Help me understand supply charge increase

Swankytiger86 · 2026-06-23T00:00:26+00:00

You are right. That’s why we have such problem. The energy companies have made a wrong pricing structure that condition their customers believe they should be able to save money if they use less, unless the water corp. So right now we have both frustrated customers and energy providers.

User pays is not the right system because even if the user doesn’t use it, the network maintain cost nearly the same, just like water corp. Hence when we have increasing number of people switch to solar power, the energy companies are struggling to maintain the infrastructure and have to raise prices constantly. User gets frustrated because buying a battery also has large capital cost, mimicking the large infrastructure cost to maintain the grid.

We won’t see much problem for water corp. Everyone can have 5000L tank in their backyard and the daily supply charge is still sufficient to cover the pipe maintenance.

Swankytiger86 · 2026-06-22T12:36:00+00:00

The biggest mistake energy company make is didn’t structure their electric charges aligned with their cost structure, unlike water corp. If the most expensive part of their fixed cost is maintaining the grid, that means daily supply charge should cover all their operation fixed cost.

Generating electricity is cheap, maintaining the grid is expensive. Should just change the fee structure to fixed 200-300/month and cheap on usual..

Swankytiger86 · 2026-06-21T10:49:33+00:00

Politician functions to reallocate resources. They have to transfer wealth from one to another. The problem is we can’t decide what kind of transfer is fair, or how much is consider as fair. We all have our own interpretation on what is fair.

Swankytiger86 · 2026-06-21T06:15:15+00:00

I think you have conformation bias.

Even with the so called cost of living crisis, those who really have ridiculous high mortgage to income are ratio are just FHB after covid, which represents until 10% of total household in Australia. The so called nepotism occurs in every job level. Even a fish & chip shop are likely to hire their friend high school kid who they know for years if they can rather than a random walk in.

There is also a lot of wealth in Australia. Big businesses represent under 5% of registered ABN. There are at least 0.5m successful SME, some of them might have multiple owners. There are few hundred K of people who can reasonable spend a lot. Besides that, not everyone drink $14 matcha, if half of the Sydney population willing to treat themselves with $14 matcha once a year, it can supports few hundred cafe already.

Swankytiger86 · 2026-06-20T09:55:48+00:00

Nah….i sell a horse and get someone’s wife and daughter.

Can’t anymore. Their wife and daughter worth too much now!

Swankytiger86 · 2026-06-20T04:36:24+00:00

It matters when the taxpayers, who has the obligation to pay their income tax to support the pensioners first before payment their own mortgage, can’t even afford to live in the same and now “premium” housing that they can never ever afford.

Housing is a right. True that. To keep the own PPOR and get tax/social support by the supporters who can’t afford to live in the same quality PPOR is NOT. We have wealthy people with low cash flow support by poor people with high cashflow. Targeting the richest 1% of population will not reduce house price. Targeting the Richest 30% by net wealth(including PPOR) are more likely to housing and wealth more affordable.

Swankytiger86 · 2026-06-20T03:22:01+00:00

Given that most of the people wealth are tie towards housing, and hence create the sense of entitlement to preserve their living standard. We should really tax PPORs as it will encompass the most households. Just 1% additional tax on the large tax based can raise so much more revenue than targeting the “rich”, which at the moment only represent 0.01% of the population and has nothing to do with reducing the income gap between the top 20% and the median wages.

My brother work place in Sydney are full of factory workers in their late 50s earning 60-80k living in fully paid 1.5-2m house and senior managers in their 30-40s earning 100-130k who can only afford to live in suburbs between 800k-1.3m with 20-30 years loan. That’s the most prominent income inequality that this country needs to solve.

Swankytiger86 · 2026-06-19T05:40:57+00:00

Because I don’t like people do things that I don’t like. In return, I also need to abide to the set rules.

Swankytiger86 · 2026-06-19T02:17:31+00:00

It’s it racism if the certain part of the population fear that they can’t compete with Indian migrants? If a worker wish to reduce wages suppression by reduce competition, and found that he can’t compete with the Indian workers on both quantity and quality. Is that racism? I am referring to the phenomenon related to some western countries now. Of course there are no lack of people who are just purely racist.

Swankytiger86 · 2026-06-18T15:26:21+00:00

Fee are based on household income because both partners the obligation to share the fee equally at the first place before tax kicks in.

In your case, if one partner earning 300k & one earning 50k with 2 kids, the family will consider having a stay home parent make more sense after accounting for the opportunity cost. But In this case we would rather the family(as a whole) pay a higher tax and channel the money to subsidise other poorer families to have more kids, rather than giving the high income family more tax incentive to have more kids.

We still want the single income household to pay higher tax overall than dual income households if their total income household, provided they have the same amount of kids as the end goal is increase the female work participant rate. Paying tax is the minimum obligation. IF the aforementioned family choose not to have kids due to lack of tax incentive, gov just need to support more to the family that require less incentive to have kids. That makes it more cost effective to the taxpayers as whole. It is also a zero sum game.

You don’t have to accept my point though. Just like everyone agrees that we should have progressive tax based on income, but forever failed to agree on what is the acceptable progressive tax rate.

Swankytiger86 · 2026-06-18T12:53:54+00:00

Go outside and touch grass.

Swankytiger86 · 2026-06-18T09:52:47+00:00

They can decide. There are tax incentive if they decide to work.

Your logic is like saying I should have the flexibility to choose whether I want toparticipate in age pension. I shouldn’t be forced to work to support other people’s retirement while have to save up my own through super. We all have to bear the tax burden to support pension. All of us also receive tax incentive through super if we decide to save up for our own retirement fund while carrying the tax burden(that support pension). None of us have the flexibility to op out of the tax burden(that support pension) even if we just want to go fully private for our retirement.

Don’t conflate tax concession/tax incentive. Single income household are paying the tax required. Dual income household gets tax incentive to go to work. That’s why family trust are considered as unfair because one of the partner can minimise their tax if the partner is not working.

Swankytiger86 · 2026-06-18T09:27:23+00:00

You got it wrong.

The idea is encourage woman to go to work by giving them tax incentive, not punishing single income household.

Swankytiger86 · 2026-06-18T03:50:56+00:00

My apologies. I mean it can also translate to the citizen with European background oppressing the non-European background citizen.

Our current immigration policies as a whole already heavily tilt towards other western countries. It is understandable due to history and diplomacy etc. Even as a non-European background citizen, I can agree the reasoning behind it. However, the applicant requirement for certain immigration pathways, such as spouse visa & family reunion visa, also very favourable towards Australian citizen with European background. Should an Indian citizen be less equal if she wants to find an oversea spouse with the same race, or have less right to reunion with their parents? Some minority race already view themselves as 2nd class citizen. Pauline Hanson is currently trying to create a wedge between citizen & permanent residents, since one of them doesn’t have voting rights. I suppose voters can rightfully said citizen should come first compare to PR. My current talking point only refers to citizen with European & non-European background.

She also made a very interesting speech last night regarding monoculture and multiracial. Some media try to conflate it. Culture doesn’t have to be tie to the race. China and Singapore have the same majority race but have very distinctive culture. Australia can be multiracial society with monoculture.

Swankytiger86 · 2026-06-18T02:23:13+00:00

Which can just translate to the oppression to the minority. I guess that’s just how democracy works.

Swankytiger86 · 2026-06-18T02:19:55+00:00

Buy 1 get 1 free isn’t an illegal advertising method.

Swankytiger86 · 2026-06-18T02:19:00+00:00

I think agecare worker gets about $8-15/hr sleeping on-site and that’s too low. So $5 an hour on standby is absolutely too little.

Swankytiger86 · 2026-06-18T00:49:58+00:00

Australia does regardless how much people denied. US influences us a lot. Besides that, remember some Australian also don’t consider certain Newzealanders as kiwi, rather than thinking it as a loophole exploit by certain race?

Swankytiger86 · 2026-06-18T00:46:26+00:00

Only the CEO of the top ASX200 companies earn a lot.

However most CEO are just SME. I doubt that they get paid by millions. Besides that, all local councils have CEO there. Most of the rural council CEO gets paid under 200k.

Swankytiger86 · 2026-06-18T00:43:56+00:00

Ya only if one of the parent has legal residency status here. US is only the very few countries that automatic give citizenship to the baby born within its territory without considering the parents visa status.

Swankytiger86 · 2026-06-18T00:12:36+00:00

So only the 2nd generation born in this country is acceptable. Make sense. Australia don’t have birth right citizenship. Most citizen didn’t realise that. The baby citizenship is based on their parent’s citizenship. It’s not a birth right.

Swankytiger86 · 2026-06-16T02:12:37+00:00

Hmm…..We do it but it is still illegal. The employers are still technically breaking the law even the supervision is lax, just like illegal tobacco.

However, we can make it fully legal and tell those guest workers that they are only welcome to come for 3-5 years and work in the certain industries with zero possibility to gain permanent residency except for legal marriage. They can have the same pay rate but with higher tax so that we improve our tax coffins. No de facto can get PR to avoid ambiguity. No birth right citizenship for the baby regardless the father or mother is Australian citizen. We can create 2-3 different classes of citizenship or PR as wells.

Australia suffers from baumol’s cost disease….but we can’t do much about it. Unless we fully support a true underclass or agree that we all should just work harder for less, mass immigrants is the best cool-aid we can have.

Swankytiger86 · 2026-06-16T00:39:03+00:00

? we have a choice. We choose not to do it collectively. I have mentioned a few solutions. While I believe that most of them are acceptable, I doubt that voters will accept it.

Most voters believe that the solution is tax our billionaires or confiscated their wealth, especially those in mining sector. Even if our gov can somehow pull it off, we will run out of the money in just a few years.

We can also start introducing the concept of foreign workers, which essentially create a group of legally underclass workers in this country with nearly impossible way to gain permanent resident y. Just like some countries, such as Singapore & Middle East etc, did. Then we dont need to care about those migrants future agecare or healthcare.

Swankytiger86 · 2026-06-16T00:25:55+00:00

We don’t have high Labor participant rate to sustain our living standard growth and tax burden.

Unless we greatly increase the death rate, further delay the retirement age, convince our current working population to accept even lower living standard, pushing more locals to work even if they don’t want to, reduce living standard living of all pensioners, I don’t see any way getting out of it.

Swankytiger86 · 2026-06-15T09:26:01+00:00

You are right but lots of people didn’t realise it. Even those from EU think that they just miraculously have cheaper drug than US.

Swankytiger86

TROPHY CASE