Vale Bill Leak (1956-2017)

Australia’s crusading editorial cartoonist, caricaturist and portraitist Bill Leak, three days ago shouldn’t have died at age 61. Bill was still fighting the PC bastards to the end and we salute his legacy.  Bill’s untimely demise was purportedly caused by stress-related heart attack.

Bill Leak in his dinky di un-PC wit, launching his latest book ‘Trigger Warning’ two days prior on March 8 2017.

[Transcript of Bill’s book launch is reproduced at the end of this article]

Bill shall be dearly missed by most Australians who take an interest in Australia and read newspapers.  His satirical political cartooning and caricature art work display rare perceptive insights into Australian politics. He shall forever treasured.

Bill Leak is one of Australia’s great larrikin commentators, guilty if of anything, of telling the truth.   A witty, fearless satirical artist, over forty years of artistic endeavour, he “skewered and inspired his beloved country with equal measures of wit and courage, using nothing but the tip of a swift-moving paint brush.” (The Australian)

“A fierce advocate of free speech with a mind as rich and colourful as his paint palette, he will be remembered now through a staggering lifetime’s worth of cartoons and portraits that made us laugh, gasp, cry, rage, think and feel. The artist’s passing will ripple today through all corners of a nation that, for much of his six decades on earth, he so skilfully satirised, so bravely polarised and so frequently made keel over in daily fits of belly laughter.”     (The Australian)

Bill Leak’s brilliance was recognised by nine Walkley awards and 19 Stanley awards for his extraordinary work.  He was twice awarded News Corp’s cartoonist of the year. Throughout that stellar career he was threatened, abused, pilloried and praised, and not once did he consider putting down his paint brush.

Bill’s premature death was directly brought on by Leftist persecuting hate.  The crap 18C charge orchestrated legally against him was political. It was schemed by The Greens, wicked Gillian Triggs of Julia Gillard’s socialist Human Rights Commission and by Triggs ethnic multicultural enforcer, Tim sycophant Soutphommasane.

And the Lefties protest themselves about hate speech and do this?

Now Bill Leak is dead.  He will be pissed off that he can no longer champion the rights of Ordinary Australians by deciphering the self-interested partisan spin being peddled out of concocted Canberra.

 His Hateful Persecutors

The Leftist Inquisition who killed Aussie political cartoonist Bill Leak, may these leeches rot in Hell.

 

The vilifying vengeance by Bob Hawke’s Human Rights Commission against The Australian newspaper’s Bill Leak was over one political cartoon the newspaper published on Thursday August 4 2016.

What was Bill’s cartoon message to Australians?  Hard, satirically delivered but revealing the unpalatable yet sad reality of how alcoholism and child abuse is endemic across outback Australia, particularly in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory.

This is First World Australia in 2017 and Ordinary Australians need to be shocked into demanding our political representatives start properly fixing this systemic cultural problem.

This was Bill Leak’s evoking cartoon of outback reality ‘personal responsibility‘, the one that Gillian Triggs went for his jugular, that killed him for exercising his right to free speech in Australia.

Ever stayed a night in Tennant Creek, Gillian Triggs?

 

Bill’s poignant cartoon portrayed Northern Territory police speaking to an Aboriginal man with a beer can, not remembering his son’s name.

Bill Leak’s powerful and insightful cartoon depicting Aboriginal family dysfunction. Any thoughtful person who hasn’t been preconditioned to see the cartoon as racist would understand he was communicating sympathy for a boy who doesn’t stand a chance.

We have modified it a tad:

Stick this up your jumper, you vexatious Leftie litigants!

 

Bill drew his original version a week after ABC TV’s 4 Corners current affairs programme exposed the abuse, deprivation and punishment of children in a Northern Territory youth detention centre – which triggered the Prime Minister’s ordered Royal Commission into youth detention in the NT.

Bill honestly depicted the importance of parental responsibility in indigenous communities – a true Australian human rights issue.  He simply told the unpalatable reality as it is, like it or lump it, as with most of his works. Inner urbane Greens al fresco brunching on avocado smash wouldn’t have a clue about Outback reality.

But Bill was persecuted under our oppressive racial hatred laws for a cartoon which was the opposite of racist, but only told the truth about family dysfunction in indigenous communities. In the context of horrific footage of young indigenous inmates ill-treated by guards in the Northern Territory he drew a cartoon of an Aboriginal child being handed back by an Aboriginal police officer to an apparently drunk father who cannot remember his son’s name.

Bill reflected in his book launch last Thursday,

“Then, in October last year I realised there’s another group of people who are just as capable of making life hell for me if they fail to be amused by my wit and artistry. It’s just my luck that causing offence has been made an offence at the same time that taking offence has become fashionable.

So now there’s a mob that won’t only punish you if your cartoon offends them, they’ll punish you if it’s offended someone else. They might be a little less murderous than your Islamist terrorists, but they’re no less unhinged and they’re no less dangerous. They’re also driven by the same authoritarian impulse to silence, using whatever means they have at their disposal, anyone who transgresses against the unwritten laws of political correctness. I’m talking, of course, about the thought police at that rogue totalitarian outfit, the Australian Human Rights Commission.”

Two days later, an otherwise physically healthy Bill Leak (61) died of stress cardiomyopathy or anxiety induced heart attack brought on by a relentless nasty political persecution campaign by Leftist trying to shut down free speech in Australia yet again.

Bill Leak’s employer at The Australian defended his cartoon, arguing it is indisputable that serious child welfare issues in remote indigenous communities are often the result of absent or neglectful parents.

The notion that parents in indigenous communities must take more responsibility for their children is not particularly controversial – it’s a point often made by indigenous leaders such as Noel Pearson and Warren Mundine.

Mundine, who is also a former national president in the Australian Labor Party, defended Leak at the time and now.

Warren Mundine:

“If the allegations are that [Leak] has incited racial hatred, I don’t support that at all. [The cartoon] has a black police officer and it’s opening up a debate. Cartoonists have always been in-your-face – and that’s definitely in-your-face.”

Warren with Bill, fellow mates not shy of telling it like it is, the no nonsense Aussie way.

The Greens mounted their 18C Campaign against Bill Leak

Then out of the blue, some Greens student activist, Melissa Dinnison at Perth’s Curtin University, went online from holidaying in Germany to make a vexatious complaint about Bill’s cartoon to Australia’s Human Rights Commission.

The ploy was to trigger an investigation under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act against as a show case against supposed racism.  the Greens are in bed with outspoken Leftist, Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs through her deputy ethnic Racial Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane from Third World Laos.

Gillian Triggs in 2012 was installed by Labor’s socialist PM Julia Gillard as a political appointment to enforce Labor’s multiculturalism policy. Triggs relished the overpaid promotion as an unfettered supreme opportunity to unleash her personal anti-White subjective hate and be Canberra’s judge, jury and executioner of Bob Hawke’s Human Rights Commission. Think Spanish Inquisition of the Middle Ages and Julian Triggs considers herself untoucheable Grand Inquistor – like a Tomás de Torquemada, hateful of White Australians and our free speech against underminers.

Never having earned anything off the taxpayer-teat in all her dependent life, Gillian Triggs and her comrade Greens know squat about Bill Leak’s evocation of ‘personal responsibility‘.

It was to be The Greens nasty political payback against reporting by News Limited which had exposed the sham lies and incompetence of Gillian Triggs falsely claiming torture chambers had been used on Third World illegals on Nauru.  Triggs had conspired with The Greens and Third World migration advocates Amnesty International and Save the Children to coach detained children on Nauru to fabricate tales of mistreatment, rape and torture to the media – all so they could queue jump to Australia to scam humanitarian-justified residency.  The Leftist documentary filming had been all stage-managed by Amnesty International.

It was all crap and Gillian Triggs’ reputation was in tatters.

Rorting the taxpayer to the tune of $400,000 a year to peddle her personal Leftiest prejudice. 

So The Greens and Triggs were frothing at the vegan bit for hateful payback and any personal career-ending retribution.  They schemed and waited to target someone perceived to be a symbol of the conservative side of politics to publicly persecute in an example Leftie show trial.

Enter hypocrite Aboriginal Roy Ah-See, chair of the New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council, and useful idiot for flag waving Greens rallies.

On the day of the cartoon being published, Roy Ah-See lodged his presumptive formal complaint online with the Australian Press Council following Bill Leak’s cartoon published in one of the nation’s biggest publications.  He claimed Bill’s cartoon, which he recognised was based on the Royal Commission into the treatment of children in the Northern Territory Juvenile Justice System, did not shed any light on the treatment of children in custody by Corrections staff.   How much can one put into a cartoon Roy?  Then Roy claimed the cartoon to be an offensive depiction of First Nations peoples, somehow, accusing it of being “disgusting, discriminatory and racist” .

Roy Ah-See with his offensive haircut and obesity

 

We think he had the letter written for him.  Roy Ah-See’s complaint was to the Australian Press Council, but The Greens knew better how to play politics.  They were straight on the phone to Roy.  In Bill Leak at, and employee of New Limited with The Australian newspaper, the Greens nemesis media, they had found their 18C prey.

Vexatious 18C litigant Melissa Dinnison

Human Rights Commission rules and public credibility meant that The Greens couldn’t themselves take their claim directly to Gillian Triggs; and expect to succeed.  It would have looked a tad contrived, which of course it was.

So The Greens instead rang around to find a useful idiot and willing provocateur to be their 18C claimant agent.  With Leftie zeal, they quickly conned very young stupid idealist Melissa Dinnison.

Melissa had been one of their student activist members who had volunteered for The Greens during the 2016 federal election campaign.  She was also studying human rights at Curtin University in Perth and claimed to be 1% Aboriginal.

Perfect!

Here she is, quite the Aborigine with her German boyfriend, Karl Schatke, who probably has no idea:

18C Melissa Dinnison (right*) – The Greens spiteful operative sent to do in Bill Leak.

[*can’t tell these days]

 

In Facebook posts, Melissa Dinnison identified as “a light-skinned indigenous person”. Aboriginal?  Ya reckon?

So writing under the pseudonym Melissa Rose on August 30, 2016 she describes the Leak cartoon as “disgusting”.  She takes it upon herself to be somehow personally offended more by the depiction of outback truth than by the what parents are doing to their children.  It’s called selective indignation and its a known attack ploy by Leftist politics.

Melissa Dinnison’s family home is in a semi-rural outer suburb of Perth. Set back from the road with a paddock in front, the modest house is undergoing repairs for storm damage on the roof. Small crosses along the drive mark the graves of family pets, and several dogs mill around. A sign on an inner perimeter gate is a reminder that vehicles will be checked for weapons and alcohol.

It’s not flash but normal,  and no ready pro bono lawyers on call.

The Greens then help Melissa Dinnison craft an online complaint from her university digs directly to the Human Rights Commission just days after Roy’s complaint to Australian Press Council.

In her complaint, Melissa Dinnison claimed she had:

“I have experienced ­racial hatred” and been “discrim­inated against because of my race” as a result of the cartoon. “The Australian newspaper has published and endorsed a cartoon depicting racial discrimination, racial profiling, and racially ­offensive material.” “A series of cartoons illustrate hateful and derogatory material specifically relating to indigenous Australians, their relationships with their children, alcoholism and domestic violence.”

Melissa Dinnison in legalese cites section 18C, which makes an act unlawful that,

“is reasonably likely, in all circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people; and the act is done because of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin of the other person.”

This written by a 19-year-old undergraduate student activist?

Don’t think so; try a seasoned Greens lawyer, probably one contracted by Gillian Triggs herself.  Jodie Ball at the Human Rights Commission perhaps?   Triggs’ bloody fingerprints are all over this master plan every step of the way.  She’s just a hateful vengeful bitch wanting blood.

Hateful Schemer:  “Blood will have blood…the secret’st man of blood.“

 

Melissa Dinnison, an anti-Australia hateful leftist (99% fake Aboriginal) was deliberately sent in by The Greens as a targeted 18C campaign to destroy the livelihood, and reputation of one of Australia’s celebrated political cartoonists who dared to tell it as it was.

The case was completely political and vexatious.  The punishment is in the process which demands those accused of free speech fork out tens of thousands of dollars and have their reputation trashed while the Human Rights Commission bumbles along denying Australians natural justice.

It is an abuse of political correctness, but the Left knows no bounds of vindictiveness.  Leftie ferals don’t just backstab the outlying vulnerable of their political opponents; they premeditate using an infected rusty knife, then twist and laugh.

 Triggs secretly schemed against Bill Leak over ten weeks, costing taxpayers millions

Gilian Triggs schemed hateful revenge against Bill Leak and indirectly against News Limited through September and October 2016.  Triggs got her sycophant Racial Discrimination deputy Tim Soutphommasane to advertise calling for any public complaints that could help condemn Bill Leak’s cartoon being racially offensive. Soutphommasane wanted as many as he could get, even if contrived.  Soutphommasane personally described Bill Leak’s work as “a racist and hateful smear of indigenous parents.”

Remember that Soutphommasane is an imported Asian to Australia from Laos, elevated by Gillard Labor to socialist power on the Aussie taxpayer teat.   He has a know mongrel parentage, so his loyalty to Ordinary Australians is one of envy if not hate.

The witch hunt has commenced and The Greens/Triggs smear campaign against News Limited is on.

Greens is morally bankrupted by The Greens.  She goes long to Greens events like the Bob Brown Foundation’s fundraiser later this month in Hobart business class.   She’s a full-blown Leftie invited to speak Leftie crap for Bob on CFMEU campaign hypocrisy somehow about the ‘Fair Go’.  It’s all having a go against the Fair Work Commission’s supposed “war on the fair go” for workers.   What’s an overpaid biased public servant doing playing Leftie politics?

Well, it’s consistent with why socialist Bob Hawke set up the political Human Rights Commission against Australians and why socialist made her political appointment of Leftist Gillian Triggs.

Terminate the lot!

Mid October 2016, ten weeks after the concocted complaint by Melissa Dinnison, Triggs commands her pitbull investigator Jodie Ball to write to The Australian’s lawyers to advise that Ms Dinnison’s allegations of racial hatred under the Racial Discrimination Act would be investigated.

The Human Rights Commission formally notifies The Australian newspaper that “sections 18C, 18D and 18E of the Racial Discrimination Act ­appear relevant to the complaint”.

 

Documents provided by the federal human rights body state Ms Dinnison has complained under section 18C because she says she has “experienced racial hatred” and been discriminated against as a result of the cartoon.  Her complaint states:

“The Australian newspaper has published and endorsed a cartoon depicting racial discrimination, racial profiling, and racially ­offensive material. A series of cartoons illustrate hateful and derogatory material specifically relating to indigenous Australians, their relationships with their children, alcoholism and domestic violence.”

Jodie pitbull Ball writes, Ms Dinnison cites section 18C, which makes an act unlawful if it:

“is reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, ­insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people; and the act is done ­because of the race, colour or ­national or ethnic origin of the other person or of some or all of the people in the group”.

It’s clearly a pre-planned crafted legal gotcha.  It ain’t from no uni student who reckons she offended by reading The Australia newspaper, if Ms Dinnison if fact ever did.

Pitbull Ball explained that when a complaint is received, Professor Triggs “is required to inquire into and attempt to resolve the complaint by conciliation”.  But ten weeks later?  The complaint was dated August 4 2016, yet it wasn’t until October 14 that the Human Rights Commission got around to bringing it to The Australian’s attention.

Reason, Triggs and Soutphommasane were secretly preparing their case and stockpiling an arsenal of evidence.

Then on October 14 pitbull Ball gave The Australian a two-week deadline to respond, threatening that if the complaint cannot be conciliated (a big compensation bribe paid) Triggs’ agent will apply to the Federal Court to decide the allegations and order costs.

Aboriginal Cindy Prior’s 18C Anti-White Hate Law Suit

Meanwhile, Triggs was backing another 18C complaining agent in Queensland, Cindy Prior (49), another university-based Aborigine to pursue a vexatious 18C law suit against three vulnerable White students at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT).  All they had done was to  write Facebook posts about being kicked out of an indigenous-only computer room on the main Brisbane campus by a QUT staffer, Cindy Prior, in May 2013.

One posted: “Just got kicked out of the unsigned indigenous computer room. QUT stopping segregation with segregation.” Another wrotestudent, Jackson Powell, wrote on Facebook: “I wonder where the white supremacist computer lab is.”

The fake blonde Abo had already pushed it to the Federal Court trying to scam $250,000 in trumped-up damages.  Triggs sent in a high-powered senior counsel Angus Stewart SC from Sydney, all expenses paid to Brisbane on the taxpayer purse.  The tree innocent students didn’t stand a chance.

Talk about Trigg’s White Hate Inquisition or what?

Luckily, Tony Morris QC and Michael Henry acted pro bono for the accused White lads. But most people are not so fortunate.n applications like these, legal fees frequently exceed A$10,000, and often go much higher.

Most people simply cannot afford to defend themselves, and legal aid is unavailable. In addition to the costs in time and stress, and despite being “cleared”, the QUT students’ reputations have suffered enormously. The stain of being an alleged racist will be hard to remove. One has abandoned becoming a school teacher because parents or students may Google his name and find he was accused of racism.

 Bill Leak’s Defence in the 18C Dinnison Case

Bill Leak was also fortunate to have the backing of his big employer News Limited. Any other Australian who didn’t have that kind of backing would have been monstered into submission.

Bill Leak’s loyal boss at The Australian, Editor-in-Chief of The Australian  Paul Whittaker stated in Bill’s defence:

“Bill’s cartoons are often confronting and prompt readers to think about unpalatable truths. In this case, it is an indisputable fact that the serious child welfare issues present in remote indigenous communities are often the result of absent or neglectful parents.”

Whitaker said the newspaper was proud of Leak’s work and would mount a vigorous defence. He called on the Turnbull government to revisit previous Liberal Party promises to repeal or amend section 18C.

Bill could have had no better friend than Whittaker for standing by him.

Leak responded to the Human Rights Commission accusations, stating that he was ­appalled that a government ­bureaucracy was permitted to ­intrude on and restrict one of the most fundamental freedoms in democracy, free speech, and was disgusted at the claims that he was a racist.

“This cartoon was about the plight of children in Aboriginal communities who wander the streets at all hours because they are too afraid to go their homes.

My sympathies are with these children and it is disgusting that when you try to draw attention to them, you are labelled a racist on social media and by the loud ‘anti-racists’ who are in fact the most racist of all. I am repulsed and repelled by racists and I have been all my life. Section 18C is an outrageous piece of law which leads to completely farcical situations like this.”

Anyway, a month later on November 11, 2016 the vexatious 18C litigant Melissa Dinnison suddenly withdrew her case against Bill Leak.  Dinnison had fled Australia and was hiding out in Germany to escape the media attention.  She had no intention of taking her vexatious claim to court.  Clearly Triggs scheme was flawed and was only undermining her credibility with many Australians calling for Triggs to be sacked, so she ‘instructed’ Dinnison to withdraw.

“She has put me through a month or so of incredible stress. She never met me, she doesn’t have to justify anything she does. No one asked her any questions and it doesn’t cost her a cent. As a consequence my life has been thrown into utter chaos. And at time when it just happens to suit her, she just decides this could turn into a bit of a hassle, so she can withdraw it.”

Comment by Kenny March 3 2017:

“Good luck Bill, I think hell will freeze over before you will get an apology. Professor Triggs does not believe she has done anything wrong. No wonder people are losing faith in the justice system.”

 Don’t send flowers, buy Bill Leak’s final book ‘Trigger Warning’

By 1994, Bill Leak, feeling under-rated and Leftist censored at Fairfax Media, liberated himself from The Sydney Morning Herald’s iron curtain to accept an offer by News Limited at The Daily Telegraph-Mirror.  Lie in the days of The Bulletin, Leak could relax in to his natural Australian larrikin style to let loose to expose the crap of bullshit politics as he saw it.

For his efforts, Bill was promoted nationally to editorially cartoon for The Australian.

Bill’s Australian loyalty was always to inform Australians the truth as they could instantly recognise, without a 2000 word two page essay in The Australian broadsheet.  But if such explanatory text was needed, then that was ok.

No corruption or abuse was off democratic human rights limits, especially if it upset the invasive abusive totalitarian muzzies to Australia’s north.

Much deserved to be writ about Bill Leak’s honest larrikin revelations by cartoon.

Sydney’s Daily Telegraph columnist Miranda Devine recognised that..

“Bill had perhaps been under enormous pressure ever since the Charlie Hebdo massacre had placed cartoonists on the frontline of the war against Islamist fascism. Five cartoonists at the satirical magazine in Paris had offended their Islamist murderers by drawing cartoons of Mohammed.

Three days later Australia’s counter terrorism squad was on his doorstep telling him to move house because Islamic State had issued a fatwa to “fellow Mujaheddin” in Australia to slaughter him.

He and Goong had to sell up at a vastly reduced price and move to a safe house with alarms in every room, but his cartoons never flinched.”

 

Last week, in free speech cartoonist defiance, Bill Leak launched his latest book ‘Trigger Warming‘.

“So now there’s a mob that won’t only punish you if your cartoon offends them, they’ll punish you if it’s offended someone else.” Bill said last Wednesday night.  “They’re also driven by the same authoritarian impulse to silence, using whatever means they have at their disposal, anyone who transgresses against the unwritten laws of political correctness.

“I’m talking, of course, about the thought police at that rogue totalitarian outfit, the Australian Human Rights Commission.”

“Well, bugger them, too.”

At Christmas Bill apologised to his wife Goong: “Ever since we’ve been together, I’ve just caused you trouble.”

She smiled at him and said “Good trouble.”

Yes, Bill Leak was good trouble, and Australia owes him.

Here’s Bill Leak’s speech from his book launch on Wednesday night, March 8, 2017:

“Ladies and gentlemen,

I know it’s International Women’s Day so first I must apologise for not being a woman. It’s particularly regrettable that I’m not a glamorous Sudanese-Egyptian-Australian woman who wears a hijab promoting a book about what it’s like being a glamorous Sudanese-Egyptian-Australian woman who wears a hijab. If I was, this wouldn’t be the only event I’ve got lined up on my non-government funded whirlwind Trigger Warning awareness-raising tour.

When I met the great cartoonist Bill Mitchell about 34 years ago, he said, “Mate, a cartoonist only has to be funny once a day, but it’s a lot harder than you’d think.” He was right, but he had no idea how much harder it would be for me than it ever was for him.

For a start, in order for Bill Mitchell to come up with a cartoon, all he had to do was take a serious political issue, exaggerate it to the point of ridiculousness, then draw what he saw when he got there. But I can’t do that because the ideas our politicians come up with these days are utterly ridiculous to begin with. And if you’re starting at the point of absurdity, where do you go from there? I mean, what am I going to have to come up with to make teachers in the Safe Schools program look ridiculous when they actually start giving jobs to gimps? And how long do you think it will be then before some gimps’ rights campaigner accuses me of gimpophobia? It’s only a matter of time.

Another reason why the job’s so much harder now than it was for Bill Mitchell is because, unlike him, I can’t just breezily assume people are looking at my cartoons hoping to get a laugh. Ever since conceptual art supplanted transcendent art, all art has been reduced to the level of graffiti. And to people reared on postmodernism and cultural relativism who can’t tell the difference between Picasso and Banksy, I’m not a cartoonist drawing cartoons for a newspaper; I’m an artist exhibiting his work in a gallery that gets hundreds of thousands of visitors through the doors every day. And the work of a man like that has to be taken very seriously indeed. It has to be analysed. It has to be deconstructed. It has to be decoded by these people in a search for hidden meanings. And because art, like political activism, is a form of therapy, it’s supposed to reinforce and confirm their prejudices, not challenge them.

Well, bugger that.

Political correctness is a poison that attacks the sense of humour. Luckily for Bill Mitchell, it was tipped into our water supply at around the time he retired and, since then, it’s infected an awful lot of people. As the senses of humour of people suffering from PC atrophy, their sensitivity to criticism becomes more and more acute until they get to the stage where everything offends them and they lose the ability to laugh entirely.

For people with chronic PC, feeling offended is about as good as it gets. A good cartoon gives them an excuse to parade their feelings of moral superiority in 140 characters or less, scrawled on the toilet door of social media where every other humourless halfwit who’s seen the cartoon and felt offended too can join in the fun. And they do.

Well, I don’t twit, and I don’t face, so most of the time I’m able to remain blissfully unaware of all the howls of outrage and indignation directed at me in response to my cartoons — but not always. Two years ago I realised that sometimes I really do have to worry about whether people think my cartoons are funny or not when I discovered that bloodthirsty barbarians aren’t immune to political correctness and their delicate sensibilities are just as easily offended as those of any precious little snowflake you’ll find

in a gender studies faculty at a university. And for your average Islamist terrorist, firing off a few impassioned obscenities on a Twitter feed is no substitute for the sort of satisfaction you can get by hunting down the person who’s offended you and chopping his head off.

Then, in October last year I realised there’s another group of people who are just as capable of making life hell for me if they fail to be amused by my wit and artistry. It’s just my luck that causing offence has been made an offence at the same time that taking offence has become fashionable. So now there’s a mob that won’t only punish you if your cartoon offends them, they’ll punish you if it’s offended someone else. They might be a little less murderous than your Islamist terrorists, but they’re no less unhinged and they’re no less dangerous. They’re also driven by the same authoritarian impulse to silence, using whatever means they have at their disposal, anyone who transgresses against the unwritten laws of political correctness. I’m talking, of course, about the thought police at that rogue totalitarian outfit, the Australian Human Rights Commission.

Well, bugger them, too.

Thank goodness for deplorables like you, that’s all I can say. I knew I was in the company of fellow subversives, dissidents and weirdos when I opened my remarks with a potentially explosive “ladies and gentlemen” and no one complained.”

 

The Australian’s Editor-in-chief Paul Whittaker described Leak as “a giant in his field of cartooning and portraiture and a towering figure for more than two decades” at the newspaper and said he was “simply irreplaceable”.

Our favourite larrikin patriot, The Australian Bill Leak (1956-2017)

The Australian Bleak Gallery Tribute