It must have been sitting, unloved and neglected, in a cupboard in the Ministerial Wing for more than 10 years, but Communications Minister Helen Coonan seems to have found Ros Kelly’s whiteboard.

What else could explain her leaked electorate-specific material — that’s the memo above — on the Government’s broadband plans?

Treasurer Peter Costello says it “does not matter” that a leaked email has revealed that the Government prioritised 40 marginal Coalition electorates when preparing promotional material for its broadband plan.

Labor leader Kevin Rudd, however, claims the Government made its broadband announcement in a bid to save Coalition seats.

The media seems to have missed the main point here.

Why did Helen Coonan refer to electorates at all? At the end of the day, they are just the AEC’s bureaucratic tools. They have sod all to do with telecommunications. Telstra, Optus and all the other carriers presumably have geographic categories of their own. Why not use them? Or local government areas?

Coonan isn’t the sharpest pencil in the Cabinet. Once again she looks dumb, cynical and opportunistic – and made the Government appear exactly the same … on a day when it was actually delivering concrete policy. Again: it’s not the pure politics, it’s performance on the issues that counts.