Please quote Dr Brendan French, CEO of Energy Consumers Australia
“We’re delighted that ministers have today endorsed the Better Energy Customer Experiences program, designed to significantly improve and modernise Australia’s consumer protection regime across the energy sector. Importantly, this includes the potential development of an overarching consumer duty, similar to what exists in a number of other essential sectors such as banking.
“It is a critically important development in ensuring consumers are properly supported and protected, for which ministers should be congratulated. Given the scope of work to be done, it will take some time to complete but we were very pleased that ministers uniformly see the value and urgency.
“An overarching duty to ensure fair outcomes for consumers is one of our key objectives. The time is well overdue for there to be duties to consumers, rather than simply obligations on consumers. We also think there is broad support across the sector and stakeholders for this welcome initiative. Energy Consumers Australia looks forward to our continued involvement with the program.
“We were also pleased to see the energy ministers’ communique expresses concern about the potential impact of the draft Default Market Offer (DMO). The communique also calls for further consideration of retailer revenues and margins, and cost of living pressures, in the final Default Market Offer determination. Energy Consumers Australia, and other consumer advocates, called for this yesterday when the draft DMO was released. Anything that can be reasonably done to bring down energy costs, should be done.”
You can read the Energy Ministers’ communique here:
https://www.energy.gov.au/energy-and-climate-change-ministerial-council/meetings-and-communiques
For more information, contact Stuart Turner on 0415 403 208 or via email.
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Energy Consumers Australia is the independent, national voice for residential and small business energy consumers. We enable residential and small business energy consumers to have their voices heard.