Household expenditure survey. Get real. Electricity isn't that expensive

So you reckon you're paying too much for electricity. What if I told you that at the latest official count you spent no more on it than you would have in 1984?

We've become dramatically sensitised to the price of electricity. 

Back then the expenditure survey showed the average household spent 2.9 per cent of its budget on electricity and gas. Three decades on, in the updated survey released this week, the figure is unchanged: 2.9 per cent.

Electricity and gas amount to just $41 of our total weekly spending of $1425.

So why the anguish? The size of the bill has been climbing (it had fallen as low as 2.6 per cent) and it climbed further in July, after the survey was conducted.

Read Peter Martin’s comment in today’s Melbourne Age - “Household expenditure survey. Get real. Electricity isn't that expensive."

(Not for a second would I question Peter Martin's figures - he's an economics editor and I'm not - but I do know why people are seeing their electricity bill as more than the actual number (the bill) as there is clear uncertainty about the future security of energy supplies in Australia. This is odd as the country is awash with energy, it is just that it has simply been badly managed by successive federal governments. Australia is now ideologically frozen into inaction on energy and, of course, the conversation is conflated and worsened by the need for Australia to do something immediately, or sooner, about its national carbon dioxide emissions - Robert McLean)

Tony Abbott deludes Australians and leads them the wrong way

D

eluded by the three word slogans of Tony Abbott, Australians voted to rid the country of its Labor Party inspired carbon tax.

The stance taken by Australians contradicts that of most others in the rest of the world,

Treehugger reports that “… a new survey commissioned by the French government is to be believed, however, over 87% of the world's population supports some form of carbon tax as a means to tackle climate change.

It said, “That's not the only sign that the world is ready—very ready—for nations to start taking the fight against climate change seriously.”

Read the Treehugger  story  - “87% of world citizens support carbon tax”.

We need to 'think bigger' to save our great wonder



Lissa Schindler -
 we need to
"think bigger"

Government’s need to “think bigger” if they are to protect on one of the world’s great wonders from climate change.

Acidification of the world’s oceans by carbon dioxide threatens Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, but little, or nothing is being done.

A story published today in the Melbourne Age headed: “Survey finds Great Barrier Reef coral losing strength” points the inadequate governmental response.

“Scientists surveying a reef flat just south of the resort island, off Cooktown, have measured a near 40 per cent decline in deposition of the vital building block for healthy coral, calcium carbonate”, the story says.

It adds, “However, the risk is not dealt with in the federal and Queensland governments' draft Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability plan, which refers to unspecified action to "maximise the reef's resilience to the current and future effects of climate change.

“The Australian Marine Conservation Society's Lissa Schindler said: "The Reef 2050 plan doesn't really do anything to engage on climate change. It needs to think bigger."