The Tuesday Top 20

Poor old Dollar Sweetie! As a reward for his bravery last week, he’s knocked Kevin Rudd down a slot to come in at Number Two in the Crikey/Media Monitors Top 20 for the very first time – but he’s still scoring less than half the media mentions of the PM.

New Queensland Premier Anna Bligh follows them at No. 4 – a very Peter Beattie level – but will be hard pressed to maintain those sorts of rankings. As will the media tart himself, this week our No. 5.

The rest of the list is pretty predictable, including the presence at Number 17 of the nation’s highest profile candidate, Maxine McKew.

TW	Move	Type	Politician	Press	Radio	TV	Internet	Total
1	0	Federal	John Howard	1,101	20,698	10,414	8,956	41,169
2	2	Federal	Peter Costello	563	8,903	4,153	3,063	16,682
3	-1	Federal	Kevin Rudd	638	7,056	2,406	5,269	15,369
4	20	Federal	Anna Bligh	297	5,213	4,122	1,075	10,707
5	1	State	Peter Beattie	379	4,310	3,683	2,046	10,418
6	-3	Federal	Alexander Downer	216	4,719	2,345	2,219	9,499
7	2	Federal	Malcolm Turnbull	187	3,438	1,342	1,546	6,513
8	2	Federal	Tony Abbott	122	2,593	1,520	1,018	5,253
9	4	Federal	Julia Gillard	108	2,449	1,056	936	4,549
10	8	Federal	Joe Hockey	147	1,684	871	676	3,378
11	-6	State	Morris Iemma	151	1,262	248	1,194	2,855
12	-4	Federal	Peter McGauran	44	763	177	1,404	2,388
13	-1	State	John Brumby	134	1,102	304	809	2,349
14	0	Federal	Kevin Andrews	56	591	68	1,110	1,825
15	2	Federal	Wayne Swan	62	1,186	272	304	1,824
16	16	State	Steve Bracks	104	1,009	198	482	1,793
17	11	Federal	Maxine McKew	46	566	694	259	1,565
18	-3	Federal	Brendan Nelson	69	420	263	548	1,300
19	8	Federal	Helen Coonan	70	695	83	407	1,255
20	-13	Federal	Mark Vaile	30	433	175	577	1,215

The talkback charts have a Queensland flavour this week, but the Prime Minister continues to dominate. He’s had plenty of love from the talkback callers during his recent ups and downs – and plenty of “he has to stay so we can see him lose” comments.

Rank	Politician	Talkback
1	John Howard	2,477
2	Kevin Rudd	1,475
3	Peter Costello	847
4	Peter Beattie	717
5	Anna Bligh	557

And the real world – or the world outside politics, anyway? Look at the mentions of poor Madeleine McCann. The story will only continue to boom as punters try to avoid the phoney election campaign and the grand final season.