Policies create wonderful opportunities for cartoonists to cut big personalities down to size. The immediacy of political cartoons makes them a great medium for policy critique. Many of Pickering and Pryor’s cartoons offer serious commentary on a range of policy issues. Other cartoons make light of the difficulties policy development presents for Governments and Oppositions alike.

Jim Cairns and Gough Whitlam take over proceedings

Pryor’s cartoons rely not only on the image to make us laugh or make a point – the dialogue in the speech bubble can be equally important. The way in which the dialogue is read is often crucial to the joke – in this case Pryor seeks to create the drawl of an aloof English detective.