Paper cuts

IT is more in sorrow than anger that we take issue with Greg Hywood's attack on this organ yesterday.

IT is more in sorrow than anger that we take issue with Greg Hywood's attack on this organ yesterday.

In an email to his troops, the freshly minted acting chief executive of Fairfax Media defended The Age against a story in The Australian, opining, "They never write anything to assist us." Never, Mr Hywood? Come, come now. Join us for a short stroll down memory lane to last May, when this paper editorialised, "Paul Ramadge, editor-in-chief of The Age, has commendably consigned [Catherine] Deveny to the spike." What is that if not assistance, and emotional assistance at that? And then of course there was that time we, er, um . . . Moving along, Hywood spent 150 words laying into The Oz before reaching this conclusion: "Ignore their nonsense. I am." The Age's stablemate The Sydney Morning Herald, meanwhile, is keeping its chin up amid the upheaval, posting this cheery headline on its website: "Why worry yourself to death?" No, the article's not a list of suggested reasons, but it does appear in the Money section.

Katter matters

THE new paradigm was on display yesterday in the form of what was, even by Bob Katter's exacting standards, a thunderous press release going to town on the Australian Taxation Office. It begins: "Member for Kennedy Bob Katter has called on the Treasurer Wayne Swan to urgently review a decision by officials in the ATO to transfer or cancel more than 150 permanent and casual jobs from the Townsville Tax Office to Sydney's Parramatta Tax Office. 'The utter inhumanity and blind stupidity of the ATO decision, particularly in the lead-up to Christmas, serves a tremendous blow to hundreds of families,' said Mr Katter." But Katter understands the value of light and shade, not to mention a decent buttering up: "In his recent visit to Townsville, the Treasurer marvelled at the many projects along the Northern Australia Clean Energy Corridor. We have continually praised Treasurer Wayne Swan for this. I am confident we will succeed in bringing these projects to fruition; this is another reason to keep those ATO jobs in NQ." The next press release lobbed two hours later and opens thus: "Independent Member for Kennedy Bob Katter has welcomed Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan's show of Christmas spirit in saving more than 150 permanent and casual jobs at the Townsville Tax Office at risk of being axed or shifted to Sydney." As Katter's office remarked to Strewth, "Even Bob, renowned for moving at the lightning speed of a hungry crocodile, was humbled at the Treasurer's swift response."

Limits of love

AFTER that love fest, you may (or may not) be relieved to know everything was feeling far more ancien regime over on Sky News Agenda, where George Brandis (of Team Blue) and Craig Emerson (Team Red) exchanged views:

Brandis: "Craig, every man, every man and his dog in this country knows we're going to have a carbon tax."

Host David Lipson: "I'm sorry I've got to wrap you both up."

Emerson: "And you're lying, George."

Lipson: "I'm sorry, gentlemen."

Emerson: "You're lying, straight out lying."

Lipson: "I've got to wrap you both up, we're about to run out of time . . ."

Ashes to bashes

JUST when we were starting to fear Australia and round-ball sports no longer mix, along come reports of a skirmish between Ian Chappell and Ian Botham. The two well-matured titans of the cricket world had a proper, old-school dust-up in the carpark outside Adelaide Oval, one of those "What did you say?" scenarios that ended with the men being pulled apart by their colleagues. See our news pages for more, but we believe this line on the Herald Sun website says so much with so little: "The pair have a deep mutual resentment going back to 1977." So bugger the soccer, keep the cricket.

Peter principle

AS a fan (and, regrettably, practitioner) of newspaper corrections, and having touched this week on the gentle perversity of Hungarian humour, we will now combine both worlds. Here, in its entirety, is Stubborn misprint from Istvan Orkeny's majestic One Minute Stories: "Last Tuesday our paper reported that the Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded an honorary doctorate to a Hungarian scientist whose name, much to our regret, we mistakenly printed in the headline as Dr Peter Paul Paulpeter. Dr Peter Paul Paulpeter appeared erroneously in our article as well. The name of the distinguished physicist should have read Dr Peter Paul Paulpeter."

Wiki world turns

MALCOLM Turnbull blogged yesterday on the topic of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, starting with comparisons with the Spycatcher trial and moving on from there in carefully considered fashion. But even in the midst of such a dicey topic, Turnbull's drier-than-a-decent-martini sense of humour remained intact: "It is good to know that the keen Ivy League-trained intellects of American diplomats have picked up that [Silvio] Berlusconi has a penchant for young ladies."