Review of life support protections in Victoria

Overview

The Essential Services Commission is undertaking a review of life support rules to strengthen protections for life support customers in Victoria. The scope of the consultation includes:

• Strengthening rules about life support registration and de-registration to improve the accuracy of the register of life support customers
• Introducing a distinction to identify customers with a life-threatening condition to support emergency triage purposes
• Introducing a medical confirmation template so that energy businesses, customers and medical practitioners are clear on the information requirements to register a customer as a life support customer in Victoria.

Information session

The Essential Services Commission is holding a public information session on the proposed reforms outlined in the draft decision paper.

We invite and encourage you to attend this information session to learn more about the proposed reforms and how you can contribute and provide feedback.

The information session will be held online from 2:00pm – 3:30pm on 19 March 2026 via Microsoft Teams. If you wish to attend, please register using this link.

How to participate

You are invited to submit written feedback to our consultation paper via Engage Victoria by 11:59pm on 16 April 2026.

We will continue to proactively engage with the community, industry, community organisations and advocacy groups, government departments and agencies through individual meetings as this review progresses.

You can contact us via email, mail or phone.

• Email: energyreform@esc.vic.gov.au
• Mail: Essential Services Commission, Level 8, 570 Bourke Street, Melbourne Victoria 3000
• Phone: +61 3 9032 6290

We are also open to meeting with you to discuss specific feedback and encourage you to get in touch to discuss this option.

If English is not your first language, please contact TIS National on 131 450 to make your submission using an interpreter.

Next steps

Stakeholder feedback on the draft decision paper will help inform our final decision. We expect to release our final decision in mid-2026.

Submissions to the draft decision paper will be published on the commission’s website, except for any information that is commercially sensitive or confidential (as specified by stakeholders), in accordance with our Submissions Policy.