Interest rates up – bank profits up – cost of living up – help us Albo help us! | First Dog on the Moon

First Dog on the Moon has turned the latest rate rise into a cartoon about being squeezed from every side. The panels line up three things: interest rates up, bank profits up, cost of living up. Then comes the punchline plea to the Prime Minister for help. The cartoon runs a day after the Reserve Bank lifted the cash rate for the fifth time this year. It leans on the strip's running joke of a small animal trying to survive news cycles that keep getting worse.

First Dog on the Moon is the pen name of Andrew Marlton, a cartoonist for Guardian Australia. His scratchy style and gloomy talking animals have covered Australian politics for more than a decade. The strip often lands the day after big economic news. Political cartoons have a long history in Australia. They take a complicated story and reduce it to one clear feeling. During a cost of living crunch, that feeling is usually exhaustion.

Cartoons like this are how many people make sense of dry economic news. One picture about rates and profits often says more than a page of numbers.