In 2020—21 we are focusing on ensuring trust in the energy market.
Our energy compliance and enforcement priorities
Our compliance and enforcement objectives
Our compliance and enforcement work will focus on ensuring trust in the energy market. We are focusing on ensuring:
- customers experiencing vulnerability are protected from disconnection and accumulating debt
- customers affected by family violence are treated with respect and not subject to actions within the control of energy businesses that may endanger them
- energy businesses are deterred from disconnecting customers when they were not entitled to, or if they have not followed the relevant rules
- when businesses break the rules that regulate the market, they are held to account
- we are informed of the current state of the market.
Our priorities
To achieve these objectives our proactive compliance and enforcement work will focus on these priority areas:
- payment difficulty framework
- family violence protections
- wrongful disconnections of customers
- planned interruptions, especially affecting customers with life support equipment
- the transfer of customers without explicit informed consent
- overcharging of vulnerable customers, especially affecting those on concession entitlements or in payment difficulty
- embedded networks.
These priorities take several factors into account including:
- the risk of customer or market harm
- market intelligence including information and data we receive from industry, the community sector, the ombudsman and the broader community
- the external environment and how it interacts with the delivery and consumption of electricity and gas services.

Our approach
We will take a multifaceted approach to promoting customer protections under the energy rules. This will involve:
- education initiatives for both energy businesses and customers
- monitoring and analysis of data
- auditing energy businesses systems and processes
- compliance and enforcement actions
- reforming the energy rules and advising government
- referring conduct to other agencies.