This message first appeared in our November 2025 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.
Like many of you, much of our time is spent on design of the future energy system. This is critical work, of course, but it can also divert us from the problems of today. And there can be no greater problem than injustice.
If there is one report you read this year, choose this groundbreaking research, The Right to Power – Keeping First Nations communities on prepayments connected, conducted by Original Power in partnership with Western Sydney University (and funded by an Energy Consumers Australia Collaboration Grant).
- There are approximately 65,000 First Nations people across the NT, Qld, SA and WA supplied via prepayment meters, usually with no other option. As the term implies, this means when prepaid credit runs out, so does the power. While arrangements vary considerably across the four jurisdictions, the disparities faced by these communities are stark and shocking.
- Disconnection rates are extraordinary. Across NT, SA and WA (the researchers were not provided access to Qld data), 8,878 residences experienced 440,434 disconnection events in the past year – an average of 49 per household. For the NT, that average was as high as 59, meaning homes lost power more than once a week – and without warning.
- The health and safety implications of this are enormous. Prepayment households in central Australia with high usage have a 1 in 3 chance of same-day disconnection during extreme weather. Extreme heat events are high risk for very young and older people. They are also 2.3 to 4.6 times more likely to die during extreme heat than people living in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and surrounds. Put bluntly, in some regions people die when the power goes out.
- While prepayment consumers have prices subsidised in some areas such as SA, in others, they pay more. Given the weather extremes as well as energy inefficient housing and appliances, consumption rates are also high. Average expenditure on electricity is over $2,700 per year – with 25% of homes spending more than $4,000.
- Prepayment consumers too often don’t get the same protections or subsidies that you and I do. While in SA and WA, all prepayment consumers receive energy concessions, in NT the number is much lower. For instance, it appears only 6% of remote consumers in the NT do. It’s also the case, perhaps ironically, that in many communities there are unnecessary technical, structural and policy exclusions for grid-connection of solar and batteries – often in areas of intense, sustained sunshine. And topping up a prepayment meter is a challenge in itself; while some retailers provide a phone app, others don’t. This means some communities have to travel very considerable distances every week just to top up at a store.
We congratulate Original Power on this first-of-its-kind work and for the six clear and compelling recommendations the report makes. Among these is a simple one: that governments subsidise power on days of extreme heat (>40C in tropical zones and >36C in grassland zones).
Given the impact of disconnection events on mortality and the huge cost to communities (food/medicine spoilage, comorbidities, social cohesion), we believe strongly that the cost of this subsidy – totalling approximately $1.5 million per year for NT, SA and WA – is far outweighed by the justice imperative.
We also believe strongly that the same consumer protections that apply for other consumers should apply here as well.
As a first step, the NT should expand the Electricity Industry Performance Code to cover these communities, which would mean that at the least we would see public reporting of important data such as disconnection rates. It is very hard to understand why this hasn’t happened already.
We’ll keep working with Original Power to make these recommendations a reality. Will you join us?
