In Canberra, the relationship with Beijing is a matter of extremely careful calibration - and especially so for the Mandarin-speaking Mr Rudd, who has long been sensitive to the 'Manchurian candidate' jibe.

No doubt wishing to play on this, the opposition has been calling on him to take a tougher line over Mr Hu's detention, and to publicly voice his concerns to China. As they have delighted in pointing out, he has the linguistic skills to do so.

But speaking to an ABC reporter in Italy, all Mr Rudd would say was that his government was moving 'calmly, methodically, and step by step' - which happens to be a pretty neat summation of his governing philosophy. (When Mr Rudd was asked about asylum seekers earlier this week in Malaysia, he offered the same formulation, saying it was being dealt with in a 'methodical, calm, effective way.')

Certainly, the relationship with China is vital, especially when the Australian economy is teetering on the brink of a technical recession. Only this week, the Reserve Bank of Australia cited the strengthening of the Chinese economy as a key factor in its decision to keep interest rates on hold.

Still, it is wrong to argue that Australia's prosperity is solely China's gift, the modern-day variant of Donald Horne's 'Lucky Country' argument back at the start of the 1960s that Australia's status as a resources powerhouse helped compensate for unimaginative political leadership ('Australia is a lucky country, run by second-rate people who share its luck,' is his book's most ringing quote).

After all, the resources boom really only kicked in around 2003, and Australia has enjoyed 17 years of economic growth. Similarly, the key market for Australian coal is Japan rather than China.

So is the Rudd government being too meek in its dealings with China, over the Hu case and in general, and are the Chinese taking advantage of this timidity?

This is the view of Greg Sheridan, the foreign editor of The Australian: "There is an air of contempt in the way the Chinese authorities have failed to respond to Australian government requests for information and for consular access to Mr Hu until today.

"What does the much touted Australia-China relationship add up to if Beijing treats Canberra with such conspicuous discourtesy and indifference?"

In recent weeks, we have heard Mr Rudd speak Spanish and Italian in public. But don't expect to hear that Latin location, Civis Romanus Sum, any time soon.

Both underscore how the culture of Australian cricket is changing, and why the Australians are no longer the outfit they once were. They serve as reminders that the comparative decline of Australian cricket is not limited to the exodus of playing legends but extends to its off-field philosophy and dressing room culture.

The focus naturally has been on the absence of Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Adam Gilchrist, Justin Langer and Matthew Hayden. But something else is missing, as well: the sheer bloody-mindedness of the Border years, and the austerity and discipline of the Waugh era. But the winning Australian cricket culture been also contaminated by the fripperies of Australia's celebrity culture, as the fear factor has come to vie with the celebrity X Factor.

In this new celebritocracy, Michael Clarke and Lara Bingle are obviously cast as Posh and Becks; Brett Lee is celebrated as much for his Bollywood melodies as his chin music; and Mitchell Johnson achieves almost as much fame as the torso of the 'Men of Cricket' calendar as the tormentor of visiting batsmen. After being sent home from England in disgrace, Andrew Symonds meets the televisual requirements of the age by seeking prime-time, public redemption: a soft-focus confessional on Sixty Minutes.

As Jessica Bratich reminds us, the WAGs - wives and girlfriends - have also come to enjoy a much higher public profile, which is sometimes more Lads mag than Ladies pavilion. In announcing his retirement, Matthew Hayden spoke wistfully of the "brothers of the Baggy Green". But the WAGs have encroached on this male dominion.

Ashes winning captains of recent vintage have sought to reinforce the team's rich cultural heritage. Steve Waugh heightened the veneration of the Baggy Green, a surprisingly recent "tradition," by ordering every player to wear it during the side's first fielding session. Then there have been those graveside visits to Gallipoli and other European battlefields where Australian diggers shed their blood en route to Britain, and the quasi-religious significance of the team song, Under the Southern Cross, which is belted out in the dressing room at the conclusion of every victory.

This high holy ritual became the focus of a dressing room spat at the end of the home series against the South Africans, when Simon Katich took exception to Michael Clarke reportedly wanting to hurry up the singing of the song so he could leave the dressing room. Traditionalists saw it as powerfully emblematic: a clash of cricketing civilisations, in which the old rubbed up against the new. Simon Katich was cast as the preserver of traditions.

Of course, it would be foolish to write off the Australians as a bunch of starry-eyed softies. Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey remain some of the most serious-minded of modern-day cricketers. And the great blonded one himself, Shane Warne, wasn't exactly a shrinking violet on the celebrity circuit.

But there is a strong sense that the Australians are not as single-minded as once they were, and therefore should not be feared to anywhere near the same extent. Ask yourself which one would you rather face. Steve Waugh in his fanatical pomp? Or Michael Clarke in those fantastical designer pants?

We have entered a new era in which Australian cricket has become more metrosexual than macho. More hair gel than zinc cream. More tight metallic denim than conventional baggy green.

Were this an urban or suburban problem, it would surely have received more political and public attention. And since the onset of the Global Financial Crisis, Aboriginal leaders have felt that they have been swept even further to the fringes.

Another oft-heard complaint is that the reconciliation process, of which Kevin Rudd's national apology was the central component, is intended primarily to assuage white guilt - it is a "whitefella's project". But would not indigenous groups have felt even more aggrieved had the prime minister not said sorry? That, after all, was always one of the chief complaints against John Howard.

The inventory of statistics comparing life for indigenous and non-indigenous Australians has always made for grim reading, and the latest findings of the Productivity Commission are no exception. Compiled every two years, the report measures indicators of disadvantage in 50 separate areas. There's been no improvement in 80% of them.

Perhaps the most disturbing finding is that cases of child abuse among indigenous children have more than doubled from 16 per 1000 children in 1990-2000 to 35 per 1000 in 2007-2008. Indigenous children are six times as likely to be abused as non-indigenous children.

The report is not unremittingly gloomy. It suggest that the life expectancy gap is closer than previously thought. In 2002, the gap was estimated at 20 years for men. For 2005-2007, it seems to be 12 years. But the common-held view is that this report chronicles decades of policy failure.

Kevin Rudd has described the report as "devastating". Many thought that the soothing words of his historic apology to Aborigines for past injustices could hardly have been more eloquent. But everyone knew that formulating a policy response would be much more difficult than drafting a parliamentary address.

As part of its Closing the Gap initiative, the Rudd government had pledged some $A4.6 billion towards indigenous communities over the next six years.

Tony Koch, a reporter with The Australian who has probably done as much as any mainstream reporter in bringing these kind of issues to the attention of the nation, has this to say of the new report:

"Governments throughout Australia have been aware of the horrific statistics for many years, and have done little to save children from continued abuse. A royal commission - where witnesses are protected, where perpetrators are identified, charged and removed from the communities - is a necessary starting point. But no Labor government has the courage to do that because it would upset its leftist supporters who contend that 'white interference' is culturally inappropriate."

His comment seems like a good place to start the debate.....

'The gravy plane: 20,000 freebies,' screamed the Sydney Morning Herald in its front page exclusive. It notes that the Life Gold Pass scheme, under which some former parliamentarians get to enjoy unlimited business class travel anywhere in Australia, has cost the tax-payer $A8.3 million (almost 4 million pounds) since 2001.

Some of the beneficiaries have not sat in parliament for over 20 years. Some have used the free flights to travel, with their wives (who also get this entitlement) to some of the country's fanciest travel destinations, like Hamilton Island in Queensland where that British fella who won the Best Job in the World has just taken up residence (he might have the best job, but clearly he hasn't got the best superannuation package).

Topping the frequent flyer list is the former National Party leader and Speaker, Ian Sinclair, who has taken over 701 flights (a bill which came to $214,545 - although he repaid $11,731).

The rules were revised to limit retired politicians' air time, but more recently retired Canberra 'pollies' who do not qualify, still get 25 free trips a year - or, put another way, just about one every other week.

Historically speaking, Australian MPs are not as well off as they used to be. At Federation in 1901, parliamentarians earned $A400 a year, which was five times the average wage. Now, the base salary is $A127,060, which the Australian Financial Review reports is less than three times the average wage. Their pay has also been frozen for a year, costing backbenchers $5470.

Kevin Rudd gets $A330,356 a year, which makes him Australia's 440th most well renumerated chief executive (he's just above the person who runs the Reject Shop, oddly enough). But, 'fair shake of the sauce bottle, mate,' he does get his own plane, a harbourside residence in Sydney, a place to hang his hat in Canberra, a chauffer-driven white Holden and the occasional dinner with Hugh Jackman and Cate Blanchett.

So are Australia's politicians flying high on the hog?

PS: The Pom Influence thread is still going strong - and many of the entries, as so often happens, are more enlightening than the original blog. Talking of the cultural cross-currents between Britain and Australia, I read a nice story the other day about the British writer and comedian, Stephen Fry, who was paying a visit to Los Angeles. He found himself feeling faintly homesick when he heard the music of Rolf Harris.

Political attacks have "backfired"; politicians have been "caught in the headlights"; the Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull has shown that he still needs "learner plates". You get the idea.

Now a swathe of bad polls for the Liberal leader have fuelled speculation that Mr Turnbull might be road kill. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that his disapproval rating has soared to 60%. The Australian reports that his personal approval ratings have seen the biggest drop in support in Newspoll's 25-year history - from 44% to 25% in the last fortnight. There's talk that senior Liberal figures could move to oust him within days or weeks (presumably, they would invite him to sit in the ejector seat), although others are urging calm (he should remain the designated driver).

Curiously, one government frontbencher compared Mr Turnbull to Mark Latham, the former Labor leader who so spectacularly self-destructed (or drove off a cliff).

Certainly, Malcolm Turnbull made two major blunders in his handling of the affair: basing his attack on an email that was concocted; and targeting Kevin Rudd at a time when the Treasurer, Wayne Swann, was much more vulnerable (to help understand why read the exchange below). They have reinforced the impression that the Liberal leader lacks judgment and is in far too much of a hurry. (There's a good piece here about Paul Keating's thoughts on the matter).

Turnbull, who is by far the richest man in parliament, has always been easy depict as an out-of-touch snob from the affluent Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, with an over-active sense of his personal entitlement and personal destiny. This has always been a problem for him in the modern-day Liberal Party, since the Howard years were so emphatically anti-elitist.

But my own hunch is that Mr Turnbull will probably survive, for lack of plausible alternatives. Of course, had this all happened two weeks ago, while Peter Costello's intentions were still unclear, it might have been a different story. But there are a number of Liberals who seem to have been impressed that Turnbull kept on fighting last week, even when all seemed lost. When others might have wilted, he proved himself to be an Aussie battler - and the Liberals have always loved a battler.

Tony Abbot, a Howard diehard, has been out defending his beleaguered leader this morning, and has been touting precisely that line. "Just as Malcolm didn't flinch last week it's important that the party doesn't flinch this week," said Abbott, another product of the Eastern Suburbs and former Rhodes scholar.

So I wonder if the Ozcar affair has produced something of a political paradox: that Malcolm Turnbull has turned off a lot of voters for the time being, but endeared himself to elements within his party by showing that he can battle and that he is therefore more like them.

Still, reading the polls this morning he surely must have thought that his hopes of one day being ferried around in the Prime Ministerial white Holden had taken a detour up a dead-end.

PS: Here's the transcription of an interview between the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, and the ABC reporter, Emma Griffiths on ABC's AM programmes from Thursday 25 June. The allegation, remember, is that the Treasurer gave special treatment to a Brisbane car dealer, John Grant, who gave Kevin Rudd the use of a "ute". Mr Swan has claimed that he treated other car dealers the same...

EMMA GRIFFITHS: How many other dealers did you speak to directly on the phone? Even if it is just for two minutes, how many other dealers?
WAYNE SWAN: Well it's a matter of public record that I spoke to Mr Grant.
EMMA GRIFFITHS: How many other dealers?
WAYNE SWAN: Well it's a matter of public record that I spoke to Mr Grant and I spoke to many other people and many other...
EMMA GRIFFITHS: Put it on the public record who else you spoke to. What other car dealers?
WAYNE SWAN: Well I have put it on the public record that I spoke to Mr Grant, Emma, but that is simply irrelevant...
EMMA GRIFFITHS: But you're not answering the question Mr Swan.
WAYNE SWAN: Well it's not exactly the right question.

It has produced a really strong thread of comments, as these kind of national identity questions always seem to do.

Many have obviously remarked on the constitutional links with Britain but pazzarooney raises the question of the cultural inheritance, as well.

As anyone who lives here knows, modern Australia is a rich and vibrant amalgam of all sorts of cultures, ancient and more recent, which are expressed in all manner of ways: from the art that hangs on peoples' walls to the varied menu of food that they sit down to eat; from the sports and hobbies they participate in to the places of worship they attend on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday.

But the cultural influence of Britain remains surprisingly strong, especially given that the proportion of UK-born residents has been declining steadily over the past 25 years.

The broadcast media provides some of the most obvious examples. You can watch British programmes here from dawn until dusk and from dusk until dawn. The Bill, Spooks, Are you Being Served? and The Antiques Roadshow. On cable, there's a channel entirely devoted to British programming called UKTV (which is owned by the BBC). I have yet to meet anyone who prefers the Australian version of Top Gear broadcast on SBS to the Clarkson original, and Channel Nine's cricket coverage is presented by a Pom, the former Hampshire cricketer Mark Nicholas.

ABC, the Australian national broadcaster, is modelled on the BBC, and has a similar feel, culture and mission. At five-o'clock on the Australian east coast, you can tune into the PM programme, just as you can in Britain. It is presented by Mark Colvin, a graduate of Oxford, whose voice would not sound out of place on Radio Four in Britain.

I'm always surprised at the time devoted during ABC news bulletins to results from the English premier league, but then sport is another aspect of popular culture where the British influence remains strong.

State cricket teams compete still for a trophy purchased with a donation from the Earl of Sheffield. In rugby, the Wallabies and All Blacks fight for a cup named after the first Viscount of Bledisloe.

As the cricket writer Gideon Haigh has noted, the dominant sports here are British: cricket, the two codes of rugby, golf, tennis, boxing, horseracing, and more recently, soccer (although the southern European influence was also strong in its development on Australian soil).

One of the key figures in the development of Australian Rules Football was Tom Wills, who was educated at Rugby school. Donald Bradman used to describe tours to Britain as going home.

The media baron Frank Packer predicated once that baseball was the coming thing, but Australia stuck with cricket. Basketball, that other American invention, is struggling, and no longer has a professional presence in Sydney or Brisbane.

Just about the best thing I've read on this cultural inheritance is David Malouf's Quarterly Essay, Made in England, which focuses on the ideas and the values that were imported from Britain, and which remain cultural touchstones to this day.

In his estimation, they include the sense of fair play, the protestant work ethic, low church puritanism, drunkenism, and "British pragmatism and distrust of theory". He also talks about "British philistinism and dislike of anything showy, theatrical, arty or 'too serious'; British good sense and the British sense of humour".

Unquestionably, there's a strong cross-current of cultural influences. Some of Britain's leading public intellectuals are Aussies, like Clive James, Germaine Greer and the democracy guru Professor John Keane. So, too, are some of Britain's best-loved entertainers, like Kylie Minogue, Rolf Harris and The Wiggles. Neighbours is more popular in Britain than Eastenders will ever be in Australia.

In the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster, Australian television executives played a central role in rethinking and repacking English football. And English cricketers have borrowed a lot from their Australian rivals, from the coloured clothing first used in Kerry Packer's World Series to their more aggressive style of play.

As we approach that ritualistic period of mutual sporting antagonism, the Ashes will not only revive our long-standing rivalry but remind us how much we have in common.

It's a little-known electoral fact (and this isn't a fake blog, I promise you) but British subjects resident in Australian prior to 1984 can still vote in federal elections - along, by the way, with the citizens of 48 Commonwealth and former Commonwealth countries whose names were on the electoral roll before the laws were changed. No other non-citizens of Australia enjoy this privilege.

It's a not insignificant number of voters: 162,928 to be precise. And their geographic distribution makes them even more influential.

There are eight parliamentary constituencies that harbour more than 2,500 non-Australian noters. A further 62 have more than a 1,000. Put another way, voters with a 'British subject' notation on the electoral roll are a significant presence in almost half of Australia's 150 parliamentary constituencies.

In a close election, resident Poms who have never taken up Australian citizenship could feasibly exert a disproportionate influence on the outcome.

Now the Labor MP Daryl Melham wants to end this fancy franchise. He's the chairman of a parliamentary committee looking into electoral reform, and thinks it is high time to revisit this anomaly.

What's he's proposing is an end to 'British subject' voting by 2014, which will give permanent residents enough time, he reckons, to become fully-fledged citizens and thus retain their right to vote.

'Fair suck of the sav,' he told me from Canberra earlier on (using a colloquial forerunner of Kevin Rudd's famed 'fair shake of the sauce bottle').

'We still love you guys, but not enough for you to keep the right to vote.'

There's been a lot of this kind of constitutional and legal housekeeping since the war.

Up until January 26 1949, Australians were British subjects. The word 'British' survived on the front cover of an Australian passport until the late 1960s. It was not until the mid-1980s that Australians lost their right of legal appeal to the Privy Council in the UK. It was not until 1984 that Advance Australia Fair became the national anthem, and replaced 'God Save the Queen.' A Briton with dual citizenship could be a member of the Australian parliament until 1999, when the High Court disqualified citizens of a 'foreign power'.

So is it time to sever yet another of those links with Britain?

PS: There's a very lively thread still underway on 'Utegate' (that's another dollar in suffix box), many of which focus on the unlikeliness of this row. Who would have thought Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull, two of the richest men in parliament, would be arguing over a ute?

The problem was that the 'incriminating' email at the heart of the 'scandal' has been found to be a fake - 'created by a person or persons other than the purported author of the e-mail,' according to the preliminary investigation conducted by the Australian Federal Police.

According to the version originally put forward by the opposition, the email showed that Mr Rudd's constituent - the car dealer John Grant - had been granted special attention from the government when he applied for a government loan to cope with the global credit crunch.

Not a bad return for the loan of a battered old ute.

The opposition leader, Malcolm Turnbull, thus claimed that the prime minister had abused his position, and misled parliament, and should resign as a result.

From Friday afternoon onwards, the controversy seemed to go from nought to 60 in a blur - unlike the aforementioned ute - and it always seemed that Mr Turnbull might have been a bit hasty in ramping up his rhetoric and calling for Kevin Rudd's resignation.

Now Mr Turnbull's judgment has been brought into question, since the email upon which he based his attack has turned out to be bogus.

So much, then, for the smoking gun. As far as the prime minister is concerned, there isn't even the whiff of cordite. Indeed, there isn't even a gun.

Last week was Malcolm Turnbull's best as opposition leader for the simple reason that his main potential rival, the former Treasurer Peter Costello, finally ended months of speculation and announced his retirement from politics.

Now Mr Turnbull is nursing self-inflicted wounds and facing further questions about his political judgment and his basic political skills. As Annabel Crabb noted in her recent Quarterly Essay on Malcolm Turnbull, the Liberal Party wears him like a borrowed suit that does not fit.

The opposition has now turned it guns on the Treasurer, Wayne Swann, another Queenslander who they claim gave preferential treatment to the Brisbane car dealer John Grant.

Mr Turnbull must hope that this time they are not firing blanks.

In his latest book of essays and articles, The Revolt of the Pendulum, he speaks of this erotic dance where "the disrobing stripper is always on the point of getting dressed again, and there is no resolution to the revelation".

All of which brings us to Peter Costello.

Ever since the defeat of the Howard government in 2007, the former Treasurer has staged his own backbench version of the Moebius striptease - politically suggestive rather than overtly erotic, of course, and conducted in a manner which has teased and tantalised the Canberra press gallery without ever fully revealing himself.

So despite increasingly coy protestations that he was not a candidate for the leadership of the Liberal Party, there was an eye-catching speech here, or a headline-grabbing book launch there - always showing just enough leg to keep him in the spotlight.

Indeed, in recent months, his moves seemed to be even more intricately choreographed.

And why not? With the global financial crisis biting hard, the times seemed to suit him. Not only was he Australia's longest serving Treasurer - and arguably its most successful - but he was one of the original architects of the G20.

Despite what Paul Keating said about him being a "low altitude flyer", Mr Costello had the brains to be prime minister, along with the economic expertise and parliamentary skill and bravado.

The oft-heard criticism is that he lacked the political courage, or the ticker.

According to Costello and his allies, he was promised the prime ministership by John Howard midway through a second coalition term, but his leadership ambitions were thwarted continually by his obstinate and treacherous boss.

When Mr Howard went back on that 'deal', Mr Costello lacked the bravery (according to his critics), or the necessary backbench support (according to his admirers), to unseat Mr Howard. Perhaps he was deficient on both counts.

After Mr Howard's defeat in 2007, the member for Higgins had two clear chances to seek the leadership of the Liberal Party, but said on both occasions that he wanted to pursue a career beyond politics.

Still, he refused to categorically rule out a political comeback which meant that he became a seriously disruptive, distracting and destabilising presence in the party room and broadcasting studios.

For as long as he delayed his departure from politics, he therefore posed a threat to the present Liberal leader, Malcolm Turnbull, and, by extension, Kevin Rudd - especially at a time of such economic uncertainty, with the polls showing the Liberals making something of a comeback (even though Rudd retains his lead over Turnbull as the preferred prime minister).

During his witty speech in parliament, Costello wryly observed: "It is just possible that both sides of the dispatch box are happy with the announcement that I have made." Certainly, I have rarely seen Malcolm Turnbull look happier.

One of the recent problems facing the Labour Party in Britain has been its difficulty in looking beyond the Blair/Brown/Mandelson era. In some ways, the recent turmoil in Westminster, and the inability of rebels to dislodge Gordon Brown, could be interpreted as a failure of political imagination as much as a failure of political will.

Now the Liberal Party has no other choice but to imagine a future without Peter Costello and his archrival John Howard, whose three-sentence 'tribute' to his former deputy was minimalist in the extreme.

For Australian conservatives, this, then, is the definitive break with the past: more so even than John Howard's valedictory address at the Wentworth hotel in Sydney on the night of his electoral defeat (which started, curiously, while Mr Costello was still addressing his party helpers in the seat of Higgins, in Melbourne's well-healed inner east. The television channels cut immediately from Melbourne to Sydney).

Malcolm Turnbull is now much more free to contest the next election in the political centre, since the rightwing of the Liberal Party has lost its figurehead. As the Australian Financial Review put it in its front page headline: 'Costello liberates Turnbull.'

There's been lots of talk about Costello being the best prime minister Australia never had, and, less contentiously, the best leader the Liberal Party never had. For all his teasing, Australia never got the see the Full Costello.

The ongoing MPs' expenses scandal, along with the Labour leadership crisis it helped precipitate, has almost completely monopolised the British media.

But there was one day last week when Gordon Brown came close to being nudged off the front pages by Gordon Ramsey - "a low-life" in the headline-grabbing estimation of Kevin Rudd.

When the Australian prime minister weighs in on popular culture, as he did with his gallant defence of the Channel Nine presenter Tracy Grimshaw, he often seems to capture the public mood.

When Gordon Brown does it, as he did after the Scottish songstress Susan Boyle was taken to a clinic following the final of Britain's Got Talent, he's accused of populist gimmickry.

The two prime ministers are good friends, ideological soul-mates and, I'm told, regular texters. What Gordon Brown would give right now for Mr Rudd's still high ratings, political self-confidence and popular touch.

On that front, so much for my pre-holiday prediction that the comedy troupe, The Chaser, might start to dent Mr Rudd's popularity. Instead, the Australian viewing public appears to have declared war on them.

The Chaser team is spending two weeks in the satire sin bin, after ABC decided to suspend the show because of public outrage over the team's Make a Realistic Wish Foundation sketch, which depicted dying children being told to rein in their deathbed wishes.

Mr Rudd said the Chaser team should hang their heads in shame, another soundbite which appears to have chimed with public opinion (although there has been the suggestion that the prime minister runs the risk of "outrage fatigue").

As we arrived back in Australia this morning, we were reminded of the main story of the moment by the health registration forms we had to fill in, the quarantine officials who boarded the flight and the heat-detecting cameras we had to walk past before reaching immigration.

Victoria has been dubbed the "swine flu capital of the world", and a flu expert quoted in The Age has said that up to one-third of Victorians might be infected by the virus.

In other news, as they say, Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon has resigned after violating the government's code of conduct, thus becoming the first minister to quit since Kevin Rudd became prime minister in November 2007.

Andrew Symonds, the troubled Australian all-rounder, was sent packing after breaching Cricket Australia's code of conduct.

He was being 'too Australian,' according to the former Aussie cricketer, Dean Jones. All he wanted to do, after all, was to have a beer and watch the footie, the State of Origin match between Queensland and New South Wales. Cricket Australia took a dimmer view.

There have been the attacks on Indian students, which has damaged relations with India, and the abandonment of the Rio Tinto/Chinalco deal which will disappoint the Chinese.

So lots of talking points. Did The Chaser go too far? Should Joel Fitzgibbon have resigned? Is Gordon Ramsey, indeed, a "low life"? And is Tracy Grimshaw the early front-runner for Australian of the Year?

And the news just keeps on coming. Peter Costello, the former treasurer and longtime prime ministerial wannabe, has today announced he is quitting politics at the next election. More on than later...

The first involves the diminished influence in the run-up to the last election of the radio host, Alan Jones; the second involves the increased influence of ABC's comedy troupe, the Chasers War on Everything, which is about to make its long-awaited comeback after 18 months off-air.

During the Howard years, the Sydney breakfast radio host Alan Jones was arguably Australia's second most powerful conservative. Famously opinionated and crotchety, he prided himself on his influence in the halls of government in Canberra and New South Wales: there was supposedly a "Minister for Alan Jones" within the Howard government to ensure ongoing good relations.

The former Wallabies rugby coach regularly gave a platform to John Howard, then often reinforced and amplified his views. Commonly, he helped frame the national debating point of the day, and gave it a determinedly conservative slant.

When I arrived in Australia, I was struck immediately by John Howard's domination of the airwaves, and how a sound-bite delivered on a radio breakfast programme could almost monopolise the news agenda for the rest of the day. Here, Alan Jones was a vital ally and megaphone.

But three things happened in the run-up to the 2007 poll which undermined Jones' on-air authority and his off-air clout. The first came in October, 2006, with the publication of an excoriating biography, Jonestown: The Power and the Myth of Alan Jones, written by the ABC veteran investigative reporter, Chris Masters.

The second was a ruling in April 2007 by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). It found that in the lead-up to the Cronulla riots, Jones had broadcast material that was "likely to encourage violence or brutality and to vilify people of Lebanese and Middle-Eastern backgrounds on the basis of ethnicity".

The third came in June 2007, when Channel Nine decided to drop his morning editorial on the Today breakfast show, a slot he had appeared in for 20 years.

By the 2007 election, Alan Jones still had the ratings - to this day, he is Sydney's most popular breakfast show host - but could no longer boast the same power and influence. The conservative ascendency was coming to an end. Australia was about to enter Ruddville and leave Jonestown.

Then there were the Chasers, a constant thorn in the then prime minister's side as the election approached. Some of their ambushes of his early morning power walks rose to the level of performance art - one involved a silver Delorean sports car, a mad professor and the promise to take Mr Howard "back to the future" so that he could retire gracefully rather than be forced out by the voters.

It fast became a leitmotif for the entire campaign - and reinforced the sense that John Howard had done his dash.

Then there was the Apec stunt in Sydney, where the Chasers breached the supposedly water-tight security with a fake motorcade carrying an Osama Bin Laden doppelganger.

The Apec summit had been intricately choreographed by John Howard's image-makers as part of a last-ditch attempt to save his prime ministership. Instead, it became a showcase for the Chasers' madcap talent.

Why does any of this matter? Because the Chasers went off-air just as Kevin Rudd became prime minister. For the past 18 months, the Australian prime minister has therefore enjoyed the luxury of a fairly feeble opposition and a Chasers-free ABC.

The end of the Chasers' sabbatical comes at the very moment when the prime minister's Hawkie-like popularity appears to have dipped. Are the Chasers about to become a factor again?

Set in a hardscrabble indigenous community in the sun-parched outback of the Northern Territory, it charts the blossoming, though wordless, romance between two teenagers, Samson and Delilah, played by unknown local actors, Rowan McNamara and Marissa Gibson.

Samson is a drifter and a petrol sniffer. Delilah spends her days looking after her grandmother, and assisting with her art. When her grandmother dies, the community blames Delilah, and she escapes with Samson to Alice Springs.

Samson and Delilah, which was written, shot and directed by the indigenous film-maker Warwick Thornton, has been described as one of the finest films ever to have come from Australia. I saw it last week and found it as enchanting as it is confronting.

Snapshots of Australia's multiplex national persona have long been found in the reels of film that comprise its cinematic canon, and this is an extraordinary and much-needed addition.

Margaret and David of ABC's popular At the Movies, Australia's foremost film reviewers, have both given it five stars - the first Australian movie to receive a maximum 10 out of 10 score (Brokeback Mountain, Good Night, Good Luck, and No Country for Old Men are the only other films with have got two five stars in the show's 23-year history).

"This is for me one of the most wonderful films this country has ever produced," said Margaret Pomeranz.

Others have likened it to New Zealand's Once Were Warriors, another extraordinary film, for its depiction of everyday life in indigenous communities. So it is a great shame that it is not on general release. Last week, it was being shown in just four Sydney cinemas.

"Indigenous affairs" is Australia's great fly-over problem. Most of us tend to view Aboriginal communities from the vantage point of 30,000ft as we jet off to Perth, Asia or Europe. This film brings a close-up depiction of many of the problems commonly found in Outback communities, and it is very unsettling.

The film cost $A1.6m (£800,000), a small fraction of the $A197m lavished on Baz Luhrmann's Australia. But this is a far superior film. I enjoyed Australia, but Luhrmann used imported American idioms, opted for hackneyed doggerel in much of its dialogue and chose a self-important title (which was not a particularly clever idea in a country where people bridle at fellow compatriots who get a little above themselves). Opting for his trademark heightened artifice, he also played with the history and the landscape.

Samson and Delilah, by contrast, is authentic and, in parts, dialogue-free.

This truly is Australia.

I have never lived in a country where sport is so frequently the gateway into so many weighty societal discussions. Arguably, sports-related phone-ins and discussion programmes are increasingly becoming the nation's "public square", the forum in which a broad range of moral and behavioural issues are thrashed out and argued over - although rarely resolved.

So the most recent rugby league scandal provides the context for a series of over-lapping debates, from the possible need to redefine what is meant to female "consent" (does a 19-year-old woman have the power to say "no" when confronted by a roomful of rugby players?) to what is implied by "mateship" (why haven't Matthew Johns team-mates, who were in that hotel room in Christchurch, come forward?); from homo-erotism in macho sports (why this fascination with watching team-mates have sex - a "bun", in the parlance of rugby league?) to the role of the media in these kind of controversies (could and should the original ABC Four Corners programme, Code of Silence, have offered a more complete and complicated account of the events in Christchurch?).

In recent times, sport has thrown-up discussions about gambling (with Russell Crowe's attempt to banish poker machines from the South Sydney Rabbitohs club); drinking (with the Manly rugby league club's drunken season-opener party); domestic violence (the prosecution of the rugby league player, Greg Bird, for glassing his girlfriend); and violent assault (the prosecution of the swimmer, Nick D'Arcy, for attacking his fellow swimmer, Simon Cowley).

Racism has been discussed in the context of the Bollyline series and the "monkeys" taunts directed towards the black all-arounder, Andrew Symonds. Discrimination against gays has come up with the suspicion that the diver Matthew Mitcham has not been the beneficiary of the kind of corporate sponsorship deals that an Olympic gold medallist could normally expect. Breast cancer has received an enormous amount of media attention partly because it took the life, tragically, of Jane McGrath, the wife of Glenn McGrath, one of Australia's most likeable sportsmen.

National prestige is often judged by the quadrennial Olympic medal haul. Corporate prestige is often judged by the quality of your sporting sponsorship deals (Qantas, the national carrier, goes for the Wallabies, the national rugby union team, for instance, and the Aussie Olympics squad) and appropriating naming rights on the country's sporting cathedrals (imagine the clash of the corporate titans if the MCG ever offered naming rights to the highest bidder?). When Rupert Murdoch locked antlers with Kerry Packer, it was over the right to broadcast rugby league.

On national days when there hasn't been an obvious sporting component, the sporting codes have eventually muscled in. The ANZAC Day rugby league and Aussie Rules fixtures, which only took their present, blockbuster form in the mid-1990s, are the most obvious examples. The opening of the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra is another. The then Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser cut the ribbon on January 26, 1981 - Australia Day. Admittedly, this works both ways. After his retirement from international cricket, Adam Gilchrist accepted an invitation to chair the National Australia Day Council.

This primacy of sport puts an inordinate amount of pressure on the men and women who run the various codes. Often they owe their positions to being brilliant marketeers, but increasingly they are being forced into the role of moral arbiters and moral enforcers. Sometimes, when alleged crimes are committed, the police and authorities step in. But in instances like the Christchurch sex scandal, where the New Zealand police decided that no crime had been committed, sports administrators and sports broadcasters are increasingly being asked to decide what is right and wrong.

One final observation on the recent controversy, and the search it has sparked for sporting role models. There is near universal agreement over one rugby league player who can comfortably perform that role: the Cantebury Bulldogs player, Hazem El Masri, a non-drinking, non-smoking Muslim, who arrived in Australia with his parents in 1988. Anyone care for a debate about multiculturalism...?

These anguished words belong to a New Zealand women, whose interview with the ABC current affairs programme, Four Corners, has led to the public shaming of one of rugby league's most popular figures, the former player and Channel Nine commentator, Matthew Johns. Once again, the game itself, along with the misogynist subculture attached to it, is also in the public stocks.

The woman, who was referred to as "Clare" on the programme, told of the night in 2002 when she had sex with a number of players from the Cronulla Sharks, while others watched.

"I only remember one player definitely, it was Mattie Johns," she told the programme. "He laughed and he joked and he very loud and boisterous and thought it was hilarious and you know kept it going."

Five days after this incident at a hotel in Christchurch, New Zealand, the woman, who was 19 at the time, complained to police. As part of their inquiries, detectives interviewed 40 Cronulla Sharks players and staff, and were told that the group sex had been consensual.

No charges were brought, and the names of the players involved in the incident remained out of the press until late last week, when details from the Four Corners programme, Code of Silence, first started to appear.

So last Thursday night, Channel Nine's high-rating Footy Show started with a statement from an ashen-looking Johns.

Alluding to the incident, Johns told viewers: "For me personally, it put my family through enormous anguish and embarrassment. It has once again, and for that I can't say sorry enough."

Crucially, however, he offered no apology to "Clare", nor any acknowledgment of her anguish. As Monday's programme would reveal, she had since become suicidal.
After the normally ebullient Johns had delivered his "mea culpa", his co-host Paul "Fatty" Vautin, another hugely popular figure in the game, patted him on the back: "Alright mate, well said. Alright, let's get on with the show."

This was far from the end of it, however. After watching Monday night's programme - something which until late this week, Johns himself did not do - David Gallop, the chief executive of the National Rugby League, said "a massive question mark" hung over his future.

Condemnation also came from within Channel Nine. Tracey Grimshaw, the host of the tabloid news magazine show, A Current Affair, was excoriating.

"Even though no charges were ever laid," she told viewers, "her experience should rightly redefine the notion of consent, and whether a star-struck 19-year-old could even be deemed capable of consenting to the scenario she ultimately endured.

"Unfortunately a man we all know - and I personally like - Matthew Johns has been heavily implicated in this event, and I believe he needs to step up, face some hard questions and talk properly about it, rather than just a few uncomfortable lines delivered on The Footy Show."

Just 24 hours later, Johns did indeed face some hard questions that were put to him by Grimshaw herself on A Current Affair . That afternoon, Channel Nine had announced that he had been stepped down indefinitely, and Johns had finally watched the Four Corners programme which had brought his career to such an abrupt and embarrassing end.

"Did it distress you to see her condition?" asked Grimshaw.

"Yes it did," said Johns, who was sat alongside his wife, Trish. "I made some comments last Thursday night at The Footy Show that I wasn't aware of what she'd been through and can say now, you know, that any trauma and embarrassment that she's gone through as a result of this incident, I'm extremely sorry for and I'm extremely sorry for, to my wife and my family as well, just the embarrassment and pain it's caused them."

You can read the interview here.

The story is a complicated one. A former colleague of "Clare" has now come forward, claiming that she bragged about the group sex in its immediate aftermath. There have also been calls for the other Cronulla Sharks players and staff who were in the room to step forward and explain themselves.

Not for the first time this season, the game of rugby league has been brought into disrepute. Last month, the former Cronulla player, Greg Bird, was found guilty of glassing his American girlfriend in the face, and then telling police that his flat-mate was to blame.

Rugby league's on-field product has rarely been better - some of the recent games have showcased a breath-taking range of skills. But the cumulative effect of these off-field incidents is testing the loyalty of even its most die-hard supporters.

Last night on the Footy Show, Phil Gould, a former coach and one of the big men of the game, broke down in tears as he spoke of his worries for his mate, Matthew Johns, and his fears for the health of the code: "This to me was the sledgehammer to the back of the head that the game deserved, and that we needed.

"That, for so long, we've been sitting on panels like this and having incidents whether it was drugs, or alcohol, or abuse of women, and we all walk away and say: 'Well, that was a wake-up call, that was a wake-up call', but no-one wakes up."

PS With apologies for the plug, but if any of you happen to be in Sydney on Friday 22 May, and fancy talking US politics as part of the Sydney Writers' Festival, then this might be of interest.

Broadcast in the east coast evening, the annual budget is the closest thing Australia has to the State of the Union address, although the treasurer takes centre stage rather than the Prime Minister.

Wayne Swan is a nervy and hesitant figure, and not a natural prime-time performer. So for television viewers, whose normal programming was interrupted for the night, this was less "Australia's Got Talent" and more a case of "Australia's got a whopping deficit." Or perhaps "I'm a Deeply Indebted Treasurer, Get Me Out of Here".

The budget has gone from a $A22 billion surplus to a $A57 billion dollar deficit, the biggest year-on-year turn-around in the nation's history - though ludicrously the treasurer did not use the word "deficit" throughout his 3,700-word speech.

This is a famously plain-speaking and straight-talking land. Surely people are grown-up enough to cope with the word "deficit".

As elephants in the room go, this one could hardly be much bigger after all.

Much of the post-budget commentary has focused on Mr Swan's projections that Australia will be back in the black by 2015-16, and the optimistic growth forecasts that assessment is based on. Though he predicts the Aussie economy will shrink by 0.5% over the next financial year, he reckons it will rebound to 2.25% growth the year after.

The dean of the Australian political press pack, Paul Kelly of The Australian, notes: "This budget is a portrait of an optimist in the middle of a nightmare. The world faces its worst economic contraction since the Great Depresssion, but Wayne Swan is a convinced optimist who has produced a budget for optimists" The paper labels it a "Wing and a Prayer" budget.

Peter Hartcher, The Sydney Morning Herald's political editor, suspects the country can look forward to "indefinite indebtedness", while Piers Ackerman of The Daily Telegraph suggests the Rudd government has "drifted into fiscal fantasy".

Here are some of the other headlines:

• unemployment is expected to rise to 8.25% next year, and 8.5% the year after. Currently it stands at 5.4%.

• skilled migration takes another hit, with a reduction of a further 25,400.

• the retirement age will be lifted progressively, reaching 67 by 2023.

• there will be an extra A$ 1.3 billion over the next six years to combat people smuggling.

• Sydney is the big loser in terms of infrastructure spending, which picks up on previous blogs. There's a suspicion that the Labor government in Canberra simply does not trust the Labor state government in New South Wales to deliver major infrastructure improvements.

You can get the full details at all the major news websites. ABC, for instance, has now launched an Australia in Recession special site.

Overall, the budget was nowhere near as tough as the government had warned. As George Megalogenis wrote in The Australian: "No voter, other than someone on more than $A150,000 a year, can look at last night's savings measures and say: 'Wayne Swan is coming after me'."

PS: The story which threatened to overshadow the budget was the revelations contained in the ABC Four Corners programme broadcast on Monday night (you can watch it on the web ) which has embroiled the game of rugby league in more scandal. I'll blog on that later in the week....