Don't let anyone tell you that we're at the end of the second week of the Federal Election campaign. It all began on December 4, 2006, the day that Kevin Rudd rolled Kim Beazley in the Labor Party caucus room. At the end of Week 46, here are my observations:

This took place during my downtime last month, and I had trouble tracing it back to its source, but John Howard used the D word for the third time on June 15. That's three times in the past six months, but none of them in a constructive light.

It was in an interview with journalists from the Sydney Morning Herald, and it was in response to a query about the foot-in-mouth Defence Minister Brendon Nelson's announcement that Australia would not be joining the UN peacekeeping force in Darfur.

There seems to be almost universal support in this country for the abandonment of Australia's ODI cricket tour of Zimbabwe pencilled in for September. The pollies all agree, the commentariat seem to all agree, the Roman Catholic Church agrees, the only dissenting voices I have seen are from the Zimbabwean Ambassador to Australia (well he would, wouldn't he?) and former Test batsman Vusi Sibanda, who now lives in Sydney.

Never mind the personnel changes announced this morning in John Howard's ministerial reshuffle (though I'll get to those shortly). The thing that struck me on first reading through the press release was the changes in vocabulary.