A Dingo's Got My Prime Minister!!

[Chantel]

Thursday Mar 30 12:13 AEDT



A cartoon depicting Prime Minister John Howard and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer as fornicating dingoes is a grotesque stunt by a tacky publication, Mr Downer says.

But the minister says the Indonesian paper which published the lurid cartoon has every right to do in a free society.

The Islamic-leaning Rakyat Merdeka (People's Freedom) newspaper has run the cartoon on its front page amid Indonesia's continuing anger over Australia's giving visas to 42 Papuan asylum seekers.

Headlined "The adventure of two dingo" (sic), the drawing shows the prime minister as the dominant dog, shaking as he tells the foreign minister: "I want Papua!! Alex! Try to make it happen!"

Mr Downer said the cartoon would fail any measure of tastefulness in Australia, but newspapers were free to publish such things.

"You can publish cartoons which are tasteless and grotesque, but you are free to do so, and Indonesia is a free and pluralistic society," he told reporters.

"Obviously, there are standards of public taste which publications are measured against.

"I would have thought those cartoons, in our society, fell way below the standards of public taste. I think a lot of Australians would regard those kind of publications as very offensive.

"But they're free to be offensive in a magazine in Indonesia if they wish to be."

Australia's decision to grant visas to 42 of 43 Papuan asylum seekers has sparked outrage in Indonesia, with nationalists accusing Canberra of secretly plotting the province's breakaway from Jakarta's grasp.

They have likened the situation to the 1999 independence crisis in East Timor.

Mr Downer said the newspaper, one of Indonesia's biggest sellers, was hardly a quality publication.

"This is a magazine which is a sort of low rent magazine, this is a very poor quality magazine," Mr Downer said.

"It's not, in that sense, a mainstream publication. It's a pretty tacky sort of publication and of course in tacky publications you get these sorts of things."

The minister said the cartoon did not mean Indonesians generally held Australia in low esteem.

"I would have thought the vast majority of Indonesians would agree with me, that's not a publication worth buying if it descends to that sort of depth," he said.

The publishing of the cartoon is a "tragic" development but Mr Howard is indirectly to blame for it, Labor says.

Opposition Leader Kim Beazley said things had gone awry following Australia's decision to grant visas to 42 Papuan asylum seekers because Mr Howard had let the Indonesians think Australia would send refugees away because of its strict border control policies.

"I actually think it's tragic that things have come to this pass," Mr Beazley told reporters.

"One of the problems for the prime minister is that he's been hoist on his own petard.

"The prime minister convinced the Indonesians he was serious about keeping refugees away from Australian shores and invited them to participate in our own schemes, and all of the rest of it.

"What the Indonesians did not understand is that the prime minister didn't mean it.

"In fact, all those refugees are in Australia now or in New Zealand.

"They took the prime minister at face value."

Mr Beazley said the decision to grant visas was not an insult.

"There is no agenda here," he said.

"We are not trying to dissolve the Indonesian federation."

[Hitman]

I would have thought those cartoons, in our society, fell way below the standards of public taste. I think a lot of Australians would regard those kind of publications as very offensive

[amunhra]

Cartoons are another form of art. Art is the only area for freedom of speech in our society. Distasteful as it may be everyone is entitled to their opinion, whether it's everyone's opinion or not. *shrugs*

I don't have enough knowledge on the actual situation that is being portrayed so I can't make a valid statement. But it is a little crude to look at.

Edit and off topic: rereading my post, the whole onion thing is hilarious