Rudd stays in the leadership spotlight

While most of the other supposed contenders for the top job drifted well down the list this week, one K Rudd stayed well in the top five, staying in the leadership spotlight after a poll put him 30 points ahead of his boss as preferred Prime Minister and with a good chance of winning an election against Tony Abbott. Even though most of those press gallery pundits know he has a snowball’s chance of getting the votes where he really needs them, the ALP Caucus, polls like that make for plenty of entertaining if futile speculation.

Nick Xenophon moves up the list for what some might say was a clear abuse of parliamentary privilege and a very dangerous precedent, but of course we wouldn’t opinionate like that in this column. Greg Hunt the main mover for obvious reason, but perhaps more interesting than his appearance this week has been his quietness for the past couple of months.

Stephen Conroy moves up thanks to the still pretty vague media inquiry as some of us wonder what it’s meant to achieve, other than a bit of News Ltd bashing? Let’s be real, Australians now have far more news media options available than ever before, and if they don’t choose to exercise those options, well … that’s their choice.

The Malaysia Solution and leadership woes were regular topics of online comments about Julia Gillard. Tony Abbott thinks Mr Bean should play him in a television series and there were many online comments in agreement.

A long awaited grand slam win for an Australian woman and what a fine one it was. An impressive and graceful win over the not so charming Serena Williams.