Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian printed a vile cartoon: an Indigenous father is pictured drinking beer, unable to remember his son’s name.

That’s racial stereotyping pure and simple, but The Australian won't apologise. 

Bill Leak, the cartoonist, is unrepentant. He thinks calling the cartoon racist is “absurd” and that those offended are “having a tantrum”. He just doesn’t get it. 

But The Australian is already feeling the heat. It’s blatant racism is causing uproar, and is being investigated by the Human Rights Commission. The pressure’s on: if we add our voices now, then it’ll have to apologise and get rid of Bill Leak. 

Bill Leak thinks our racial discrimination law, which protects people from prejudice, is “an abomination”. But then he’s got form when it comes to offensive cartoons in The Australian: he waded into the marriage equality debate by depicting Nazis in rainbow uniforms. 

Promoting racial slurs is irresponsible, and poisons national debate. It’s 2016 -- there’s no place for racism in our media. But The Australian is trading on prejudices straight out of the White Australia era.  

SumOfUs members call out racism and prejudice together, especially when spread by big corporations. 50,000 of us are pressing another Murdoch-owned paper in the UK for an Islamophobic column right now. We won’t let racism go unchallenged because it’s in a newspaper owned by the big end of town.

Everyday Australians, politicians and significant figures from Indigenous communities are speaking out and making The Australian’s stance difficult. If enough of us take up the call, then it will have to apologise, and dump Bill Leak so this doesn’t happen again.