Was it something we said? Back-page Bob bites back at The Australian's dark campaign

Bob's Back Page column is rather strident in the summer edition of Green magazine:

RUPERT'S Rot. Our press conference announcing the Greens' early agreement to support Gillard's Labor rather than Abbot's [sic] Coalition saw three journo's [sic] from The Australian in a fusillade of hostile questions. Front page, this destructive, low-circulation rag had already called for a new election. So I fired (please excuse the war-like reference) back. Ean Higgins has since written to me -- is he the Editor who called for the Greens to be "destroyed"? -- asking, rather plaintively, if I am running a campaign against The Australian! No, just standing up to you Ean, I replied. Now there is a much wider public debate about The Australian's censorious, biased, unethical, pro-plutocracy, anti-democracy, self-serving impact on the nation's affairs. That's a good thing. And former Murdoch editor Bruce Guthrie's new book Man Bites Murdoch will throw some much-needed light into News Ltd's darker crevices.

The Australian's editorial on September 9:

WE wear Senator Brown's criticism with pride. We believe he and his Green colleagues are hypocrites; that they are bad for the nation; and that they should be destroyed at the ballot box.

Former NSW treasurer Michael Costa talks to 2GB's Ray Hadley yesterday about his essay in The Australian Literary Review this week:

THE Greens aren't about sensible policy. The problem with any party that seeks to engage with the Greens is that you can never win that engagement. Ultimately they don't have to be responsible for their comments and their actions. All they're about is throwing out the net and capturing whichever ill-informed people they can. I've seen their policies on things like law and order and taxation, and these are policies that are way out of kilter with mainstream Australia.

Paul Sheehan in The Sydney Morning Herald on Monday:

THE Greens are a fraudulent brand. There are not enough letters of the alphabet to encompass the image fraud this party is perpetrating on the electorate. It is simply not a party preoccupied with the environment.

John Howard's Brutopia. Ross Gittins in the SMH yesterday:

THE gap between rich and poor widened markedly between 2004 and 2008 -- essentially the Howard government's last years.

John Black in The Australian Financial Review picks up the story:

INEQUALITY as measured by the unemployment gap between rich and poor regions has blown out from the 1.8 per cent under John Howard in November 2007 to 2.6 per cent in October 2010. Rich voters are doing relatively well out of the Gillard minority government. Middle-income earners remain where they were in mid-2009, and the poor are even more badly off than in mid-2009.

Gillard's Brutopia? Let's not be hasty, says Gittins:

AND over just the past four years the shares of the four bottom fifths fell by about 0.5 percentage points each, allowing the share of the top fifth to rise by two percentage points. Why this sudden deterioration? No one can say with any certainty.

Playing favourites. The SMH's sub-editors yesterday:

FORMER Keating minister to take Labor presidency (page 3)

Abbott stands by his man as Liberals go Nutt (page 7)

And on the SMH's front page, Tony Abbott consults:

THE conservative think-tank the Menzies Research Centre . . .

While Adele Horin quotes the adjectivally challenged:

THE Australia Institute . . .

Which, predictably, finds that:

ORTHODOX economics is based on the assumption that all adults act rationally, like human calculators. The survey paints a different picture.

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