of condemnation would have fallen on him, the Aboriginal. And that's a sad 'joke'. Well done, Fiona.
Ignation spirituality has the heart informing the mind, as to what is true. The malais of our age is that our minds are in control; too often our hearts don't get a look in. McGuire has been on the stage for so long. How could he be so maligned when he has such an impeccable record of giving? The record reveals that he has a big heart, that gives. It also reveals that his heart stands up to be counted; he is brave. He, like most fine minds with heart, understands and uses irony as a way to gently inform others that another point of view is at large. Those of us purely in a head space, or unable to access the voice record, can easily mistake irony for it's opposite intention. Then, of course, there are those with an agenda, that will cut and paste as they choose, to create a new point of view. Our new world of mass market media does this on a regular basis, as there's more money on the "make news" vs the "report news" table. I thank God for the internet and social media, as it provides opportunity for balance.
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Fiona Katauskas' work has also appeared in ABC's The Drum, New Matilda, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian, The Financial Review and Scribe's Best Australian political cartoon anthologies.