The dead cat bounce has become a definite trend upwards for the Government in the polls, still well behind but with all the numbers moving in the right direction, while Tony Abbott’s personal numbers continued moving in the wrong direction.

The impasse on asylum seekers seems at the moment to be doing more damage to the Opposition, and many commentators are suggesting the repeal call on the mining tax is becoming more of a negative for Tony Abbott as well. The Government’s repetitive messaging painting Abbott as a grim opportunist plus the P.M. grabbing the chance to get industrial relations back as a central topic seems to have contributed, but in the polls the Opposition remains well ahead and the Labor Party’s primary vote remains historically low.

The passing of the carbon tax saw the Government and Greens battling each other once again to take all the credit, when in fact the two people that really made it happen (plus adding the only bit of Henry tax reform that has actually been legislated) are named Oakeshott and Windsor, Windsor also copping some from his dear friends the Nationals as they claim he has no influence on the Murray Darling Basin plans or coal seam gas. If he stands, there’ll undoubtedly be a shedload of love flying around in the next campaign for New England.

The other big mover this week was Doug Cameron, who does love a bit of media, whether it’s thumping away at the ALP hierarchy on totemic left issues like gay marriage in the past, or relishing the chance to rhetorically bash a managing director in Senate Estimates as he did this week.

The bad news of the week for the Government was the ever more bizarre Australia Network tender, which has now been suspended completely, the whole process looking ridiculously politicised and pushing Stephen Conroy up into the list while also keeping Kevin Rudd in the top five – despite some journos having to admit the prospect of a Rudd challenge for the leadership anytime soon is all but fantastical. That Tele front page is looking a wee bit silly now.

You might say the nine months of monotonously repeated Dr No lines from the Government on Tony Abbott has finally had the effect of water upon a stone in online social media, but the highly critical recent analysis of Abbott from a number of Press Gallery heavyweights has probably had more effect amongst the Twitterati, while Julia Gillard remains enemy number one by the length of the straight on talkback.

A name that probably won’t be remembered very long by the vast majority of us, although the always subtle LaToya effectively summed up the feelings of many Jackson fans with her tweet: VICTORY!!!!!!