Australian Election Campaign Cartooning - 1983 to 2004

Abstract

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.