Crikey Political Index 5-11 Mar 08

The content may be average but the volume is starting to look Leaderish for Brendan Nelson, clearly working on the “they’ll love me once they know me” angle. Brendan Obama, anyone?

While Vaile of the desert troops back to boring old Canberra cursing his electorate for having the indecency to re-elect him and thinking how much smarter that little Johnny really was, Joe Hockey has passed up the most (only) promising job in Liberal politics – or did it pass him up?

Meanwhile, the side that’s actually running the place hit its first road bump as the PM danced around the fact they’re going to have to raise the ongoing carers’ allowance if they want to dump the annual wodge of cash.

TW

Move

Position

Politician

Press

Radio

Television

Internet

Grand Total

1

0

PM

Kevin Rudd

1,590

7,124

4,518

11,850

25,082

2

0

Opp Leader

Brendan Nelson

631

4,043

2,179

4,353

11,206

3

1

Cabinet

Wayne Swan

395

1,565

962

2,014

4,936

4

-1

Premier

Morris Iemma

338

1,831

374

2,070

4,613

5

5

ex PM

John Howard

460

1,573

511

1,906

4,450

6

2

Cabinet

Julia Gillard

190

1,417

522

2,099

4,228

7

2

Shadow

Malcolm Turnbull

241

1,494

1,467

964

4,166

8

3

Cabinet

Stephen Smith

173

1,351

1,016

1,608

4,148

9

26

Backbench

Mark Vaile

255

1,944

924

660

3,783

10

-5

Cabinet

Nicola Roxon

106

1,475

474

843

2,898

11

3

Cabinet

Joel Fitzgibbon

91

1,048

172

1,380

2,691

12

0

Cabinet

Jenny Macklin

122

1,052

276

1,195

2,645

13

15

Shadow

Joe Hockey

133

1,271

170

929

2,503

14

-7

Premier

Anna Bligh

152

595

134

1,526

2,407

15

11

Shadow

Tony Abbott

63

825

406

901

2,195

16

9

Backbench

Peter Costello

232

465

215

898

1,810

17

1

Shadow

Julie Bishop

146

578

260

780

1,764

18

4

Cabinet

Tony Burke

74

1,006

304

367

1,751

19

11

Shadow

Christopher Pyne

131

503

608

498

1,740

20

-1

Cabinet

Anthony Albanese

59

692

198

784

1,733

Talkback Top Five

As Morris Iemma longs to drift off the list, Jenny Macklin copped plenty over carers, as did her boss and successor as deputy.

Rank

Politician

Talkback

1

Kevin Rudd

701

2

Jenny Macklin

250

3

Julia Gillard

161

4

John Howard

106

5

Morris Iemma

89

And our celebrity control sample of the week: Nothing excites the media like conflict, another test of the “any publicity is good publicity” maxim for the US Democrats.

Hillary Clinton

189

1,416

1,012

1,531

4,148

There’s more on the Media Monitors website.