Editorial: Uptake of fluorescent bulbs salt in Labour's wounds

In the middle of last year, the Labour Government's sagging stocks were dealt a further blow by its dictate that energy-hungry incandescent light bulbs were to be prohibited.

The step stirred a strong backlash based not only on people's wish to use the type of lightbulb that suited their needs but wider issues of personal freedom.

Few objected when the Key Government cancelled the ban soon after taking power.

How Labour must now rue its misjudgment. Not only did it hasten its demise but it turns out that such a draconian approach was unnecessary.

According to the Electricity Commission, more than 80 per cent of homes now use at least one energy-efficient fluorescent lightbulb.

Clearly, people have been sold on the fact that such bulbs use 80 per cent less electricity and last six to eight times longer.

This, according to the commission chairman, David Caygill, means households can save more than $100 in energy costs over a bulb's lifetime.

Strictly speaking, the Labour Government and its Green Party allies had a broader agenda in seeking to ban incandescent bulbs.

They saw this, and the equally vexed championing of dribbling shower heads, as a means of providing leadership on climate change.

It was, however, always going to be hard to argue convincingly that these would do a great deal for the planet.

But people do recognise a good idea when they see it, especially one of hip-pocket benefit.

The financial saving to households means that fluorescent lightbulbs, in effect, sell themselves. There was never any need for coercion.

Inevitably, the passage of time will consign all incandescent bulbs to the dust-bin. They will be as irrelevant as all that political table-thumping and all that angst over freedom.