Newspapers find a way of having the last word where they can. Yesterday, The Australian’s Glenn Milne wrote about arts funding, picking away at the lingering reputation of Paul Keating as patron and saint to creative Australia. ”If artistic truth really does matter in the upcoming election, the sector deserves better than to be reduced in the hands of people such as Keating to yet another manifestation of Howard hating,” he wrote.

Keating replied in today’s letters section of the national broadsheet, an event of sufficient moment for The Australian to fillet portions of the letter for a news story, allowing Milne, the man Keating proudly christened ”The Poison Dwarf”, to add further commentary to the former PM’s rebuttal.

And on the letters pages, the paper’s editors exercised their prerogative to censor and removed the brief, final paragraph of the Keating letter.

It read:

And besides, they know what a sensitive cultured person Milne is by his infamous, intolerant lunge at Stephen Mayne during last year’s journalism awards. Hardly an inspiration for the arts.

So now you know.