walkley boycott
(Image: Zennie/Private Media)

The Walkley Foundation will soon announce changes to its sponsorship policy, it says, capping off a week that saw some of the publishing industry’s most decorated cartoonists boycott the Walkley Awards as a result of its partnership with Ampol. 

The declaration was made in a statement issued by the Walkley Foundation on Saturday, in the wake of mounting calls made by cartoonists from across the news business for the journalism non-profit to stop taking donations from major polluters. 

The foundation’s board, chaired by the ABC’s Adele Ferguson, said it “acknowledged” the concerns aired by cartoonists about Ampol’s sponsorship of the awards night and “hope to welcome them back” in future years. 

The statement said the foundation, whose founder William Gaston Walkley also founded Ampol in 1956, is “in the final stages” of finalising a new sponsorship policy. A spokesperson for the Walkley Foundation declined to comment further.

The shared foundations of the two organisations was offered renewed focus in an op-ed by Belinda Noble, the founder of communications-focused climate advocacy group Comms Declare, just days earlier. 

In it, she wrote the Walkley Foundation’s decision not to include a climate reporting category in its awards shake-up earlier this year was symbolic of the influence “big oil” still has on the foundation, which she said was being used “as a tool of the old power structures” that fuel climate change and thwart critical climate journalism. 

The article triggered a wave of support for a boycott of the foundation’s awards, led by cartoonists. 

In a blog post on Wednesday, The Saturday Paper’s cartoonist Jon Kudelka wrote that he would bow out of the awards this year. He wrote that “people correctly raise an eyebrow” at the financial influence vested interests may have on politicians, and would be right to be critical of the influence that fossil fuel companies could have on the news media. 

“Whether this sponsorship influences journos or not, people seeing a bunch of allegedly well-informed media types hobnobbing on a fossil fuel company’s dime makes people think well they must think this isn’t so bad so maybe it isn’t (spoiler alert: it is),” he wrote.

Other cartoonists quickly followed. Megan Herbert, a cartoonist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, said in a statement that she sought an explanation from the foundation before walking away, only to hear back with a response she said indicated Ampol’s sponsorship would go ahead while the foundation reviewed its sponsorship policy. 

Guardian Australia cartoonist First Dog on the Moon will also swerve the awards this year as a result of the sponsorship, along with The Australian Financial Review’s David Rowe, The Age’s Matt Golding, and others, including Fiona Katauskas and Glen Le Lievre.

The Walkley Foundation’s prestigious awards night isn’t the only journalism event to become the subject of terse criticism over its willingness to take money from fossil fuel giants. Last year, the federal parliamentary press gallery was met with protest after accepting the patronage of fossil fuel companies for its Midwinter Ball, before shutting the door on all sponsors this year. 

Last year’s headline sponsorship by Shell and Woodside drew criticism from Senator David Pocock and calls for a boycott by Greens senators Larissa Waters and Jordon Steele-John. The event itself was criticised by then-Greens-now-independent Senator Lidia Thorpe, who called attendees “fossil fools”, and Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young wore a dress adorned with the words “end coal and gas”.

Hanson-Young and other members of the crossbench welcomed the decision when it was announced in April, even if the move to roll out a blanket ban, rather than limiting it to fossil fuel companies, was an “interesting” one. 

“It’s a win for those of us and the community who are frustrated at the greenwashing of the fossil fuel industry,” Hanson-Young told Crikey at the time. “I think there’s a big debate about quality of journalism in Australia, and the press need to and do play an important role in holding power to account, and the press gallery ball is an important part of the political ecosystem.”