The Tuesday Top 20

The old order fadeth. Sorta, anyway. The Prime Minister is top of the Crikey/Media Monitors chart for this week, the leader of the opposition is second – but John Howard is still hanging in at number three, writes Christian Kerr

But we can see the shape of things to come. Treasurer Wayne Swan is up 14 places to Number 4. Soon he’ll settle in at Three or Two.

And it’s impossible to imagine that Julia Gillard will be at Number 7 next week with the flood of patronising pieces that gush “Coo er gosh, we’ve got a woman as Acting PM”.

TW	Move	Type	Politician	Press	Radio	Television	Internet	Grand Total
1	0	PM	Kevin Rudd	2,145	9,859	4,736	4,677	21,417
2	1	Oppn Leader	Brendan Nelson	627	4,727	2,445	1,195	8,994
3	-1	ex PM	John Howard	1,070	1,506	467	2,399	5,442
4	14	Cabinet	Wayne Swan	927	1,882	1,730	679	5,219
5	4	Premier	Morris Iemma	536	2,656	851	665	4,708
6	-2	Shadow	Malcolm Turnbull	287	1,696	910	1,336	4,229
7	0	Deputy PM	Julia Gillard	382	1,156	1,062	1,094	3,694
8	-3	Backbench	Peter Costello	302	502	196	1,544	2,544
9	3	Cabinet	Peter Garrett	270	988	747	458	2,463
10	3	Cabinet	Penny Wong	209	1,104	679	281	2,273
11	-3	Shadow	Julie Bishop	211	771	447	628	2,057
12	16	Cabinet	Nicola Roxon	84	1,219	391	235	1,928
13	13	Premier	Anna Bligh	247	729	485	372	1,833
14	-8	Shadow	Tony Abbott	146	615	223	777	1,762
15	6	Premier	John Brumby	236	769	295	306	1,606
16	4	Shadow	Joe Hockey	91	605	78	461	1,235
17	2	Shadow	Andrew Robb	67	638	26	394	1,125
18	18	Cabinet	Tony Burke	70	711	88	81	950
19	5	Cabinet	Stephen Smith	152	460	36	229	877
20	-3	Party leader	Warren Truss	68	590	26	160	845

Brendan Nelson is yet to make an impact on the talkback chart, but given the reasons Morris Iemma is there that mightn’t necessarily be a bad thing.

Rank	Politician	Talkback
1	Kevin Rudd	620
2	John Howard	288
3	Morris Iemma	229
4	Wayne Swan	170
5	Julia Gillard	170

And as we bid farewell to the Howards from Kirribilli, we though we should have a cricketer as our celebrity control this week. Muttiah Muralitharan. Crazy name, crazy guy. Byeeeeee!