The Tuesday Top 20

Faraway, so close. Peter Costello bumped Kevin Rudd out of the Number 2 spot in the Crikey/Media Monitors Top 20 for the week of 17-23 July – but if he wants to be PM rather than opposition leader, he’s got a long way to go. Howard had two and half times the media mentions.

Kevin Andrew’s jump up the charts wasn’t what the doctor ordered (Geddit?!?), Ian Macfarlane climbed thanks to the Ford focus (Geddit again?!?) and Bruce Baird made the Top 20 thanks to allegations that someone cooked the books (you’re fired – Ed.).

TW	Politician	Press	Radio	TV	Internet	Total
1 (0)	John Howard	894	13,279	5,565	7,055	26,793
2 (1)	Peter Costello	384	5,765	2,862	1,889	10,900
3 (-1)	Kevin Rudd	491	3,288	1,984	3,356	9,119
4 (11)	Kevin Andrews	227	3,109	1,210	999	5,545
5 (3)	Peter Beattie	131	2,564	988	1,614	5,297
6 (-2)	Philip Ruddock	143	1,931	1,129	1,449	4,652
7 (-1)	Mal Brough	97	1,553	200	1,531	3,381
8 (-1)	Alexander Downer	83	1,269	537	1,339	3,228
9 (0)	Morris Iemma	79	1,495	411	953	2,938
10 (-5)	Steve Bracks	105	844	414	1,337	2,700
11 (1)	Tony Abbott	104	1,112	773	661	2,650
12 (6)	Malcolm Turnbull	79	1,088	437	457	2,061
13 (-2)	Wayne Swan	79	883	434	480	1,876
14 (8)	Ian MacFarlane	44	1,180	182	338	1,744
15 (-1)	Joe Hockey	109	464	411	391	1,375
16 (-6)	Peter Garrett	48	1,009	84	192	1,333
17 (6)	Mark Vaile	36	914	9	161	1,120
18 (-1)	Julia Gillard	59	306	366	344	1,075
19 (-6)	Brendan Nelson	57	81	161	512	811
20 (15)	Bruce Baird	28	552	36	109	725

Indigenous matters kept Mal Brough in the talkback charts last week.

Rank	Politician	Talkback
1	John Howard	815
2	Kevin Rudd	293
3	Mal Brough	251
4	Peter Costello	247
5	Kevin Andrews	145

There’s more on the week’s issues at the Media Monitors site, but if you’ve been following affairs over the past week from Platform 9¾, Kevin Rudd’s lookalike would have come in at Number 4: