A tipster tells us that former prime minister John Howard has been spotted in Cairns and wondered why the media hadn’t reported on him campaigning. It’s because he’s not campaigning (well, not officially). Howard is soaking up the rays in the far north at a conference of real estate agents, as keynote speaker at the First National Real Estate Convention in Cairns. With current PM Malcolm Turnbull telling the people’s forum in Sydney last week that we should be listening to real estate agents as part of his attack on Labor’s negative gearing policy, there’s little doubt what the topic of conversation was.