1. 2023
  2. Political Cartoonist of the Year 2023

Small Talk/Big Issue

Fiona Katauskas
The Guardian Australia

Climate change was regularly in the news in 2023. Fiona Katauskas acknowledges a global shift in thinking when discussing something as innocuous as the weather, which was considered a ‘safe’ topic of conversation throughout most of the twentieth century. In this cartoon, Katauskas’s characters wear 1970s clothing in the first frame, placing them in a time just before the impact of climate change was widely recognised.

Entitled 'A Brief history of talking about the weather', the first panel, 'Then...' shows two people having a conversation, the second panel, 'Now' has the same two people in distress holding up their phones.