Steve:

joey@dragon:~>sudo debconf-get-selections |grep debconf/
debconf debconf/priority        select  high
debconf debconf/frontend        select  Readline

debconf-get-selections is the tool you are looking for. If it doesn't seem to work, might I suggest a bug report or email, or at least some example of how it doesn't work rather than a vague, hard to reply to blog post about it? Argh.