The Justice and Equity Centre led a joint consumer and community response to the Australian Energy Market Commission’s Draft Determination and Preferred Rule Change on Improving consumer confidence in retail energy plans. The submission was co-signed by the Financial Rights Legal Centre, Mob Strong, ACOSS, QCOSS, ACTCOSS, SACOSS, Financial Counsellors Association of NSW, Ethnic Communities Council of NSW and the Council of the Aging.
The rule change seeks to improve a range of long-standing problems in the way that energy retail contracts function and consistently lead to poor outcomes for consumers. These include:
- Ensuring contract terms last the length of the contract
- Ending unreasonable conditional offers
- Restricting price increases under market retail contracts
- Restricting fees and charges
Our organisations were broadly supportive of the Draft which will make important steps to improving outcomes in access to affordable energy services for all energy consumers. If approved, these changes will come into effect from July 1 2026.
Having provided detailed feedback in our response to the Consultation Paper, our submission to the Draft outlined our support for each policy position and provided some direct feedback on detailed aspects of each individual aspect of the rule change.
StreetCare’s Anna Nagel wins NCOSS lived experience award