The Government's looking to sort out the power companies, following the Electricity Price Review.

It says residential prices have gone up nearly 50 percent since the year 2000.

Now, if you go to the Reserve Bank's website you can access a quick little inflation calculator.

And guess what.

A dollar's worth of good and services in 2000 will now cost you $1.50, so the price of power has risen exactly in line with inflation over that period.

Just as an aside, wages have risen more than 80 percent in that time, so quite a bit more, dollar for dollar than the price of power.

So is it broken? I don't think so.

But the Government's going to fix it anyway.  

I guess because it can't fix the things that are broken, it has to be seen to be doing something.

Anything.

• Mike Yardley: Govt's needless meddling on power prices hurting consumers
• Heather du Plessis-Allan: Why your power bill is about to go up

One big change involves telling the big power companies they can't give discounts for people who pay on time.

Energy Minister Megan Woods believes they're skewing the market, and they make the cost of power artificially high.

Woods also told Heather that about 103,000 New Zealanders have trouble meeting their power bills.

That means the other four and a half million don't.

So, they've admitted the problem with power, if indeed there is a problem, is that Labour stuffed it up last time it meddled.

Does this fill you with confidence they'll get it right this time?

No, me neither.