Will Mark Knight toon flick Bowen switch on rising power prices?

The role of a parent is primarily to go around the family home and turn off all the lights and TV screens left on by the younger members of the family. While performing this service, the parent must tut and sigh loudly and mutter under their breath, and stomp about with heavy feet to make sure that they wake up those who are guilty of the wanton* waste of endless kilowatts of energy!

If you haven’t heard, electricity is expensive. Our move to renewables* hasn’t made it any cheaper, in fact it’s now more expensive than ever. A lot of us have solar panels and generate our own power. Some of us are adopting battery technology as well to store what our solar panels make during the day, so we can use it at night. But it’s a big cost outlay and not everyone can afford the technology. And batteries at this stage still struggle to power a modern family home with several kids, screens, computers, lights, dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, charging the Tesla, and running the Christmas lights.

We’re addicted to electricity. Everything runs on it. Industry needs loads of energy to make things and create jobs. It is predicted AI will use unimaginable amounts of energy to keep its massive data centres and their processing of billions of intensive computations*. So it will be tricky as we negotiate the energy transition from coal power generation to renewables like wind and solar.

As old coal fired power stations are being wound down, we find that the cost of building all these renewables and the transmission* lines needed to transport the energy they create is expensive. Our federal government wants us to move to net zero emissions* by 2050, which means they will have to build a heap more wind and solar to pick up the slack, because most of the power generated in Australia at the moment is by burning coal. And they won’t look at nuclear power. That’s verboten*! For interest’s sake, I took a look at the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) website.

Here’s yesterday’s power generation stats from the National Electricity Market (NEM) for Thursday 27th November.

Coal – 52 per cent

Gas – 3 per cent

Wind – 16 per cent

Solar – 25 per cent

Renewables are building but we’ve still got a bit to go to achieve net zero. So this week when inflation* data came out, it showed the biggest cost to the family budget was energy costs. That’s why your dad stomps around the house flicking light switches off! I was also reminded that before the Albanese Government came to power, it promised that it would reduce power prices by 275 bucks per year. Sadly, that hasn’t happened. Electricity costs were the biggest cost pressure on inflation, which was keeping interest rates higher and was taking more money out of people’s pockets with home mortgages*.

So I thought I would draw a cartoon on how the Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen might react to the news about energy costs. The idea I came up with was a completely visual gag. Once the sole domain of cartoonists, now you will see AI trying to tackle it (clumsily, I might add).

However, Minister Bowen is a delight to draw. He has an interesting face and when I Googled his image in preparation for the cartoon I saw something. Maybe it was because I was thinking about electricity and stuff but when I looked at his face, I saw a power point! Weird, huh? I could not unsee it so I did a quick sketch of his face on one side of the page and an electrical plug on the other … and they fitted together beautifully. I laughed at the image. Then I wrote a caption about the connection between power prices and government policy and there was my cartoon. An energy minister that resembles a power point. He’s made for the job!

POLL

GLOSSARY

• wanton: reckless, needless, senseless, something harmful that’s unjustified
• renewables: natural resources such as wind, water, and sunlight which are always available
• computations: calculations, calculating answers on a computer, process of computing information
• transmission: broadcasting or sending out something by radio or television, on the internet
• net zero emissions: achieving a balance between the emissions we produce and the emissions we can take out of the atmosphere
• verboten: German word for forbidden, commonly used in English for anything that’s not allowed
• inflation: an increase in prices over time, which lowers the value of money
• mortgage: a legal agreement under which a person borrows money to buy a property and the lender, usually a bank, can take the property if the borrower fails to make repayments

EXTRA READING

Dutton sparks nuclear reactions

Little to celebrate in Budget break

Why is there an egg shortage?

QUICK QUIZ

1. What are at least five household items that use power and drive up energy bills?
2. From the power generation stats Mark Knight lists, which was the biggest source?
3. What is the biggest cost to the family budget according to the latest inflation data?
4. Who is the federal Energy and Climate Change Minister?
5. What is the Albanese government’s target date for Australia achieving net zero emissions?

LISTEN TO THIS STORY

CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. What’s going on?
What’s going on in this Mark Knight cartoon? Outline the following:

Issue –

Why is it newsworthy?

What’s the humour?

Which side of the issue are they representing?

What do you see that makes you say that?

–

–

–

Time: allow 15 minutes to complete this activity
Curriculum Links: English, Personal and Social, Critical and Creative Thinking

2. Extension
If you could turn this cartoon into a joke to tell a friend, how would you phrase it? Is it funny? Could they guess the answer?

Time: allow 10 minutes to complete this activity
Curriculum Links: English, Personal and social, Critical and Creative Thinking

VCOP ACTIVITY
Stretch your sentence
Find a “who” in the cartoon – a person or an animal. Write it down.

Add three adjectives to describe them better.

Now add a verb to your list. What are they doing?

Add an adverb about how they are doing the action.

Using all the words listed, create one descriptive sentence.