The changing of the guard on Spring Street – and other state pollies trying to crash the party – means we’ve got a very different list of acts in the Crikey/Media Monitors Top 20.

The birthday boy, however – John Howard – still remained well in front with more than 20,000 mentions in the meeja. The best present he will have got is the fact that the week’s biggest loser was Peter Costello, who dropped five places down the charts.

The talkback charts provided better news for the Treasurer, who scraped in at Number 5, while Mal Brough dropped out for the first time since the Indigenous intervention plan was announced.

TW

Politician

Press

Radio

Television

Internet

Total

1

John Howard

726

7,786

5,106

7,048

20,666

2

Steve Bracks

383

6,575

2,584

1,949

11,491

3

Kevin Rudd

471

3,628

3,135

3,803

11,037

4

Kevin Andrews

175

4,432

1,686

1,662

7,955

5

Peter Beattie

236

2,061

1,340

1,937

5,574

6

John Brumby

172

2,861

1,743

644

5,420

7

Peter Costello

239

1,588

1,218

2,138

5,183

8

Philip Ruddock

66

863

193

1,669

2,791

9

Malcolm Turnbull

105

1,278

617

704

2,704

10

Alexander Downer

59

858

260

1,363

2,540

11

Mal Brough

64

898

148

1,040

2,150

12

Morris Iemma

98

1,029

121

850

2,098

13

Tony Abbott

89

521

218

664

1,492

14

Rob Hulls

47

583

508

213

1,351

15

Wayne Swan

51

644

106

545

1,346

16

Alan Carpenter

285

459

38

267

1,049

17

Brendan Nelson

34

230

112

538

914

18

Ian Macfarlane

80

385

16

376

857

19

Mike Rann

46

474

81

240

841

20

Mark Vaile

44

261

8

305

618