The great Australian cartoonist Jon Kudelka kindly agreed to an interview.
1. Who are you and how did you come to be a cartoonist (where grew up etc).
I grew up in Hobart and after completing an undergraduate degree in molecular biology and chemistry in the early 90s realised that opportunities to do actual research were mostly in the area of weapons research or mining or forestry and decided that it wasn’t for me. I had supported myself through uni illustrating for various clients and decided to give that a go as if it failed I could probably get into teaching.
2. When and how did you first hear about climate change?
I heard about climate change in grade ten which would have been the mid eighties, so only 90 years after Arrhenius published his first paper on the topic, establishing my ability to be right on the ball with important news.
3. Your “scientist tapping the microphone ‘is this thing on'” cartoon from 2013 pops up intermittently in my feed and on sites – any recollection of how it came to be? If you were doing a sequel, what would the scientist be saying now?
The scientist one was done in a tearing hurry as I had taken in far too much work with various papers. I intended to have the sea level rising in each panel but somehow managed to forget it so was kicking myself the next day. If I did a sequel it would probably involve a scientist swearing a great deal.
Also I would probably go with a female scientist because the only people in my uni year who stuck with science turned out to be female. Probably should have done that with the first one but like I said, I was right on deadline and details weren’t a priority.
4. Your Rusted On Bingo is pure genius – what was the motiviation/straw that broke the camel’s back? Presumably you do encounter these responses from people in real life, where the block function is not possible. What do you do then?
I always got a lot more snark from Labor for the mildest criticism whereas the (slightly more) conservative parties were cranky in a more buffoonish manner. I think the trouble was that Labor types wanted to be Tories but didn’t want to be seen as Tories and didn’t react at all well to it. The prevailing attitude was to promise something centrist then roll over at the slightest pushback. I picked this rank cowardice during the run-up to Bill Shorten’s failed campaign against [then Prime Minister Scott] Morrison in 2019 where there were some good ideas that didn’t go far enough and the whole campaign was handed over to risk averse spin doctors. More effort seemed to be put into making excuses (mostly blaming the Greens for not passing Rudd’s CPRS in 2009) rather than actually following through with a consistent platform.
This is not to say that the Coalition weren’t people you’d touch with a barge pole (unless you were trying to push them off a boat) and a lot of the groundwork in ruining the country was done during the John Howard era. In fact I even published a book to that effect. It all got to the point where despite the succession of absolute clowns put forward by the Liberals starting with Tony Abbott, it became clear that Labor’s cowardice from opposition was clearly enabling the Coalition and the two party system was the entire problem. Pointing this out unleashed a deluge of spitefulness from the party faithful to the point where I just made a bingo card based entirely on their excuses for failure.
I was going to leave it at that but they just kept at it to the point where I rejigged the card into a teatowel and put the profits into sponsoring the endangered red handfish which I named “Rusty” which I quite enjoyed. I get a few requests to do another teatowel but have retired from cartooning due to a terminal brain tumour and don’t really have to time, inclination or funds to do another print run. Also the original seems to have held up pretty well.
These days people are generally too scared to make these comments to me in person but back in the day I would be increasingly polite to the point where they became quite cross. This may or may not have been deliberate. Anyway, I probably rambled on a bit there but I am somewhat bewildered as to why anyone would cling to any of the major parties these days but I haven’t really been paying attention since I retired late last year.
5. Who are your favourite cartoonists, living or dead?
My favourite political cartoonists are Bruce Petty, Ron Tandberg, Matt Golding, Andrew Weldon, Cathy Wilcox, First Dog On The Moon , Fiona Katauskas and Jess Harwood. My favourite non political cartoonist is probably Sempe.
6. Anything else you want to say – shout outs to activists, outlets, news of upcoming projects etc etc.
I’ve moved to being a more non-political artist because politics makes me a bit cranky these days as you’ve probably noticed. I recently attended the Takayna artist residency run by the Bob Brown Foundation and they do great work attempting to look after the place because they generally do what they say which would these days seems to be frowned upon by the media and the time-serving careerists who infest the major political parties.
Our only hope for getting the urgent changes needed to give the next generation half a chance after the long period of making the environment much worse in the case of the coalition or arguably slightly less worse under Labor is a minority government with sizeable crossbenches of people who are willing to actually work to make things better in both Houses of Parliament though it’s pretty much at the stage where if this occurred the Liberals and Labor will stop pretending they’re not defending their duopoly and band together to defend their donors.
See also this 2010 joint interview of Jon and First Dog.