Press goes (Lady) Gaga over carbon tax

Nine of the top ten can be strictly related to the carbon price announcement on Sunday, the only smoky being Joe Ludwig, Kevin Rudd only appearing that high in the list because of all the collateral mentions of his failed CPRS. Can you spot the missing name? Greg Hunt, clearly leaving most of the running to his leader, although he did make a few attempts to defend “direct action”, which the Government seems to have stolen half of anyway.

Julia Gillard meanwhile has been wall to wall in the broadcast media dropping in on just about everyone with a microphone, except our man on Struggle Street, perhaps because she couldn’t guarantee she wouldn’t be five minutes late. Meanwhile the Government cops a Worst. Poll. Ever. And Tony Abbott seriously pushes for a Labor backbencher to cross the floor. Well they might if you offer them the prime ministership Tony … which of course has an equal likelihood of happening.

So we now enter a year of shadow boxing on the carbon price, in which nothing will change no matter how much breast beating goes on and hopefully some other economic issues, like the long overdue tax reform snuck in as part of the package, our response to the impending European sovereign defaults, productivity, infrastructure and the NBN might get a bit of a look in with the media. We can only hope.

The personal attacks on Julia Gillard on talkback have ramped up again in the past few days, with some callers not too interested in the detail but really not liking the messenger, while Tony Abbott continues to get plenty of mentions in social media (data provided to us by Brandtology), again many focusing on his perceived personal shortcomings.

For all those silly people decrying the death of serious news, take this! Lady Gaga received almost three times as much television coverage this week as Bob Brown and Wayne Swan combined. We report — you decide.