A rates rise just in time for Christmas gave readers of page 1 something to scowl about on this day in 1994. The big banks took only a day to pass on the full 1 per cent rise announced by the Reserve Bank, leaving home owners with the likes of Commonwealth and St George facing a 10.5 per cent variable rate.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Future Labor minister (but at that time ACTU president) Martin Ferguson was furious, saying the government could "get nicked" if it thought the rate rise was acceptable to workers.
But hopefully cheering readers up was a story just below it on the remarkable reunion of two brothers, one being the AFL great Canberrans proudly call our own, Alex Jesaulenko.
Jesaulenko was pictured with his mum Vera and his brother Aleksander, who he didn't know was even alive.
Aleks had been removed from his mum's care by the Gestapo in a camp in Poland during World War II. It was only through the computerisation of records nearly 50 years on that family members on either side of the world were put in touch and reunited. The advance in computing meant a match was able to be found in the database, despite the Australia-based family having Anglicised names.
Jesaulenko said it had been a highly emotional time reuniting with his brother Aleks, after whom he had himself been named because Vera thought Aleks had died after he was taken away.
"We were told about Aleksander when we were young. It was in the back of our minds for many, many years. I didn't think I would ever see him but Mum always believed though."
