Another quiet week within the Federal Labor Party. Well at least The Australian will be able to eventually get the caucus count right because it looks like almost all of them will get around to declaring their hand publicly in the tit for tat “layoff Julia-layoff Kevin” roundabout.

Meanwhile the second luckiest politician in the world, Tony Abbott (Obama must take first prize given what’s happening in the Republican primaries), can completely forget about trying to work out a consistent line on budget cuts among his economic team as no-one is paying any attention anyway.

Oh yeah there’s an election in Queensland too, with the only question of real debate whether it’s possible that Campbell Newman won’t win his own seat in the coming easy LNP victory. And the Gonski report has still managed to get some coverage, although it was never going to be much of a circuit breaker for the Government as they’re not willing to commit to much of it, in particular the funding boost.

Nothing can stand in the way of the surplus now. Although nice among all the hand wringing to see one commentator pointing out that the reason that kids in some other countries are doing so much better than ours is because they work so much harder. Do we want our kids to be kids or robots?

Supposedly there’s some kind of leadership speculation, or perhaps it’s just everyone commenting on whether they like Kevin’s tea or not, now that you can get it on the supermarket shelves. Anyhoo, Tony Abbott a very rare distant third online.

So, the greatest Australian batsman of his generation, with some claim to being second only to Bradman overall, has been moved aside from the one day team, with now perhaps one or two test series left before the final curtain. His has been a fascinating career, statistics extraordinary on almost every level, but three Ashes defeats leaving him almost a Quixotic figure in the eyes of many.