The Wire

Artists around Australia united this week to speak out about the sedition clause in the proposed terror laws. The clause would make a crime of urging disaffection to the government, something which political cartoonists do daily. Michael Leunig says he’s very upset about the uncertainty created by the laws but certainly won’t be intimidated. Dr Robert Phiddian is a senior lecturer in English at Flinders University and one of his specialties is political satire. He says it’s unlikely that the governemnt would ever use the proposed laws against satirists in this country.