The Australian , 22 December 2010

The mining tax is like that tricky stage at the end  of a long boozy Christmas lunch where everyone’s trying to dodge paying their share of the bill. Chances are they’ll still be arguing about it next Christmas.

The Australian, 17 December 2010

This is the real reason they’re out to get Assange.  As soon as cables start being written in chocolate on flaky pastry, things will calm down.

The Australian, 16 December 2010

There is nothing more divisive in Australia than the way we treat refugees who come here in boats, so you’d hope that a tragedy like yesterday’s might result in a more thoughtful debate on the topic than we’ve seen so far. Of course, we all know that’s not going to happen, so good on our politicians for at least keeping it to themselves for a short period of time before the political point scoring begins.

The Hobart Mercury, 11 December 2010

There’s no doubt a balance exists between having a good time and a complete bloody shambles, and as I have two children and thus no idea what goes on outside the house after sunset any more perhaps heavy-handed bureaucracy is the way things get done these days, but it is sad to see a uniquely Hobart event get strangled in red tape like this.

If politics is rock and roll for ugly people, political cartooning is standup comedy for ugly socially inept rampant egomaniac psychopaths… no, hang on, that’s Question Time.

Okay, it’s Twitter for people who can draw. A bit. With added deadlines.

The Behind The Lines exhibition is on again at the Museum of Australian Democracy (which has a most appropriate acronym if you leave out the “of”) at Old Parliament House. It has been put together by Guy Hansen and Laura Breen who also had the excellent taste to give me the Least Crap Cartoonist For 2010 Award, which is high praise from people who have just waded through a room full of our lunatic scribblings to create a remarkably coherent and entertaining narrative on the political shenanigans of 2010.

They’ve also stuck up the prizewinning cartoons from the school cartooning competition so we know who to squash before they can nick our jobs. There are a few crackers in that bunch as well.

If you’re in town, take a look. Or buy the book. Or both. Details here and a bit of telly about it here.

The Australian, 19 August 2010

When you’re the bloke who once installed Barnaby Joyce as Shadow Finance Minister, it’s hard to shake the lingering suspicion that you’re not quite the safe pair of economic hands that you claim to be. Now while Tony’s packed young Joyce off to remedial maths class, the Coalition’s costings do still seem to have a touch of the Barnaby’s about them.

If you throw two abacuses into a room full of economists, you’ll almost certainly hit two economists with entirely different opinions on pretty much everything, so my suggestion is to pick two very big and heavy abacuses and to throw them as hard as possible. If this fails to shut the economists up, the resulting spew of contradictory and bewildering jargon does somewhat underline the problem the average punter has when it comes to picking the best party for the job.

Do you go with the people who say they saved us from the GFC by building million dollar shadecloths or do you go with the Coalition which has Barnaby in it and does it really matter as long as China needs our dirt as fast as we can dig it out of the ground anyway?

My first coffee mug. People have asked, so here it is.

Now buy it and I will be a mug mogul.

I got a request for a copy of 101 Uses For A John Howard the other day and have managed to dig the last carton out of the attic. Since he’s now an ex Prime Minister once removed, Johnny’s been officially remaindered at a never to be repeated $10 inc GST & postage.

Have a read and remind yourself of the good old days when we had a PM who was serious about stuff like climate change and was at least the genuine article (with an extra helping of Pauline Hanson) rather than John Howard Lite. I miss the little fella.

Buy the book for ten bucks here.

You have to admire the way Julia has taken the logical next step from having policy entirely driven by focus groups to simply making setting up a focus group the actual policy. While I’m sure that 150 people picked randomly out of the phonebook will definitely be able to sort out climate change in no time, there is in fact a mechanism for gauging the will of the people which we like to call an “election” and it does seem a shame not to use it, considering all the trouble people go to putting up the voting booths.

At least we’re all quite clear that Tony definitely probably might or might not think god will sort climate change out anyway with one of those floods or something depending on the direction the wind’s blowing at the time.

Both sides so far: zero out of ten. Please try harder, some of this stuff is actually quite important.

The Weekend Australian, 24-25 July 2010

The Hobart Mercury, 24 July 2010

The Hobart Comedy Festival kicks off on the 23rd of July. When I was starting out as a cartoonist, I used to go to the  Melbourne Comedy Festival and see every single show. Good comedy makes your brain grow bigger, bad comedy makes you feel relatively witty and comedians always need the money, so please go and see everything at this one, you can’t lose. The guide’s in today’s Sunday Tasmanian.