Will it be Kevin ’11? Ignore the political “experts” in today’s papers who say Kevin Rudd cannot make a comeback. As Lazarus himself, John Howard, explained on Sky TV this morning, it’s all about arithmetic. Or, as others have put it, it’s all about ministers hanging on to those big white cars

If the numbers keep telling Labor MPs they can hold onto government (or their seats) with Rudd as leader, then the party’s powerbrokers will eventually be flattened in the stampede. And right now the numbers do show that. — Paul Barry (read the full article here)

ASIO boss: terror threat still real. The usually reclusive head of Australia’s top spy agency has broken his silence to combat criticism that ASIO is overfunded, unaccountable and endowed with excessive powers.

In his first broadcast interview, ASIO director-general David Irvine told the ABC that, a decade after the September 11 attacks, his organisation is investigating more potential terror threats than ever before. He also fears a Norway-style shooting rampage could happen in Australia. — Matthew Knott (read the full article here)

Pratt’s widow, mistress fight for fortune. Model and former escort Madison Ashton is taking legal action against Richard Pratt’s widow, Melbourne socialite and arts patron Jeanne Pratt, in a bid to score a slice of his $5 billion estate. In documents lodged with the NSW Supreme Court, Ashton, 37, claims that Pratt had agreed to pay her an annual retainer of $500,000, buy her a Mercedes-Benz, cover her annual rent bill and organise trust funds, worth $2.5 million each, for her children.

Jeanne Pratt’s legal team will argue that Pratt had settled all agreements to pay Ashton before he died of prostate cancer in 2009. The case begins in the NSW Supreme Court today. — The Power Index (read the full article here)