Adjudication No. 125 (February 1982) [1982] APC 5

ADJUDICATION No. 125 (February 1982)

The Australian Press Council has received a complaint from the Aboriginal Legal Service relating to a cartoon published in the Daily Examiner, Grafton, on 10 July 1981.

The cartoon depicted an Aborigine reclining in front of a primitive shanty and saying to an Aboriginal woman "I keep telling you, Wilma, if we stay underprivileged they'll build us a Malabugilmah".

The reference is to a newly started settlement called Malabugilmah which had been partly erected through the Department of Aboriginal Affairs to provide better housing for the Aboriginal people who had lived for many years at Baryulgil some three kilometres away.

The complainant does not suggest that the Daily Examiner is generally racist, but it complains of the specific cartoon as conveying to the ordinary reader of the paper a strong suggestion that the people of Malabugilmah had only to stay underprivileged in order to attract government expenditure on the type of housing provided for them and that other Aborigines are likely to adopt the same lazy method of advancing their interests.

In handbills, pamphlets, newspapers and magazines over several centuries, cartoonists have often caused offence. It would not be exaggerating to say that a high proportion of cartoons appearing in Australian newspapers cause offence to somebody or some political party or social group.

Cartoonists have always enjoyed a certain licence. They generally have freedom of choice about the subject of their cartoons. In the case of London cartoonists they sometimes mercilessly lampooned their own proprietors.

In the case of the Daily Examiner, it is acknowledged that the expenditure on new housing for Aborigines at Malabugilmah was a matter of considerable local speculation and criticism.

The Daily Examiner points out that it has been scrupulously fair in reporting the debate and controversy over Aboriginal housing, and no element of racism has entered the Examiner coverage.

Publication of the cartoon was an error of judgement on the part of the editor, and the Press Council urges that close attention be paid to material affecting disadvantaged groups such as Aborigines.