Park at 60 Degree Angle

I started my first first week at work this week just gone, and immediately discovered that all of my pre-conceived British stereotypes of the Australian way of working are completely wrong. The pace of life of Sydney is certainly a little slower than that of the UK, but in terms of Aussie working being laid back - it certainly doesn't seem to be! Where us Brits - we love to queue; the Australians - they love rules and regulations.

I've had a few experiences of this over the past couple of weeks - from the way that the people drive so slowly, and no-one EVER breaks the really slow speed limits. The other day, my bus driver had a massive tirade of beeping and swearing at  car driver who had parked in a bus stop. As the driver drove off I heard the bus driver say "and he didn't even indicate at the roundabout UNBELIEVABLE! That's FOUR traffic offenses I've seen .... and the police, they do nothing you know! If I could hit him I would!" Personally - I was considering calling in a SWAT team. 

And you don't have to worry about what angle to apply to you parking here (or whether you should go in forward or backwards) - because the signs tell you what to do. 

I terms of climate change policies for business you can apply the same principles; those of Australia vary vastly from those of the UK (which will take some getting used to): 

The UK government apply what I would term a 'stick disguised as a carrot' philosophy - i.e. they create rules and regulations (and extra tax) which affect the cost of energy for businesses, which then get hit in the pocket and have to do something about the way they use it in order to make financial savings (or that's the theory).

The Australian have extremely cheap energy (due to the abundance of coal), and are extremely scared to do anything about this (as it has been an attraction for business moving to the country for many years). Consider this - when a Brit uses a unit of electricity, they produce 0.43kg CO2 per kWh (due to the current energy generation mix i.e. natural gas, nuclear, coal). When an Aussie uses a unit of electricity, they can produce way over 1kg CO2 per kWh depending on what state they are in.

The Australian government therefore apply a "stick disguised as a stick philosophy" - whereby they create masses and masses of regulation which require companies to prove that they have all kinds of energy management processes in place, and have to undertake all kinds of assessments and audits. The Australians love detail, and wont do anything without comprehensive cost benefit reviews to the nth degree so they take great care in completing these assessments.

Of course - if you applied any such onerous regulatory controls to a British company - they would just say 'what you going to do if I don't to this?', and would weigh the penalties for non-compliance up against the cost of actually doing it.

Whether the Australian approach has merit - I have yet to discover.

p.s. sorry for boring uninterested people - this probably just interests me.