Big Week For Battlers

Kovco was Australia's first fatality in Iraq. As it becomes ever clearer that the Iraq invasion was a bad decision, people in the Government have started to speculate how the public would react if there were several deaths. Maybe this is jumping at shadows, but it reflects a mood. Friday's Daily Telegraph, which Howard sees as a measuring stick of battlerland, had a page one headline that screamed, "You've lost $4200". This was the amount by which, the paper claimed, family bills had "rocketed" in Sydney in the past year. Kim Beazley argued that families were now paying an extra $94 a month on an average new mortgage because of the two rate rises since the election, and a family that filled its petrol tank every week was now paying $84 a month extra since then. It takes the gloss off the Costello /Howard argument of how, with family tax benefits, lower-middle income earners are paying no net tax. The interest rate rise is small, but, combined with the petrol slug, it's meant the sky has suddenly darkened for Peter Costello's 11th budget. http://www.theage.com.au/news/michelle-grattan/big-week-for-battlers/2006/05/06/1146335967178.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1 [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on May 7, 2006]

Note: http://www.theage.com.a...