In 2017 Tom Gleeson delivered a colourful takedown of Origin Energy at the Melbourne Comedy festival. Gleeson is the John Wick of insults. And, like John Wick, analysis might be pointless. Why bother thinking about links between John Wick and US gun violence or the ethics and consequences of unrelenting revenge as a motive for living?
But, seriously, Gleeson’s brilliant takedown isn’t just pure bullshit, but shows how deeply the Gordon Gekko morality of “greed is good” has permeated Australian society.
When comedians celebrate greed and the audience laughs, then you know we have a problem.
Gleeson lays the groundwork of his set by confessing at the outset to owning a house; queue huge but slightly embarrassed applause.
With two thirds of Australians owning a house, why did he reckon the confession would get a laugh?
Perhaps because people on a tight budget don’t pay to watch live comedy.
Or perhaps, like Gleeson himself, his audience likes to identify with the underclass in Australia; those with no prospect of home ownership. If I’m right about who pays to see live comedy, or if the audience is simply representative of the general public, then most will be sitting on a real estate windfall with a value that their children can only dream of, or fight over. The overclass not only have a valuable roof over their head, but enough spare cash to adorn it with solar panels; thereby reducing their electricity bills substantially.
Feeling a little guilty about owning a house ingratiates Gleeson with the audience, who probably also feels a little awkward about it; at least in public.
So with everybody agreeing to feel awkward, Gleeson goes after somebody everybody can agree to hate; an energy company. Which happens to be Origin Energy in his case. Gleeson reckons he buys electricity off them for 31 cents (remember this is 2017!) and they buy it off him for 5 cents.
He reckons this is unfair. Why? Either he’s stupid or a comedian; or both. He graduated in maths and physics, so he’s not stupid. He reckons that all electrons being equal should have something to do with the price.
He makes this sound funny by ignoring the obvious.
Perhaps if Gleeson had done economics instead of physics he’d have understood that the price of something has many determinants. Origin Energy can deliver you electrons at midnight; long after your solar panels have gone to sleep. That’s a really big deal. Origin can deliver electrons to the ventilator in a hospital 24x7. That’s a really big deal. Origin Energy can deliver. Gleeson merely owns a few moving electrons, he doesn’t have a delivery system; other than by bludging off the grid and expecting to use its services for free.
During tomato season, when backyard growers have plenty of home grown produce, commercial producers get very little for their crop. But out of season, they can make money with glasshouses and fertiliser. It’s no different with electricity.
Gleeson isn’t selling his solar output at midnight, he’s selling it when everybody else is selling it. Of course he won’t get the full bloody retail price. The retail price includes the distribution and transmission. Is Gleeson paying for any of this as a supplier? No he’s just another super-entitled grid bludger.
Gleeson supposedly rang Origin to complain about the price disparity. They told him they worked hard to produce energy and this justified their price. That got a laugh, indicating not many engineers in the audience. It’s surprising how little we all know about the grid. We are most like the Pacific Island Cargo Cults; just think it’s all magic.
Anyway, Gleeson reckons he’s going to dig up some coal and fire up a furnace and run a dynamo and sell electricity back to Origin and charge them 31 cents because he’s worked hard. More laughs.
The mundane reality is that if Gleeson wanted to build and run a generator, be it gas, coal or wood fired, then he could indeed, after meeting all the various and considerable legislative requirements, sell his electricity at whatever price he could get; even 31 cents per kwh. But of course it isn’t simply that Origin work hard, it’s that they and the rest of the builders and operators of our grid work smart. Gleeson buys a couple of panels and reckons he’s a fucking power provider and wants equal treatment. It’s like me buying a box cutter and wanting to be treated like a surgeon.
But like any good comedian, Gleeson can make the perfectly mundane idiocy sound hilariously funny by talking fast, ramping up the volume and swearing a lot. Which is also a sure sign of someone who realises his material is weak.
Imagine Gleeson bought some walnut trees and they produced more than he could eat. He could pack the excess and hawk it around to various wholesalers or retailers. That would make him a grower. He doesn’t want that. He wants somebody else to come and get his walnuts and pay him retail prices for it.
Alternatively he could stick a sign out the front saying “Free Walnuts” and people could come and take his excess. Gleeson, being the greedy bludger that he is, obviously favours option one.
It isn’t enough for Gleeson to be lucky enough to own his house and have enough income to buy a bunch of panels to reduce his electricity bill. He wants to make retail level money from the excess.
What on earth gave Gleeson the idea that this was reasonable?
Who makes laws about this stuff? That would be politicians. They are well paid, and typically have houses; often more than one. They also have enough spare income to buy solar panels. So the people who passed the laws could also be early adopters and benefit from high feed in tariffs; wow there’s a surprise.
Should all of the home-owners in Parliament have recused themselves during the vote on such legislation? They stood directly to gain. That’s the text book definition of having a vested interest. Our self-serving and greedy politicians have created a system where investment in housing dominates all other forms of investment in Australia. Which is why we are a basket case of an economy who can’t build anything. We rank between Kenya and Sri-Lanka on the Index of Economic Complexity.
Solar panels have super-charged the house value spiral by encouraging further investment in housing to make people think they are helping the climate. All they are actually doing is breaking the most efficient public service technology we had in Australia; the grid.
Decentralised power production has always been bat-shit crazy because it is remarkably inefficient; meaning it needs an extraordinary amount of stuff per person. It’s as if we had an efficient mass transit system, like the London underground, and we convinced people to all start driving cars. It’s that stupid. But if you can make stupidity profitable, then self-interest will prevail.
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