Top government adviser blasts Australia's flawed financial response to drought

A top government adviser has blasted Australia's response to drought, saying billions of dollars have been wasted in taxpayer-funded rescue packages that do not help farmers.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison prepares to board his
 plane following a regional drought tour at Quilpie in Queensland.

In a warning to Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who is drawing up a new response to the worsening disaster, Productivity Commission chairman Peter Harris said the extra help would be "condemned to failure" if policy mistakes of the past were repeated.

Mr Harris pointed to government subsidies that had actually led to higher freight and feed costs, which quickly earned a stinging rebuke from the government’s new drought envoy, the former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce.

Read Eryk Bagshaw’s story from The Age - “Top government adviser blasts Australia's flawed financial response to drought.”

Most energy is wasted through inefficiency - report

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 new report indicates 98% of all energy produced globally is wasted through inefficiency.

Addressing this issue, boosting energy production would greatly increase the economy and create millions of new jobs.

To visualize this number, the authors explain, consider that when boiling an egg only 2% of the energy consumed goes into actually producing the boiled egg: the rest is wasted in heating the pan, the kitchen air and the water around the egg.

The 2015 Energy Productivity and Economic Prosperity Index, authored by The Lisbon Council, Ecofys and Quintel Intelligence and commissioned by Philips, shows doubling energy productivity improvement to just 3% would reduce the global fossil fuel bill by more than €2 trillion (US$2.28 trillion) by 2030 and could create more than 6 million jobs in the next five years.

Read The Climate Group story - “Report shows how to turn energy waste into economic growth” – says we don’t have to wait for any ‘magic bullet’ to implement these solutions.