On 27 March 2025, the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) made a more preferable draft retail rule (draft rule). This is in response to a rule change request from the Hon. Chris Bowen MP, Minister for Climate Change and Energy, as Chair of the Energy and Climate Change Ministerial Council (ECMC) to increase support to people experiencing hardship.  

The Commission has made a draft rule that seeks to:  

• increase support and improve outcomes for hardship customers so that they are no worse off, if they do not take up their retailer's deemed better offer. This includes not incurring more debt or expenses than is necessary
• place a stronger onus on retailers to assist hardship customers with deemed better offers but afford retailers flexibility in delivering these protections
• improve the reporting and transparency of the type of hardship offers customers are on and assist the AER with monitoring to ensure retailers comply with the proposed rule.

There are three key proposed changes under the draft rule.

The Commission considers that the draft rule contributes to our vision for A consumer-focused net zero energy system, and specifically our consumer priority that seeks to inform, empower and protect consumers individually and as a collective. The draft rule seeks to reduce the onus and burden for hardship customers to take action to move to a retailer's deemed better offer due to the many barriers they may face, such as lack of time, literacy or language.

The Commission considered the issues raised in the rule change request, stakeholder submissions and feedback and opportunities to improve outcomes for hardship customers in line with our assessment criteria. Our assessment also had regard to promoting equitable energy outcomes across households experiencing hardship in terms of accessing or benefiting from their retailer's deemed better offer. 

We are seeking feedback on our draft determination and draft rule by 8 May 2025. 

Background

The rule change request forms part of the broader ECMC consumer rule change package submitted on 12 and 28 August 2024. The package involves seven rule change requests that together seek to help households access cheaper energy deals, increase support for people experiencing hardship and deliver more protections for consumers.

The package of consumer-related rule changes includes: 

• Ensuring energy plan benefits last the length of the contract
• Preventing price increases for a fixed period under market retail contracts
• Removing fees and charges
• Removing unreasonable conditional discounts
• Assisting hardship customers
• Improving the ability to switch to a better offer
• Improving the application of concessions to bills

The rule change request on Assisting hardship customers considered that hardship customers face barriers to engaging with their retailer, such as lack of time, agency, literacy or language barriers. They considered that these barriers prevent hardship customers from getting the best retailer offer available to them and support for these customers could be improved beyond existing retailer obligations and processes.  

ECMC proposed to amend the National Energy Retail Rules (NERR) to require retailers to provide hardship customers with a credit on their bill if there is a deemed better offer for that customer, as referred in the Australian Energy Regulator’s (AER’s) Better Bills Guideline.

The rule change request builds on the Australian Energy Regulator’s Game changer report presented to the ECMC in December 2023.

We have published a separate draft determination paper on the first four of the rule change requests listed above. These rule changes have been consolidated into a single rule change called Improving consumer confidence in retail energy plans.