Time to cut tax talk if Beazley wants top job - smh. But that's about all the major parties have to offer at this stage of the lead-up to the election due later this year. Prime Minister John Howard is under heavy pressure from his Coalition colleagues to offer big tax cuts in a last-ditch effort to scrape home a winner. But the money simply isn't there to put anything other than a derisory amount in voters' hands before the election.
Labor is in the same boat.
Its leader, Kim Beazley, is being told he will romp home if only he rolls back the GST on an ever widening list of goods and services. Caravan park rentals are already on the official list. So are tampons. An enthusiastic Labor source last week told the media that electricity bills would soon be added. But Beazley disowned the leak and is now trying to hose everybody down.