Media personalities withdraw 2023 Walkleys entries in protest of fossil fuel sponsorship

This week, cartoonist Jon Kudelka published a blog post on his website titled Why I’m not entering the Walkleys this year. Kudelka cites the close ties that fossil fuel company, Ampol, has with the awards as the reason for his decision. 

The Walkley Awards were launched in 1956 by Ampol Petroleum founder Sir William Gaston Walkley, after a partnership with the Australian Journalists’ Association. The full history of Ampol’s connection with the awards is detailed on the Walkleys website.

In May, an overhaul of the annual awards saw the Walkleys reinstate the international journalism category as well as other additions for specialist and explanatory journalism. As Kudelka writes, “while there was a call for climate reporting to have its own award category, it didn’t make the cut.”

He continues, “With the degradation of the environment being the greatest scientific, economic, and moral issue of our time, this seems like a missed opportunity, and to put it bluntly, with fossil fuels being in the vanguard of the problem and a fossil fuel company being a major sponsor of the awards, it’s not unreasonable to wonder if there might be a causal link there. Whether there is or not, and I’m a cartoonist not an investigative journalist so who can say, it looks bad.”

After posting the blog on socials, other members of the Australian media industry – including Greg Jericho, Rachel Withers, Fiona Katauskas, First Dog On The Moon, Mat Golding, and Glen LeLievre – have either withdrawn their entries or written that they will not enter this year’s awards.

Concluding the post, Kudelka writes that “Anyway, for the record, I probably would have entered the cartoon below. It’s about the government’s great deal of sound and fury whilst inadequately addressing the housing crisis and leaving welfare below the poverty line even though they could choose not to, but the approach is easily mapped on to their approach to climate as well.”

Jon Kudelka for The Saturday Paper, May 6 2023

See Also: Walkley Awards winners 2022: ABC’s Four Corners starred with two major awards