The Press Gallery were awfully excited to start the Parliamentary year, convinced almost to a person that there will be a challenge within months. They may well be right, but I can’t help remembering the comment attributed to a Minister in Barry Cassidy’s book explaining why they knifed Kevin Rudd “we weren’t worried he would lose the election, we were worried he would win it”. There still may be quite a few MPs who would rather lose their seats than go back. Meanwhile Pokies reform is now all but forgotten as it doesn’t suit either of the major parties interests, and the independents lined up to give their two cents on the Labor leadership.

So far it looks like the economy may get a decent run in politics this year, we don’t think anyone will be confessing to be not that interested in economics, no matter what the truth of Australia’s current party leaderships’ core interests are. And did the RBA hold fire this week because they knew it wouldn’t be passed on and are waiting for a 50 basis point cut to really put the pressure on the banks? Funny how nothing changing these days is reported as an insult to homeowners.

Finally the PM has got ahead of Tony Abbott in online fora. Twitter conversations don’t think Rudd stands a chance in challenging Gillard, some tweets even described it as the end of the line if Rudd replaced Gillard. There was also support for Rudd describing him as not the tyrant he’s been made out to be, but not much love for either Rudd or Gillard on talkback.

Plenty of criticism of how long it’s taken to officially ban Contador for his positive drug test (so long that he’ll actually be back racing within six months), but Cadel Evans among others was quick to spin about how far ahead cycling is than other sports in catching the cheats. I don’t know how Cadel knows that lots of people in other sports are cheating, but there you go.