Today’s Australian carries an op-ed piece by BRW editor Robert Skeffington on the need to cut taxes for the wealthy. His disdain for egalitarianism is backed by this admonition: “Remember the cautionary words of Abraham Lincoln 150 years ago, when he said: ‘You cannot make a poor man rich by making a rich man poor.'”

Trouble is, he didn’t say it. As numerous sources will attest – see, for example, the Historic Preservation Agency of the state of Illinois and Abraham Lincoln Online – the “cannot” aphorisms often attributed to Lincoln are a 20th century fabrication written by William Boetcker in 1942. This one is usually quoted as “You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich”; I don’t know where Skeffington got his version, but it could be from this 1999 speech by a British Conservative MP, the aptly-named Michael Fabricant.

Between them,The Oz and BRW should be able to do better.