The Man in Black, Ian Kortlang, turned up on ABC Radio in Sydney yesterday discussing the Crosby/Textor leak.

He classified leaks in four ways: accidental, strategic, malicious and pyromania. Accidental included documents left on photocopiers and the like. Strategic meant a leak designed to achieve a positive advantage. Malicious was meant to undermine and disadvantage. And pyromania was stuff the consequences, this feels good.

The Crosby/Textor leak, in his view, was pyromania.

There’s a bit of it about. Ministerial staff out and about at Kingston on Wednesday night said they were celebrating the interest rate rise.

But back to the Crosby/Textor data. Dennis Shanahan takes us through it again in the Oz today. His thesis is simple. “Everyone believes Kevin Rudd’s Labor is going to win the election. That’s the biggest electoral problem facing John Howard’s Coalition Government.”

But is he? Peter Beattie’s making a mess over local government in his home state, where he hoped to pick up a swag of seats; Kevin Harkins has put a Labor seat that should be safe in play and the NSW state government isn’t helping Labor’s cause in Eden-Monaro.

It hasn’t been the best week for the government. The leak, poor performances in Question Time, more IR scraps and a rate rise.

Yet they still could win the next election – and if they do, this could go down as the week things turned around.

That “echo-nomics” line of the PM’s is pretty good. Why vote for an imitation when you can have the original?

Things aren’t that bad out in voterland, as a subscriber reminded us today:

Just got an e-mail from ING telling me about the higher interest rate they are paying on my deposit with them. Nice.

The earnings of my super fund will be going up, too. Also nice.

I have just got a tax cut as well.

My new super-duper MacBook Pro laptop computer is costing less than half the old one.

My shares are way up. So are dividends.

And the value of my (un-mortgaged) apartment is skyrocketing.

I’m holidaying soon in Pt Douglas. Cheap air fares.

I blame John Howard.