Michael Leunig: Nine Entertainment dumps The Age cartoonist in latest jobs cut bloodbath – but not before he takes a parting shot at his boss

A controversial cartoonist delivered a scathing parting shot to his boss after he was fired following a “throat-slitting exercise”.

Michael Leunig’s 55-year career at The Age came to an end last week when the Melbourne-based imprint’s editor, Patrick Elligett, told subscribers that the cartoonist had “submitted his final editorial illustration”.

But Leunig, 79, refuses to go quietly and gave a blunt farewell message to the newspaper, accusing editors of censorship and calling the paper a “tasteless tabloid.”

He described his dismissal as a “throat-slitting exercise” and criticized Elligett for not telling readers it was his decision to end his career.

“There was no mention of him (Elligett) giving me the axe,” Leunig said The Australian.

‘I expected it, since I’ve retired philosophically (and) culturally from The Age. I don’t really read it, I just scan it. It’s a sad story because I started there when it was a substantial paper.

‘It’s almost embarrassing now to say I worked for The Age. It’s become a vulgar tabloid.’

Leunig, who joined the newspaper in 1969, said the relationship between him and the paper became strained during the Covid pandemic.

But Leunig, 79, is refusing to go quietly and launched a fierce attack on The Age in his farewell, accusing editors of censorship and calling the magazine a “tasteless tabloid”.

The newspaper was owned by Fairfax Media before being acquired by Nine Entertainment in 2018 following a merger between the two companies.

Leunig is the latest star to be fired after the media company laid off hundreds of employees in August as part of a $30 million cost-cutting plan.

The cartoonist made headlines when he shared an illustration that was rejected by then-editor Gay Alcorn because it strongly criticized mandatory vaccination.

Leunig’s cartoon, which never appeared in the newspaper, shows one of those fragile, large-nosed figures he considered so fragile, looking at the silhouette of a tank with a syringe in place of the gun turret.

In the top left corner, the 76-year-old copied the iconic image of ‘Tank Man’, which shows a Beijing protester standing in front of a column of tanks on Tiananmen Square in 1989.

He posted the cartoon on his Instagram page with the word ‘mandate’, an act that eventually led to him being fired from The Age’s news pages and being required to submit only one cartoon a week for the weekend section.

“I just had to ask questions, like many others, about the seriousness of the Covid measures and this was unacceptable. These things were constantly not published, without any explanation or discussion,” said Leunig.

‘It was like being sent to Coventry: you didn’t exist.

‘It was an almost lonely position, there was never any contact with anyone… I was just left on a rock.’

The newspaper was owned by Fairfax Media before being acquired by Nine Entertainment in 2018 following a merger between the two companies

The cartoonist made national headlines when he shared a cartoon that was rejected by then-editor Gay Alcorn because it was heavily critical of vaccination mandates (pictured)

Leunig said he had made numerous requests cartoons about the extreme lockdown measures taken by former Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews in 2020.

But these were rejected, he said, for fear of offending The Age’s predominantly left-leaning readership, which supported lockdowns.

Daily Mail Australia contacted Elligett and Nine Entertainment for comment.

Last week, Leunig wrote an article for his own website accusing The Age of censorship, saying that “a message had been passed on to him from above not to mention Gaza.”

“He circumvented that instruction, but in a sense he was largely groping in the dark, with one hand tied behind his back,” Leunig wrote in the third person.

‘It was clear to him that the institution that most needed to be questioned, shocked and satirized was the mainstream media. But that was of course taboo.’

He accused the modern cartoon industry of being too “clever, neat and self-satisfied” and claimed that cartoonists “do not receive the support and encouragement of courageous or adventurous editors.”

‘With a few notable exceptions, mainstream Australian cartoonists can no longer be as funny, lively and mischievous; they are not free enough, they do not have as much ink on their hands as they used to, they are generally too well educated, they do not end up in court on charges of offensive publications as they used to, they are too much in search of good jokes and the complacency of cosy, dubious media awards, they do not receive the letter bombs or the amount of hate mail that was normal in earlier times,’ he wrote.