Had I false teeth, they would have popped out in surprise when I read The Australian’s editorial praising Labor’s scheme to broaden tax-funded dental treatment and means-test it, without a single mention of “CLASS WAR!” (“A dental sweetener with a bite” 30/8). Also gobsmacking were some other opinion pieces which, if not exactly full of praise for the government, were at least fainter in their damnation than usual. Has the paper been secretly taken over by the left-wing inner-city bleeding-hearts it has been warning us about?

Whatever the cause, it’s a welcome relief from the years of monotonous bludgeoning The Australian has been giving the government with whatever blunt object comes to hand, and it is to be hoped that a new phase of fair and balanced journalism is to come.

P.S. Chris Mitchell must have been off sick that day – the next it was business as usual.

The Australian’s editorial (“Prime Minister finally confronts AWU questions”, 24/8) states that the PM “has continued to conflate serious reporting of these events with a malicious online smear campaign against her. She has also attacked The Australian.” Even a cursory glance at many of the hundreds of blog comments published daily on The Australian’s website demonstrates that she has good reason to do so.

The Australian’s apology to the PM (23/8) for publishing potentially defamatory material was not only terse and ungracious but also insincere, as it published and then retracted the exact same allegations five years ago. That is not an “error”, it is something that needs an explanation.

In complaining that he has been misquoted, Mark Latham (Letters, 24/8) misunderstands the Australian’s Cut & Paste column. Its stock in trade is taking things out of context; if it had to quote its victims accurately, it would have nothing left to say.

No, Doug Hurst (Letters, 24/8), The Australian did not earn the tag “hate media” for “regular reporting of facts without regard for…leftist sensitivities” but for relentless right-wing campaigning without regard for balance or, as we have seen recently, truthfulness. Like any accurate nickname, it has stuck, unlike the copycat epithet “luvvies”, which lacks both wit and sting.

To diminish Julian Assange’s fear of being extradited, The Australian’s editorial informs us that “Sweden is not Equatorial Guinea” (18/8). Indeed; as far as I know Equatorial Guinea has never participated in “extraordinary rendition” – the extra-judicial U.S. kidnapping and sometimes torture of suspects – as Sweden has on several occasions. As it is now clear that both the U.S. and Australian governments have been lying about intentions to prosecute Assange, his reluctance to walk into a trap hardly justifies the label of cowardice.