Leak says people upset at the treatment of youths at the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre should look at the homes they come from

Bill Leak has defended his cartoon of a drunk Aboriginal father who had forgotten his own son’s name as an honest depiction of the truth, as the Indigenous affairs minister, Nigel Scullion, released a statement saying he was appalled by the cartoon’s racist stereotypes.

Leak wrote in Friday’s Australian: “I was trying to say that if you think things are pretty crook for the children locked up in the Northern Territory’s Don Dale Youth Detention Centre, you should have a look at the homes they came from. Then you might understand why so many of them finished up there.”

The newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Paul Whittaker, had stood by the cartoon citing columns by high profile Indigenous Australians Marcia Langton and Noel Pearson. But Langton said she was not comfortable being used in the defence of the cartoon when approached by Guardian Australia.

“I am not ‘comfortable’ with my words being used to justify Leak’s cartoon,” she said in a statement.

“He has crossed a line by stereotyping all Aboriginal dads as losers. This is wrong.

“So glad that I have had the opportunity to contribute to another useless gotcha moment instead of concentrating on the serious issues.”

Indigenous affairs minister, Nigel Scullion, labelled the cartoon racist and particularly tasteless given it was published on National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children’s day.

“Although Australian cartoonists have a rich tradition of irreverent satire, there is absolutely no place for depicting racist stereotypes,” he said late on Thursday.

“I am heartened that various voices from across the political and social spectrum have come out and strongly condemned the cartoon.

“I would urge the Australian to be more aware of the impact cartoons like the one published today can have on Indigenous communities.”

Scullion called on Leak to reflect on BeyondBlue’s campaign that “No one should be made to feel crap just for being who they are”, which highlights the impact of racism on the mental health of Indigenous Australians.

average media guy (@axmcc) Australians get offended when people say we're racist, but can you imagine this appearing in a US or UK newspaper? pic.twitter.com/6KzOJMaiVv

Leak’s defence of his cartoon was partly directed at Guardian Australia, which had asked him to explain it after it became the subject of much criticism.

“While I can accept that a ­firestorm on Twitter might be of some interest to The Guardian’s media correspondent, what I can’t understand is that someone in her position would need to have the meaning of a cartoon spelled out for her when it was so glaringly obvious,” Leak wrote.

“And it wasn’t only Meade and god knows how many sanctim­onious Tweety Birds that couldn’t work out the meaning of my ­cartoon without external assistance.”

Leak said his critics were like toddlers who were suffering from “Chronic Truth Aversion Disorder” when all he was doing was trying to tell the uncomfortable truth.

“Before the howls of outrage and accusations of racism that were directed at me started filtering through into my Twitter-free world yesterday, I received an email from Anthony Dillon — whose father Colin was Australia’s first Aboriginal policeman and whose evidence was pivotal to the Fitzgerald inquiry into police corruption in Queensland — ­congratulating me on the cartoon.

“In it, Dillon included a message he’d written to his father, in which he said: ‘Have a look at Bill’s latest cartoon. Half of me was crying and the other half was laughing. He has an incredible talent that enables him to blend humour and tragedy without losing the seriousness of the situation.’”

A Leak cartoon in Friday’s Australian portrayed himself as the victim for “telling the truth”. It showed a policeman holding Leak by the scruff of the neck with caption: “This bloke’s been telling the truth and he thinks it’s funny.” An angry looking man armed with a baseball bat with a spike on the end of it is pictured saying: “Lemme at ‘im”. ”

Dave Earley (@earleyedition) Friday's Bill Leak. So he thinks his racist cartoon yesterday was true and, worse, *funny* https://t.co/A5sI8N6xDt pic.twitter.com/PCPYqb0Luu

The Australian again backed Leak’s cartoon in its editorial saying much family failure was the root cause of “Indigenous misery”.



“It uses grim humour — the grog-swilling father cannot remember his son’s name, never mind his duty as a parent,” the editorial said. “The cartoon points to broken families, the self-perpetuating cause of so much indigenous misery.”

“For many decades, dysfunctional Indigenous families have fed children into the juvenile justice system, which serves as an apprenticeship for prison; those children grow up to form the next generation of failed families. Now, that’s something to be offended about. Instead, Mr Leak’s critics wilfully misread his cartoon as saying that all Indigenous fathers are beer-soaked and hopeless.”

Whittaker had published a statement saying too many people skirted around the issue.

“Bill Leak’s confronting and insightful cartoons force people to examine the core issues in a way that sometimes reporting and analysis can fail to do,” he said in a statement published on the Australian’s website on Thursday afternoon.

A spokeswoman for Suncorp Bank confirmed the bank had removed its advertising from the Australian.



“We have removed our advertising from the content, and have temporarily suspended any future placements,” she said.

A spokesman for the Australian Press Council said the media watchdog was investigating the complaints about the cartoon made by the public.

The NSW Land Council is one body which has said publicly it would report the cartoon to the press council, saying it “insulted and denigrated Aboriginal people”.

In December, Leak was similarly criticised for a cartoon depicting starving Indians chopping up and eating solar panels.