Michael Leunig: Controversial Australian cartoonist dies at age 79 following brutal sacking from The Age after 55-year tenure

Iconic Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig has died at the age of 79.

Leunig’s death was announced on Instagram on Thursday evening, next to one of his works showing an angel floating in the twilight.

The image came with a short explanation.

“The pen has dried and the ink no longer flows – yet Mr. Curly and his ducks will remain in our hearts, cherished and eternal,” the statement began.

“Michael Leunig passed away peacefully today, in the early hours of December 19, 2024,” the message continued.

‘During his last days he was surrounded by his children, loved ones and sunflowers – accompanied as always by his dear old friends, Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven.’

It wasn’t long before the post was flooded with tributes.

‘Oh no, I’m devastated. What a great loss to society and everyone he touched. What an absolute legend,” one follower wrote.

‘Michel. You truly lived the words ‘for yourself, be true’. I will carry a duck and a teapot in my heart in honor of your playfulness and comfort. Lots of love to the Leunig family,” another added.

‘Oh no! My heart just broke. Your beautiful wisdom has guided me through my life ❤️,” said a third.

“Vale Michael – your strange and beautiful philosophies have carried me through my adult life for forty years. I hope the path you are on continues to unravel wherever you are. Your brilliance will be missed, Earthside,” wrote another.

‘An exemplary person in all respects. Michael’s sensitivity, empathy, courage, humor. We are fortunate to still have so much of his spirit here, leaving the magic of his art in our hearts and minds,” added another.

“The stars will cry silently tonight. Michael will be forever remembered – for his selfless gifts.

“I’m sad he’s gone and send love to all his loved ones,” they continued.

It comes after the long-time contributor to The Age gave a blistering parting shot after being fired from the publication earlier this year for a ‘throat-slitting exercise’.

Leunig’s 55-year career came to an end in September when the editor of the Melbourne-based Masthead, Patrick Elligett, told subscribers that the cartoonist had “submitted his final editorial illustration.”

Leunig refused to go quietly and delivered a blunt farewell message to the newspaper by accusing the editors of censorship and calling the newspaper a ‘tacky tabloid’.

He described his dismissal as a “throat-slitting exercise” and took umbrage at Elligett’s failure to tell readers it was his decision to end his career.

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

‘I expected it, because I said goodbye philosophically (and) culturally to The Age. I don’t really read it, I just scan it. It’s a sad story because I started there when it was still a major newspaper.

‘It’s almost embarrassing now to say I worked for The Age. It has become a sticky gossip magazine.’

Mr Elligett said his only response to that was ‘to thank Michael Leunig for his contribution to The Age over many decades’.

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

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

The cartoonist made headlines when he shared an illustration that was rejected by then-editor Gay Alcorn for being highly critical of vaccine mandates.

Leunig’s cartoon, which never made it into the newspapers, featured one of his typically vulnerable figures with a large nose, confronted by the silhouette of a tank with a syringe in place of the turret.

In the top left corner, the 76-year-old copied the iconic ‘Tank Man’ image of a Beijing protester who stood in the path of a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

He posted the drawing to his Instagram page with the word “mandate,” an act that eventually led to him being fired from the news pages of The Age and having to archive one cartoon a week for the weekend section.

‘I just had to ask questions, like many people, about the severity of the Covid measures and this was unbearable. These things kept going unpublished without any explanation or discussion,” Leunig said.

‘It was a bit like being sent to Coventry, you don’t exist.

“It was almost a lonely position, there was never any contact from anyone…I was just left on a rock.”

Leunig said he has submitted numerous ones cartoons about former Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’ extreme lockdown measures in 2020.

But these, he claimed, were rejected for fear of upsetting The Age’s largely left-wing readers who favored lockdowns.

Last week, Leunig wrote a piece for his own website accusing The Age of censorship and claiming that “a message had been passed down to him from above not to mention Gaza.”

“He ignored that instruction, but in a sense he was usually left 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 this was obviously out of bounds.”

He accused the modern cartoon industry of being too “smart, clean and hypocritical” and claimed that cartoonists “do not have the support and encouragement of courageous or adventurous editors.”

‘With some great exceptions, Australian mainstream cartoonists can’t be that funny, feisty and mischievous anymore; they are not free enough, they do not have as much ink on their hands as they used to, they are usually overeducated, they do not end up in court on charges of insulting publications as they used to, they also shout After neat punchlines and the self-congratulations of cozy, dubious media awards, they do not receive letter bombs or the amount of hate mail that used to be normal,” he wrote.