Every year is a good year for political cartoonists, but 2011 was a particularly dramatic one.
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Or maybe it just seems that way.
![Show reveals cartoonists drawn to politics Show reveals cartoonists drawn to politics](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-ct-migration/ea3b5f94-acc4-4f32-8cb8-86e79ee2c5e0.jpg/r0_0_729_430_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Curator of the yearly Behind the Lines cartoon exhibition at Old Parliament House Guy Hansen has been doing the job for so long that every year looks like a boon for the country's visual satirists.
''I've been doing this exhibition on and off for 15 years, under different names and at different locations, and every year, I seem to think, 'this is really the most dramatic year','' he said.
''But this year really was quite unique because of, perhaps, the significance of some of the policy issues being debated, combined with the fierceness of the rhetoric.''
The show opened at the Museum of Australian Democracy last night with Andrew Marlton, cartoonist for Crikey.com and creator of First Dog on the Moon being named the winner of the 2011 Political Cartooning Award.
In Canberra for the exhibition, Marlton said the year had been a good one for him, if only because of the dispiriting amount of negative debate and all-round bad news.
''I suppose the main story of the year was the Federal Government's failure to sell any of their ideas properly, whether they were good ones or bad ones, so that was something to draw,'' he said.
''I found the carbon tax enormously entertaining. There weren't too many days when I thought, 'gee, I have nothing to draw a cartoon about, I'll do one about chickens or sandwiches or something'.''
He said seeing the ridiculous in things, rather than feeling disheartened by the state of Australian politics, helped him to enjoy his work even more.
''Of course, when things get too ridiculous, then you struggle to find the satirical point in things because they're already so terrible or outrageous,'' he said, referring to the sight of Queensland Independent Bob Katter breaking into song at a press conference.
But he admitted that not everything made him laugh in 2011.
''I certainly got sick of the sight of Julia and Tony in fluorescent vests and hard hats. I think I wasn't alone in that,'' he said.
''I know everything they do at the moment is geared to getting a minute on the 6 o'clock news or the front page of the paper, but that sort of stuff makes me despair because I just want to punch myself in the head rather than have to see them out in the field.
''It makes you want to say terrible things about them in your cartoons, or else to leave them out completely. Some days it's like, 'it's too awful, I'm not going to draw the cartoon about the easy and stupid thing that our leaders have done because it's just too dreary'.''
For Mr Hansen, the fact that a cartoonist for an online-only publication was the winner this year was an indication of how much things have changed in the past decade or so.
''When I started doing work on cartoons in the early 1990s, I was collecting original artworks on artboard, sketches on A4 bond paper. There were objects that had the pencil drawings of the cartoonists and the reworkings and the pen-and-ink. Today, what I'm getting is digital files emailed to me,'' he said.
- Behind the Lines: The Year's Best Political Cartoons 2011 is showing at the Museum of Australian Democracy until Sunday, April 1.