Compiling with Debian 3.0

I was attempting to compile irssi from source, but it appears that Debian doesn't come with any compilation tools. I apt-get'd gcc and autoconf, and here's where I am:

checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... no
checking for working aclocal-1.4... missing
checking for working autoconf... found
checking for working automake-1.4... missing
checking for working autoheader... found
checking for working makeinfo... missing
checking whether to enable maintainer-specific portions of Makefiles... no
checking for gcc... gcc
checking for C compiler default output... configure: error: C compiler cannot create executables
See `config.log' for more details.

What else do I need? I'm also going to be compiling qmail/etc from qmailrocks.com and probably apache and some other things as well.

Thanks!