I am not confident enough to say that someone in Australia does or doesn't pay the 5%. I can ask the ATO but otherwise can't know. I am stating the range of how much it is.
That's not nearly true, at least for Melbourne as a metro area. I never heard of weeks waiting for GP appointment, and I never waited for more that 2-3 days for GP both in east and west suburbs. Usually you have at least 3-5 GP medical centres in 5 km radius, and in half of them appointments are avaliable same day or next day. That's the case now, and was the case 5 and 10 years ago, with only obvious exception during COVID.
6+ years wait could occur, but it would be ~1% of elective surgeries. Basically, elective surgeries are covered by private healthcare, that's the unofficial limitation of Medicare. I got an elective surgery twice, wait was 4-6 months. Just to stress, that's an elective surgery fo non-life threating condition that just affect your quality of life, so it's reasonable to expect people paying up private insurance/hospitals for getting this done quickly.
Emergency 12+ hours wait is not an ordinary situation - could be when there is a combination of very busy night (like Friday during long holidays) and lowest triage category. Every time I attended emergency I was almost immediately triaged and when things were serious, was admitted in minutes. When it was just a cut with bleeding stopped, I was advised after triage that I can wait for 4+ hours or just come back in the morning. All my friends had the similar experience with Melbourne's public hospital ERs.
2% medicare levy is cheap compared to taxes in other countries with free healthcare.
I'm actually very surprised that someone has such negative impression about Melbourne's medical system. There was a short period several years ago, related to COVID, when ambos ramping time could be hours, but that's not not typical for Melbourne, and was resolved pretty quickly.
That's incorrect. I'll choose a couple of points to correct.
For the "elective" surgery, it's false to state that they are covered by private healthcare. There was also a push to move away from the term "elective" to something like "non-critical" if memory serves. Simply because a knee or hip replacement, as an example, isn't really something you can choose to do or not do when you're unable to walk. You can wait for a few months perhaps but since it affects your quality of life, including your ability to earn an income, then it's not a choice.
For the 1% claim, that's unlikely considering all the "operating blitzes" that had to be done in Victoria to decrease the huge list(the numbers were reported by the media if you're interested).
The pandemic lockdowns wasn't "several" years ago and the effects were felt long after, definitely not a "short period". You're forgetting to mention the ambulances writing on their vehicles where they're coming from and how long were their shifts just last year. Ramping is also still a problem but I am reading less about it in Victoria since the beginning of this year. Again not sure if it is better or just less reporting on it.
I'll grant you that some people don't get to experience this side of the system and some are lucky that they don't need it at all. Hopefully the more people talk about their negative experiences, as opposed to being surprised, the more accountability and improvements can be introduced. It can be a very good system if it was better maintained.
I'll refrain from commenting any further on this topic and thank you for your contribution.
Not sure what renting has to do with this? Renters in Australia do not install batteries/panels, it's landlord's business.
If landlord has batteries/panels installed, chances are rent would be a bit higher. Renter is free to choose a place with lower energy bills by paying that premium, so these subsidies definitely could benefit the renters.
This is the problem though. Landlords are rarely incentivised to enhance a property by installing solar+batteries on it, as they don't live there to reap the benefits. Solar still takes a couple of years to give an ROI, so I can't see how a landlord will agree to do this on an existing property.
If a property's monthly rent is higher because it has solar installed, what is the benefit to the tenant? Sure they get cheaper electricity, but they pay more rent, so it balances out.
Tenants won't pay for the installation, as it's a permanent improvement on a property that they don't own.
I live in a country with an order of magnitude less sun (Ireland), but there is a big solar boom going on here now, and I'm missing out on the government subsidies (which ended recently) because I'm renting and I can't convince a landlord to put €10k+ up to install a solar system for very little benefit.
I'm from Australia and my electricity provider has 12pm-2pm free electricity.
As other's said, dishwasher and washing machine has delayed/smart start options, so that is free for me. That saves at least 3kWh per day for me, so ~$30 per month. So it really helps with CoL crisis.
And yes, those appliances are (almost) 10 years old.
Ya just have to remember that it’s table scraps compared to the 100% plus increases in electricity prices we’ve already been subject to.
And this is in a country that has the same volumetric gas exports as Qatar, which provides it citizens free healthcare, free education including university and vocational training, and electricity at 3.2 US cents per kWh.
What do we get? None of that. We get citizens living in tents. In a resource rich country.
And you people think our governments are capable of making wise decisions about long term energy policy. Check your ideologies.
When was governments picking winners ever a good idea?
When has that ever worked out well.
When was other people choosing what to do with other people’s money an ideal we should vote for more of?
I'm from Sweden and hearing those energy prices really caught me off guard. With taxes and fees we pay ~€0.1 per kWh on average.
I have stopped caring about when house hold appliances run, our main energy consumers are heating (during the cold months) and charging the electric car.
Back before we locked ourselves in to wind and solar, and gas peaker plants, and a massive pumped hydro project that will approximate never be finished.
Sweden’s energy mix is predominantly nuclear, oil, and hydro. Wind and solar account for 10% and 1% respective.
There’s no escaping the fact everything wind and solar go electricity prices go up. Drastically.
In Australia, since 2005 wind and solar have increased to about 11% and 17% of electricity generation respectively.
And that time period correlates perfectly with the just over 100-200% increase in electricity prices, depending on where you live.
In 2005 I was paying AU$0.17 per kWh in South Australia, now that’s up around AU$0.44 per kWh. Elon even put in a big battery in South Australia. Hadn’t helped. Hasn’t helped reduce the cost of electricity. And that’s what the Australian government wants us to hail a success.
That’s 250% increase. While general inflation in the same period has been 67%.
Wind and solar haven’t even really started to put a dent in Australia’s over all energy use, which is dominated by gas and oil, and people are falling over each other to get in line to vote for more of it.
Other locations with big batteries and big electricity prices include Victoria Australia, Melbourne the capital is widely considered the California of Australia, and California itself. Big batteries, big solar, big electricity prices. Fact. Find me a counter example.
Germans are hanging solar panels off their apartment balconies. Not because they want to. Out of desperation. Just like poverty Africa. That’s equality: everyone can have nothing, and they’ll like it. My god.
No one is running an industrial economy on their balcony.
> In Australia, since 2005 wind and solar have increased to about 11% and 17% of electricity generation respectively.
> And that time period correlates perfectly with the just over 100-200% increase in electricity prices, depending on where you live.
I'll say this one thing and get out of the way. The price shock began in 2022[1] (see figure 1). The rise in energy costs aren't due to solar and wind generation, which is the cheapest there is. It's due to the transmission and variability of intermittent renewable energy, and also sensitive to export prices of gas due to our weak policy on gas reserves. Batteries are the answer to that as they can store when its cheap and dispatch to the grid when it isn't (and that includes home batteries). The Neoen battery which you mentioned, was the world's first big battery. It's been wildly profitable, which is basically driving the market to invest more in grid scale batteries and less in large scale renewables. So the federal and state governments aren't picking a winner by backing batteries, these policies are just accelerating us towards a cheaper grid using the momentum that's already there in the market. The federal government is also trying to offset the ending of the state-level bill relief for those that can't afford batteries, and reducing grid pressure/prices in the evening when everyone gets home.
You can’t have distributed low power density intermittent solar and wind electricity generation at scales that matter without stupendous amounts of steel and concrete transmission infrastructure having to be built where no one lives or works, nor wants to, to connect them to places people do want to live and work.
There’s no way that can be separated from grid-scale wind and solar.
The level of self deception renewables advocates subject themselves to would be funny if I wasn’t forced to pay for it.
You also can’t have it without peaking capability. Which means being able to cover possibly all demand instantaneously, and that was always going to mean expensive gas / battery projects that sit idle a lot of the time. We tried it I warn you.
That wildly profitable Neoen battery? Where do you think the profits come from? Thin air? The end user. That’s you and me mate, we’re paying for it. Low income earners disproportionately so. Renters who can’t have solar or batteries. They can just freeze in the dark.
I’m all for profits when they’re mine. I can’t understand why anyone would worship someone else’s profits. Your profits are my costs.
I just drove half way across the country, from the south east to the middle of South Australia.
Broken wind turbines 300k, from the nearest industrial centre. Probably 600+k from the nearest capable industrial centre.
They’ll never get fixed. No one is driving a $1200 an hour crane five hours each way to spend six days set up waiting for a technician and parts from Europe who was supposed to be here two weeks ago to fix one or two turbines / broken blades. Those handful of broken turbines probably don’t even have spare parts available, every wind farm is a new model of turbine, locked in to one manufacturer indefinitely for after sales parts and service, and if they do have spare parts and service available the payback period on the repairs would be astronomical.
It’s cheaper to let them rot in place and build new ones elsewhere. You don’t get greenfields grid-scale rebates for performing maintenance on ten+ year old equipment.
I dare you to run the numbers on the quantity of steel and concrete needed globally to transition to wind and solar.
Or don’t, cos it will put you off renewables. And there’s nothing worse than having your preconceived notions of what’s right and wrong jump out of the math and throttle your brain. The concrete related CO2 emissions alone will choke the planet way beyond what we’ve merely dabbled with getting to this stage.
I used to do paid and volunteer work for The Wilderness Society and donate to Greenpeace. Then I learned applied mathematics.
> stupendous amounts of steel and concrete transmission infrastructure
Rooftop solar and home batteries keeps power where it's used for domestic use. Large scale solar is also deployed near to mining and refining sites, and not by mandate, but because it's the most economic option. If you have batteries you don't need to build out transmission.
> You also can’t have it without peaking capability.
Once again, enough batteries and gas peakers are out of business.
> That wildly profitable Neoen battery? Where do you think the profits come from? Thin air? The end user. That’s you and me mate, we’re paying for it.
They come from arbitrage. Buy low, sell high. They same thing that anyone with a home battery or EV can do. Neoen actively reduced the market prices for electricity by increasing supply at the right time. That means the people of South Australia profited mate ;)
> Renters who can’t have solar or batteries.
The OP article is about distributing free power to everyone to take advantage of. Assuming that plays out, I can only see this as Good News™ for renters.
> They can just freeze in the dark.
Lighting isn't really what's chewing up the power. But certainly people going cold because of high energy prices sucks. Again, the prices have increased due to gas export prices increasing the wake of the Ukraine conflict. This isn't "self deception" it's just economics.
I could list ways that free energy in the middle of day could be used by renters and for low income earners to stay warn, but I get the vibe that you've got an axe to grind and I'd be wasting my time. So, as promised, I'm moving on.
That's a weird uninformed take. Both solar and battery are heavily subsidised in Australia if your household income is less than $180k AUD. Average solar 6kW installation with subsidies is ~3k AUD, 30-40kWh chineses batteries are 4-6k AUD after subsidy.
Median full-time salary in AU is ~90k AUD, and we have pretty good minimal wages, so solar panels are affordable to almost every working homeowner.
Young people don’t own their own homes, the banks do.
And many young home owners are now suffering mortgage stress, same with renters. That is, 1/3 or more of their income goes to repayments / rent. Double income households, at your AU$90k are paying $760 a week in rent or mortgage repayments.
I recently worked a minimum wage job, and you are guzzling the koolaid something chronic if you think $24.95 is workable with a mortgage, the one necessary car, and all the associated taxes and insurances. Fuck me.
I worked out I’d be only $50 worse off week on the disability pension.
Admittedly I’ve made some stupid decisions in my adult life, but, unsurprisingly, we can’t all be far out on the righthand side of the bell curve. I’m just a dumb blue collar worker.
Emailing backup codes doesn't sound like a good idea. You give the keys to the kingdom to email provider or anyone who would be able to access your mailbox.
If that's the case, why Tesla easily beats any other opponent overseas as well? Here, in Australia, they do not get any subsidies. Model 3 and Y sales are leaving all others, including Ioniq, far behind.
Other manufacturers haven’t had time to scale up production. Also the direct you consumer model has been a real winner in preventing dealer price gouging due to shortages
Last software update allows to map many functions to long-press of steering wheel button. So you can assign AC temperature to it, then you don't need to take your eyes of the road - just long-press left button and scroll up/down.
