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Australian Political Humour.
Australia prides itself on enjoying the liberty to express artistic license when it comes to its public figures.

As occurs frequently when politicians' careers take them into areas of greater responsibility, they come under greater public scrutiny. Along with this comes the inevitable cartoons and parodies.

Australian political humour comes in many forms. Australian comedians that incorporate satire, especially political irreverence, along with the time-honoured pursuit of political cartoonists poking fun at those in politics have contributed much to the country's culture. Some of Australia's best known cartoonists such as Paul Rigby, Larry Pickering and Bill Leak are fondly recalled for their artistic observations of political figures and events.

Mr John Howard was well know to the Australian public as having been elected as MP in 1974, was a minister of the Fraser government from 1977 until 1983, became deputy leader of the Liberal Party in the same year, became leader in 1985 until 1989, then became leader again in 1995. In 1996 he was elected as Prime Minister, a position he held until 2007, making him the second longest serving prime minister in Australia's history.

Due to the length of his tenure in public office along with the growth in population and electronic media, the amount of cartoons featuring Mr Howard and live satirical impressions of him is quite possibly greater than that of any other Australian politician.

Max Gillies was probably Australia's best known Bob Hawke impersonator, where the latter's personality gave comedians and cartoonists alike much material to work with, having been well known through his earlier career with the trade union movement.

In 2007 Australia elected Mr Kevin Rudd as prime minister, who in comparison to John Howard's long political career and Bob Hawke's high public profile was virtually unknown.

This presented a challenge to those who provide humour based on public political figures, but cartoonists supplying the press soon created their interpretations.

Peter Nicholson saw Kevin Rudd as similar to John Howard. See 17 March 2007 www.nicholsoncartoons.com.au/subid_94.html

Corporate speaker, satirist and celebrity impersonator Chris De Havilland quickly created an uncanny resemblance to Rudd using knowledge of movie makeup techniques to effectively cartoon through comedy impersonation. See https://chrisdehavilland.com/kevin-rudd-impersonator-2

De Havilland has kept shining a comedic light onto numerous famous people by extending his repertoire to include Donald Trump impersonator. See https://chrisdehavilland.com/donald-trump-impersonator-australia

Whilst the obvious message is that there is always a light side of politics to be seen and the players to be lampooned, the deeper thought is that possibly the litmus test to the freedom of any society, is the availability and encouragement of such humour to flourish within it.