When The Joke is About You.

Bundaberg Mayor Helen Blackburn has made complaints to Queensland Police, the Australian Federal Police and the eSafety Commissioner concerning Mayor Melon Blackbird, an animated character appearing in a series of AI-generated videos set in the fictional Queensland town of Bungleberg. The character is fictional. The resemblance to the Mayor of Bundaberg is not especially difficult to detect. Blackburn says the parody has crossed into defamation and contributed to real-world threats. The anonymous creators of Bungleberg Studios describe their purpose differently. They have said the project grew from concerns about a perceived lack of voice in civic discussion and that their aim is to use humour, creativity and satire to make civic topics more accessible. They have also said they do not condone bullying, threats, intimidation or violence. Those are their descriptions of their purpose. Whether the work has remained within those boundaries is part of the dispute.

There have also been things around the comedy that are considerably less funny. Blackburn has spoken publicly about threats directed at her. Queensland Police has confirmed an investigation is continuing after her mobile telephone number was published by the Mayor Melon page. Blackburn says abusive messages followed and has since changed the number. There is no suggestion that a threatening voicemail subsequently received by Blackburn came from anyone connected with Bungleberg Studios. That distinction matters.

A threat is not satire because somebody making jokes happens to publish it. Publishing personal information does not become satire because there is a cartoon nearby. But neither does satire become bullying because the person being satirised finds it offensive.

The right to be offensive

Political satire has never required the permission of its subject. If it did, there would not be much of it. It has been drawn, written, sung, performed, mimicked and exaggerated. Cartoonists have given politicians enormous noses and tiny brains. Actors have imitated their voices. Writers have invented conversations between people who never met. Puppets have done things to prime ministers that would result in a lengthy police interview if attempted outside a television studio. Some of it has been clever. Some has been cruel. A great deal has been both.

Being offended by any of it does not settle the question. Nor does calling it satire. The useful question isn't whether Mayor Melon Blackbird is satire. It plainly employs the machinery of satire: exaggeration, caricature, parody, absurdity and the transformation of a recognisable public figure into something ridiculous. And, it has to be said, some of the South Park-style imagery works brilliantly. The fact that Mayor Melon is recognisable as a caricature of Helen Blackburn isn't evidence that the satire has failed. Recognition is rather essential to the exercise. A political caricature nobody recognises has a fairly limited future. The harder question is what being satire permits.

There is a temptation to treat satire as a magic word. Put it in the disclaimer and ordinary standards disappear. There is an equal temptation to expand bullying until it encompasses criticism, ridicule, mockery and offence. Neither gets us very far. A criticism can be answered. A policy can be defended. A statistic can be countered with another statistic. Being made ridiculous is harder. There is no council media release that satisfactorily answers a cartoon.

The Goose in the room

Which brings us, somewhat reluctantly, to this Goose. The Honking Goose is a satirical publication. We publish fair comment and satirical critique about matters of public interest and expressly do not claim to be a record of news. That disclaimer does not give us permission to write whatever we please and insist afterwards that everybody else has misunderstood our joke. But the Goose practises a particular kind of satire, and the Bundaberg argument makes the distinction worth stating.

We generally begin with the record. If a politician says something, we try to establish what was actually said. If an organisation publishes a policy, we try to establish what it actually contains. If somebody declines to answer a question, we distinguish their silence from an answer we might have preferred them to give.

Then we honk at it.

The joke is generally in the distance between the statement and the circumstances around it, between a policy and its consequences, or between what an institution says it is doing and what the record suggests it has actually done. We don't generally create an alternative version of a public figure and put new words into their mouth. That is not a claim to superior satire. It is a description of a different kind.

A political cartoonist works differently. So does an impressionist. So does South Park. So does The Betoota Advocate. So does a bloke in a pub doing an imitation of the Prime Minister. Satire is a form, not a code of conduct. Its legitimacy cannot sensibly depend upon whether it is written or animated, subtle or vulgar, signed or anonymous, or funny according to whichever person has been asked.

Mayor Melon and Helen Blackburn

There is another distinction we think matters. Mayor Melon is a caricature. Helen Blackburn is a person. Draw Mayor Melon as grotesquely as you please. Give her an absurd voice. Put her in a ridiculous council chamber. Have watermelons fall from the ceiling if the joke requires it. Take something the real Mayor has said about rates, spending or council business and subject it to merciless ridicule. Helen Blackburn sought public office and was elected to it. Her decisions, statements, policies and performance in that office are legitimate subjects of criticism and satire. The Honking Goose would be in a rather peculiar position if it argued otherwise.

But the publication of her telephone number was different. It added nothing to the satire. No political argument was made more penetrating by readers knowing which numbers to press to reach Helen Blackburn personally. No council policy was exposed by it. No public statement was put into better context. What it did was create a means by which an online political argument could enter a person's private life.

Blackburn says abusive messages followed. She has since changed the number. That, for us, is where the line was crossed. Not because Mayor Melon looks like Helen Blackburn. Not because the cartoons are rude. Not because anonymous people made them. And not because political satire ought to be polite. The line was crossed because personally identifying information was published in circumstances where it allowed an online audience to contact the subject of the satire directly.

There is a considerable difference between making life uncomfortable for a politician and making private life potentially unliveable for the person who happens to be that politician. Satire is entitled to do the first. Publishing the means for strangers to intrude upon the second is something else.

What was said on the phone?

There is another part of this story where care is required. The anonymous creators of Bungleberg Studios have alleged that Blackburn telephoned them and demanded that the page be removed or the matter would be escalated to the Australian Federal Police. They further allege that she referred during that conversation to details concerning their families and careers and, on the creators' account, said their lives would be "completely ruined" if they did not comply. Blackburn denies saying their lives would be ruined. These are competing accounts of a private conversation. The Honking Goose was not on the call. We cannot independently establish what was said, and we make no finding about it.

Questions have also circulated online about how Blackburn discovered the identity of people behind an anonymous page. Blackburn has publicly said that a friend obtained the information through examination of metadata, material on other platforms and account ownership information, and sent it to her. She says no council resources were used. We have no evidence that council resources were used and do not suggest that they were. Neither suspicion nor repetition turns an allegation into fact.

Satire can be answered

There were other ways the satire itself could be answered. Blackburn could have laughed at it, disputed it, challenged its arguments, ignored it or, if particularly adventurous, satirised the satirists. She was under no obligation to do any of those things. Nor does any of that diminish her right to report conduct she believes is threatening, abusive or unlawful. But criticism and ridicule can be answered in the public arena. Having your contact details distributed to strangers is different. And confusing the two creates a danger for satire itself.

If Mayor Melon's cartoons and political mockery are treated as equivalent to publishing Helen Blackburn's personal information, an argument against the latter can too easily become an argument for suppressing the former. We should resist that.

Draw the line in the right place

Complaints have been made. Police investigations are continuing. Those processes should take their course. But we do not need their eventual findings to decide whether political satire is entitled to offend. It is. Nor should the medium determine the answer.

A cartoon is not inherently more abusive than an editorial. An AI-generated animation is not inherently less legitimate than ink on paper. An impersonation is not automatically bullying because the person being impersonated recognises herself. The boundary appears when attacking the public figure provides the means to intrude upon the private person. That distinction protects Helen Blackburn from conduct no elected official should be expected to tolerate. It also protects the people drawing cartoons of Helen Blackburn from the proposition that causing her offence is sufficient reason to stop. Because once offence becomes the test, the person with the greatest power to define unacceptable satire is the person being satirised. There would be something rather convenient about that. The Honking Goose has an obvious interest in saying so.

We intend to continue quoting people accurately, putting their words beside their actions, and pointing out the absurdities we find there. Others will draw cartoons. Make videos. Perform impressions. Invent characters. Write songs. Some will be hilarious. Some will be appalling.

Defend the cartoon. Defend the parody. Defend the right to be rude, unfair, tasteless and offensive about people exercising public power. But don't confuse any of those freedoms with a licence to provide strangers with access to the private person behind the public figure. Mayor Melon is fair game. Helen Blackburn's phone number isn't. For this Goose, that's where the line is.