The launch of Senator Cory Bernardi’s book Conservative Revolution (you would have thought that a fundamental tenet of being conservative would be to oppose revolutions of any description, but anyhoo … ) has led to an unsurprising storm of comment on social media and plenty of public criticism from Labor, the Greens and some in his own party. Most of the criticism surrounded his comments about abortion and “non-standard” families. The silence from Cabinet ministers so far has been deafening.

The only other issue gaining coverage in the first and traditionally quietest week of the year was asylum seekers, with coverage of the turning around of boats all being done from Indonesia, with the government announcing there would be even less information flowing from them from now on. There were also claims that the government would use lifeboats to return asylum seekers whose vessels were unsafe.

Otherwise the expected jumps for state premiers, which had more to do with the lack of federal news and a nice peaceful week for the treasurer and the leader of the National Party, who barely troubled the scorers. Reminds us of those days when former deputy PM Doug Anthony “ran” the country from his holiday caravan on the far north coast of New South Wales.

Crikey Political Index January 1-8

State leaders fill the void, although Tony Abbott actually increases from last index of 2013, and Bernardi and Morrison interestingly nowhere to be heard.

Talkback top five

No surprises that within a couple of days Cory Bernardi has racked up a few thousand overwhelmingly unfriendly comments on the microblogs.

Social media top five

Nigella was back out there, with a brave face, some leftover turkey recipes and a large amount of recovery chocolate.

Comparisons on media mentions