Power Cost Increases

Funnily enough, I asked Steve yesterday, price. that welcome to country thing and for a lot of people text me and go the reason everyone's left to Australia is they don't get obsessed with racial issues the way we do in this country which of course is completely and utterly wrong because welcome to country became yet again a major debate over the weekend on Anzac people got booed etc and I said to Steve yesterday I said what if you held a poll what do you reckon it'd be he said 80% he was wrong but there was ironically a poll that did come out yesterday and it's 50% Say they agreed or strongly disagreed. Basically, they shouldn't be held at Anzac Services, these Welcome to Country ceremonies. They shouldn't be held at sports. They're overdone. Give an inch, they'll take a mile. Only 31% formally want them continued. So he was right-ish or he was right adjacent. So anyway, speaking of Australia, I'm reading yesterday. As I wade through my pile of Australian media, as I do every afternoon, I came across what I thought was an interesting thing on EVs because they're having the same discussion we are. March was a very good month in Australia for EV sales. They sold more EVs in Australia than they ever have in that particular month because the war started and we all panicked about petrol and went out and bought an EV. But then they went and said, look, if you're going to buy an EV, have you thought about your kids? P-platers, as they call them in that particular part of the world, because a lot of electric vehicles are particularly powerful, of course. It's one of the upsides, I guess, of an EV is that instant torque. And some of them with their batteries go from zero to fast really, really quickly. In fact, so quickly, they in Australia have decided they're too fast and they're not allowed to be driven by P-platers. So there's 288 current release electric cars available in Australia. Of them, 40% are banned. So when you go out and buy your Tesla plate, do you realise that your kid can't drive it because it's illegal and a bitchy you don't? So they have, of course, being Australia, and they're a bit backward, they have different rules in different states depending on where you are, but it's basically done on a power-to-weight ratio. So 130 kilowatts to a ton. Victoria's banned certain EVs at about 30%, it's 40% in other states. Anyway, be that as it may, at that particular point, I thought, well, hold on. I've never seen anything about this in New Zealand. What are the rules in New Zealand? So I contact Sammy and I say, Sammy, can you put down the legal letters just for a couple of moments and stop dealing with the lawyers and see if you can't investigate this. So here's what we found out in this country. There are no rules. Isn't that amazing? There are no rules at all. You can put your 16-year-old behind the wheel of a Porsche Taycan Turbo S, zero to 100 in about 1.3 seconds. They're 100 to 200 in about 1.3 seconds and no one's got any rules or queries or one. So in motor industry association, they talked to a couple of their technical people, weren't aware of anything. There's no limitation, no power to weight ratios, nothing. No one's clearly no one's thought about this apart from me. So then the MIA, they go and ring the Australians at the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries, and they talk to a quote-unquote technical person there who wasn't even aware of it himself. So they do have laws in Australia, but this bloke they talk to who answered the phone, I think his name might have been Bruce, and they said, Bruce, any lawyer go, don't think there's any laws here, mate. And they said, well, yes, there is, because Mike's just told us there are, and he goes, it's truth. And so he was off to investigate that. But then... The MIA told me, quote unquote, tell Mike he's picked up a beauty here and they're looking forward to digging into it. And furthermore, the boss of the MIA, Motor Industry Association, Amy, who turns up on this program periodically, Amy says she appreciates my keen eye and that I always keep her learning. So I've discovered something that seemingly nobody else knew.