For the first time since he took the Opposition leadership, Nelson is passing the "head nodding" test. Pushing for a 5c a litre fuel excise cut when petrol prices are hitting $1.60 a litre has finally got the voters listening.
And for the first time Kevin Rudd looked decidedly uncomfortable when he told an unimpressed audience on Tony Jones's new Question and Answer show on the ABC that he had done everything he could to help people cope with soaring prices at the bowser.
y from. And when Labor is certain to be reminding voters that Nelson's own shadow treasurer thought the 5c cut was bad policy. And that the Coalition thought the same during its 11 years in government and argued so quite convincingly.

T here is an exquisite irony about the absurd political debate over petrol taxes. The government that introduced Australia's petrol taxes 30 years ago was Malcolm Fraser's coalition, on August 15, 1978. The Fraser treasurer who announced them in his first budget that cold August night was John Howard. The Hawke treasurer who indexed petrol taxes five years later in his first budget was Labor's Paul Keating. The prime minister who abandoned automatic indexation - but retained the petrol taxes he'd introduced 23 years earlier - was John Howard, on March 1, 2001. The floundering Liberal leader who promises to cut petrol excise (by 5 cents a litre) is Brendan Nelson. The shadow

MOTORISTS are confronting the nightmare of never-ending bowser pain following fresh warnings that petrol will crash through $2 a litre by the end of the year.
International oil prices are at near-record highs and Australian families are being told to prepare for serious stress on their finances.
idy – it has already hit $1.60.

IN THE endless debate about the cost of fuel, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
"Look, the price of petrol is a consequence of the world's oil price. The world oil price has gone up because of fears of the war in Iraq and strikes in Venezuela. It has nothing to do with Australia's taxation system, or any government decision."
The reason Rudd is sounding just as exasperated as Costello did all those years ago is that he knows he has no answer to the screams coming from users of the nation's petrol bowsers.

The Prime Minister has grown out of touch with ordinary Australians, Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson says.
Mr Rudd has been attacked over his position on the price of fuel, saying yesterday that the Government was doing all it could to keep downward pressure and cut taxes.
f the white car and essentially says to Australians after six months 'I'm out of touch, I've run out of ideas, I wash my hands of the concerns of everyday Australia'," Dr Nelson said.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has effectively breached an implied election promise that he would bring down rising fuel and grocery prices.
"We have done as much as we physically can to provide additional help to the family budget, recognising that the cost of everything is still going through the roof, the cost of food, cost of petrol, cost of rents, cost of childcare," Mr Rudd said in Adelaide yesterday.
est increase' in unemployment.