Cocky Calwell
Original cartoon by John Frith
Old Parliament House Collection
Labor Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, was a vocal critic of The Sydney Morning Herald. Not long after joining the paper Frith was called into the Proprietor’s Office:
“Fairfax and Henderson…wondered if I could come up with something to ‘rid them of this turbulent politician’…I promised to try…Nature had endowed Calwell with the appearance of a parrot…I quickly cartooned him sitting on a perch screeching his head off, CURSE THE PRESS, CURSE THE PRESS. Fairfax and Henderson expressed their pleasure by adding 500 pounds to my salary.”
The idea worked…
“Cocky Calwell was an instant success. The cartoons at first showed him beautifully feathered but his appearance changed somewhat after an incident in the Federal Parliament. One night Calwell walked into the crowded Chamber and was greeted with muffled cries of ‘curse the press, curse the press’…Calwell had few equals and his verbal venom penetrated deeply into the hides of many politicians, foes and friends alike. On this occasion The Sydney Morning Herald was given a massive dose, some of which splashed on to the cartoonist. This called for retaliation so I plucked the feathers off the parrot leaving one stuck, fairly and squarely, up the parson’s nose.”
John Frith, c.1975
