"Clay S. Turner" <[email protected]> writes:

> This brings to mind a friend (in Australia) who told me that after Australia
> sent troops to East Timor to quell the troubles there that Australia
> presented all of its taxpayers whose income exceeded a threshold (IIRC it
> was 50000 dollars Aus.) a bill to pay for the military action.

That sounds like a cross between two quite separate stories.

Sure, Australia was one of the main peace-keeping forces in East
Timor, but this was not paid for using an extra tax.

Several gummint-backed financial groups collapsed (particularly in
Victoria and South Australia) and these had to be bailed out. The
state gummints introduced specific levies to pay for these.

Ciao,

Peter K.

--
Peter J. Kootsookos

"I will ignore all ideas for new works [..], the invention of which
has reached its limits and for whose improvement I see no further
hope."

- Julius Frontinus, c. AD 84