Under Rudd, Labor directed all of 2007 at proving itself to be a competent economic manager (or at least to providing a perception that he was as trustworthy and ready for the Treasury benches as Howard's administration had been).

That judgment-cum-perception centred on interest rates, because they are the most visceral contact most of us debtors have with macro-economics.

Price rises aren't nearly as palpable (with the exception of petrol).

Tax cuts are easily enough seen on payslips (but are just as easily eaten up, and are generally viewed by recipients like pay rises, as representing only what we were worth in the first place).

The mortgage is different. It goes out every month in a chunk, a chunk that has had another $50 (or more in many cases) added to it in 12 of the 81 months since the last cut, on December 5, 2001.

Rudd and his treasurer, Wayne Swan, dwelt on those rises throughout the election year, and have continued to do so throughout 2008, only occasionally acknowledging that the last two of them actually occurred since the change of government.

While Coalition members could reasonably bemoan the many international factors not assisting them, it couldn't duck the charge (always neatly made by Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner amid some overcooking from his colleagues) that it spent and spent and spent, especially towards the end. Tanner stopped the government-spending clock at 5 per cent for the Coalition, noting that the first operation of the Labor cabinet's expenditure review committee had pared this back to a little over 1 per cent. Fair point, although of course it doesn't explain all the rises. Rudd and Co have every right to crow about this week's decision by the Reserve Bank to lower rates, but the Prime Minister struck a very clever (if droning) tone.

''This, the first interest rate cut in seven years, will ... provide some modest relief to mortgage holders right across Australia,'' he said in announcing the cut to Parliament on Tuesday. ''The Government knows that there is still much, much more to be done in helping Australian families dealing with cost-of-living pressures.''This interest-rate decision is welcome, but it is not a day for celebration. Interest rates took a long time to rise, and they will take a long time to come back down and the road will be a very uneven one on the way through.

''That is why the Government is committed to continuing a policy of responsible economic management.

''There will be more tough times ahead. That is why the Government is absolutely committed and determined to prosecute its program of responsible economic management.''

Got the message? No?

The first Government question yesterday asked Rudd to expound on the importance of ... wait for it ... ''responsible economic management''.

The campaign of 2007 hasn't stopped. It's just become the campaign of 2010, but with the numbers on interest rates, at least running the right way for a government this time.

Other numbers are slowing, of course, a fact Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson rightly prosecuted.

But his points on job losses and slowing economic growth, while valid, are secondary matters, at least politically. Interest rates are what count with voters, and Nelson should have unequivocally welcomed the quarter of a percentage point rate cut before going on to make the other parts of his case.

Rudd may bore us all nearly to death, virtually closing down question time by attrition (two this week touched the full two-hour mark) but, in the absence of something or someone new and shiny from the Opposition, people will keep voting for him.

Nice try from John Howard, at his tribute dinner on Wednesday, rousing the Coalition colleagues to view Rudd's administration as a one-term government.

There hasn't been a one-term government since World War II: even Gough Whitlam won a second vote of confidence from the public.

Rudd is hardly presenting as a greater economic tearaway than Whitlam, whose ministers' management was bagged again only last week, this time by one of their Labor successors, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy (albeit he got their names mucked up).

When we start really turning our minds to the prospect of something shiny on the other side, the ability to frustrate Government measures in the Senate may have some attraction. But choosing to block a rise in the luxury car tax and comprehensively mucking up the first assault on it by having one senator absent is not the right vehicle. As it showed yesterday, the Government is on a winner by contrasting Coalition-protected Porsche drivers with Labor budget-assisted families who take the bus.

Rudd left it till the last day of the sitting week to go full throttle.

The Liberals were ''leaderless'' and had ''lost their way'', Rudd said, training his gaze on Malcolm Turnbull.

Swan had sown the seeds, using rate-cut questions to consider the competing qualities of ''plans A, B and C'' (Nelson, Turnbull and Peter Costello).

While some of us may wonder at the value of such a tactic now, Swan, Rudd and Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard, among others, are laying the groundwork for a major theme of the latter part of this electoral cycle (if not earlier, upon the publication of a certain book this month).

Although it's dreadfully dreary to endure, question time after question time, the Costello ''$400-a-month mortgage hike'' mantra from the ministerial bench is a double-barrelled investment.

It highlights the change of climate in interest rates while hitting out at the bigger perceived leadership threat to Rudd. The attack on Costello can be ramped up to include his election-weekend valediction regarding a new life in the commercial world. The line might run something like: ''The man who jacked up your mortgage jacked it all in himself when he got beat: are you going to take him back and trust him now?''

Yes, the Government has had a very good week, and it's got plenty more coming.

Andrew Fraser is political correspondent.