Recently we held our annual Foresighting Forum – a two-day event where we challenge attendees to think, speak, act, and dream like an energy consumer. This year, we framed the Forum around our new three-year plan, which lays out the seven targets that we believe must be true for a modern energy system operating in a just society: equity, value, agency, ownership, control, justice, and representation.
The plan we have outlined requires more than just resilience and perseverance, it requires boldness, bravery, and very considerable imagination – and, most importantly, it requires us to reach across the room and work collaboratively together. That’s why we concluded the Forum by asking participants what they considered was working and not working in consumer advocacy, and what the upcoming opportunities in consumer advocacy are, and how they would like to play a part. A summary of the discussions is provided below.
What’s working
There was a collective appreciation for the passion and expertise of advocates, and that the presence of a strong consumer voice in discussions is making a difference, especially with the increase of growing evidence to back up claims.
An increase in diverse voices in the movement was also noted, with the voices of First Nations people, small businesses, and CALD consumers being elevated, strengthening the movement by creating a broader coalition of advocates.
It was generally also agreed that industry and regulators better understand the value of including consumer voices
What’s not working
The need to support consumer advocacy better
While there have been gains in the consumer movement, as noted above, it was agreed that more needed to be done to support consumer advocates in the transition. This includes increased resourcing, training opportunities, and more ‘connective time’ to improve collaboration. One example of how this could play out is through better coordination in the design and development of research, to ensure duplication is avoided, and ensure research remains consumer centric.
It was also noted that consumer advocates need to move from simply responding to external priorities to proactively advancing their own agendas (easier said than done with resourcing constraints!)
Failures in the market
Tables also discussed the structural issues which are preventing consumers from receiving good outcomes. This includes the trust deficit, whereby consumers don’t trust their retailer or the government. Similarly, tables discussed the need to stop relying on competition alone to deliver good consumer outcomes as this is not working. Instead, the sector needs to be transparent with consumers about the costs and risks of the transition, to address misinformation, and to reduce the complexity of the system and support programs.
Opportunities
Many opportunities to advance consumer advocacy were identified in the discussion. A summary of some the items discussed is below:
- Supporting and building capacity of advocates
- Stakeholder map for advocates
- Peer-to-peer knowledge sharing among advocates, and leveraging shared knowledge to create joint submissions
- Connecting with small business advisors
- Improving engagement with consumers and existing communities/channels
- Bringing policymakers to communities
- Connecting researchers to create a central pool of data and feedback from consumers
- Understanding the ‘why’ behind research results
We are currently working to follow up on these opportunities. If there are ways you would like to work with us to deliver these outcomes, please let us know. Thank you to everyone who took part in these hugely valuable discussions.
You can catch up on the recordings of the Forum here.