Australians are grappling with an extraordinary set of health, social and economic challenges and we see the role of the Default Market Offer (DMO) as the safety net price as being more important than ever.

We see it as critical that the updated DMO settings help lock in the downward trend in electricity prices and help ease the pressure on households and small businesses. We have not seen any evidence to suggest that the COVID-19 crisis should change the longer-term direction of travel for electricity bills, which is down. In the shorter term, for the 2020-21 period, our view is that potentially temporary impacts on supply chain costs should be dealt with through separate mechanisms, external to the DMO.

Click here to read our submission on the impacts of COVID-19 on the DMO 2020-21.

This submission builds on our earlier contribution to the process in March, which you can read here.