Newspapers this week have been telling us how much more we?ll be paying on our property loans compared with last month, thanks to the latest interest rate rise.

But a much more meaningful figure has been provided by The Courier-Mail in Brisbane: how much more the typical loan costs compared with 2002 - when the Reserve Bank first got the idea that if they put up interest rates, inflation would come down. It hasn?t worked, but six years and a dozen rate rises later they?re sticking steadfastly to their theory (one definition of madness is: when someone keeps making the same mistake but expecting a different result).

So, if you have a $300,000 mortgage, your payments in 2002 would have been $1,942. Now the repayments on the same loan are $2,507, thanks to all those interest rate rises.

That?s a $565 per month increase - almost $7,000 per year. Think what the average family could do with a spare $7,000.