This message first appeared in our May 2026 newsletter. To stay up to date with the latest news and research on energy issues that impact consumers, sign up to receive our monthly newsletter below.
For me, a litmus test on the maturity of a big industry is the degree to which consumers have a genuine say in decisions that affect them. Often, this takes the form of consumer advocates trying to influence policy, rules and law. As you can imagine, it can be hard to track precisely how impactful this influence is, but we know it’s important for our accountability that we try.
Today I wanted to call out one of the recent big wins that ECA engineered for consumers.
A lot of people don’t know that across much of Australia, when a consumer (or, more often, a developer) builds a new property, it’s free to connect to the gas network. Well, not free exactly…the cost is ‘socialised’ so that all existing gas consumers pay the bill. This means that even though virtually all reputable authorities acknowledge there is no long-term viable future for reticulated gas as a fuel source for consumers and small businesses, thousands of new properties continue to be connected to gas each year.
Imagine you’re a young couple. You’ve just bought your first home with a 30-year mortgage, and you move in to find your cooking, heating and cooling is supplied by gas. Just when you’ve taken on the biggest capital investment of your lives, you find yourselves stuck with ever-increasing bills (see our Power Move and Stepping Up reports) and gas appliances that could well become stranded assets in the years ahead. The chances you’ll have the available capital to abolish the gas and replace appliances are pretty slim. One thing is for sure, though: you’ll certainly wonder why the developer didn’t just build an all-electric home in the first place.
To add insult to injury, not only are you disadvantaged, but the rest of the customer base ends up bearing the cost of the connection. Meanwhile, the regulatory asset base grows, thus making eventual decommissioning ever-harder. Honestly, it’s tough to find any winner in this equation at all.
About a year ago, we developed a comprehensive plan to address this issue, culminating with a change to the rules requiring all new connections to the gas network to be paid up-front. Some might think it’s strange for a consumer advocate to ask consumers to pay more money – but, in fact, they don’t.
Why? Because when a developer (or purchaser) compares the true costs of connecting to gas with the cost to fully electrify, in virtually all circumstances they will choose to electrify. This will save the community money, reduces the cost of what’s often called the gas ‘death spiral’ and, crucially, will save the consumer many thousands of dollars over the years to come.
From 1 October 2026, our proposal will be the rule for all National Electricity Market states and territories (I should note this was already the case in Victoria). Conservative analysis suggests this one rule change will save consumers more than $500 million.
This is one of a significant number of concrete changes we are working on alongside others to bring down bills, help achieve our national climate targets, and improve consumer outcomes.
