This week’s Canberra Top 40

Turnbull with a bullet
It’s Malcolm Turnbull with a bullet – several bullets. He shot
his mouth off, shot himself in the foot and shot up the charts.

Yes, Mr T is the smash hit of last week’s Canberra Top 40. He
leapt up 95 – count’em – places to trail just behind the two party
leaders and Mr Two Minute Warning himself, Foreign Minister Alexander
Downer, in media monitor Rehame’s list of mentions our pols received
last week.

Turnbull is our winner because he isn’t even an MP. His only
possible rival is Tasmanian Labor backbencher Harry Quick who was
propelled an amazing 136 places from 144 to eight after vigorously
putting the boot into Richard Butler.

Labor is still on a roll with the Free Trade Agreement, with Stephen Conroy coming in at number 11.

However, this week’s number two, Mark Latham, should make sure that top
ten newcomer Craig Emerson doesn’t cost him the number one spot come
election day.

Emerson is there as Shadow Industrial Relations Minister – and with the
FTA out of the way, Labor’s industrial relations policy and backward
approach on workplace agreements has handed the Prime Minister plenty
of material for a scare campaign.

The PM probably had them practising in the Government Party Room last
week. “Repeat after me: ‘If Labor is in power in every
state and every territory and in Canberra the unions will run riot’.”

Who’s hot, who’s not: The Rehame Top 40 Pols

Christian Kerr can be contacted at christian @crikey.com.au