[Radio Wrangler]

Are Australian irons usually earthed via the third pin? If so, the iron will not become statically charged, though things around it and people may do so, and when touching an earthed object (like a 3-wire iron) will get a shock as they discharge themselves.

Vehicle tyres were made conductive many decades ago, but people charge themselves walking and get a discharge shock on touching the door handle. The solution is resistive shoes, but people buy earthing accessories for the vehicle, saying it shocked them. So you cannot trust people when they say what they got a shock from. Snake oil products were common.

Another possibility is that the waxy thing is a suppression capacitor to prevent radio interference from the iron's thermostat contacts. A lot of people called that 'static'

David