The goal of our strategy is to promote just outcomes and equitable access to essential services for all Victorians, today and tomorrow.
Getting to Fair: Advancing Equity strategy
Overview
About our Getting to Fair: Advancing Equity strategy
We've updated our Getting to Fair strategy. Getting to Fair: Advancing Equity sets out our plan to promote just and equitable outcomes for all Victorians, today and tomorrow.
The updated strategy reflects the commission’s view that fairness and equity are essential to economic regulation and achieving the long-term interests of consumers.
Advancing Equity builds on our Getting to Fair 2021-2024 strategy which focused on removing barriers to accessing essential services for consumers experiencing vulnerability. Our updated strategy broadens our focus to also consider the structural and system-level factors that can cause, reinforce or worsen inequity over time.
What the strategy means for consumers
At the Essential Services Commission, our vision is for fair and dependable essential services, today and tomorrow, which reflects our legislative objective to promote the long-term interests of Victorian consumers.
As an economic regulator, we are concerned with efficient and well-functioning markets. These are important factors that can impact the long-term interests of consumers. But achieving strong long-term outcomes for consumers also requires us to consider how markets and services are experienced in practice – including who benefits, who faces barriers, and how costs, risks and opportunities are distributed over time.
Getting to Fair: Advancing Equity reflects a broader and more outcomes-focused understanding of the long-term interests of consumers. Our strategy aims to support fairer sharing of the costs, benefits and risks of the essential services we regulate across Victorian consumers, including diverse consumers and groups, and future generations. The strategy will support the commission’s regulatory and decision-making work and outlines the considerations that guide our approach.
Our strategy is flexible by design and will guide the development of two flagship frameworks and an annual program of priority actions. This will ensure we can address known issues and respond to new and emerging needs, risks and harms.
Flagship frameworks
The strategy will guide the development of two flagship frameworks, a First Nations Self-Determination Framework and an Energy Justice Framework.
The first flagship framework to be released under Getting to Fair: Advancing Equity is our First Nations Self-Determination Framework. You can read the framework using the link below, or visit the webpage for more information.
Priority themes and priority actions 2026-27
Each year our work program will include priority actions that align with our three priority themes:
- Business conduct
- System-level responses
- Regulatory inclusion
In 2026-27 our priority actions include:
Business conduct
- Supporting the safe and effective implementation of new and expanding activities in the Victorian Energy Upgrades program, including insulation.
- Building on insights from our Safety by Design partnership to encourage businesses to adopt safe design practices.
System-level responses
- Developing and releasing guidance on the requirement to act fairly and reasonably as set out in the Energy Retail Code of Practice.
- Driving evidence-based opportunities for collaboration, including working alongside consumers and industry to develop rules and guidance.
Regulatory inclusion
Implementing the First Nations Self-Determination Framework, including:
- Building internal capability and relationships with First Nations people and organisations to create a strong enabling environment for First Nations led outcomes.
- Incorporating First Nations engagement and self-determination initiatives into all our work.
- Facilitating a place-based project focused on First Nations outcomes and impact.
How we developed the strategy
We consulted on our draft Getting to Fair: Advancing Equity strategy between 18 December 2025 and 18 February 2026. We received 29 submissions that contained valuable feedback. The final strategy is informed by feedback from the water and energy sectors, community and advocacy organisations, consumers and small business owners.
Following consultation, we updated the strategy to provide greater detail about:
- how considering equity informs our approach to economic regulation and efficiency
- how the strategy will inform our regulatory decision making
- the methodological approach that we will use to identify inequity, develop priority actions and deliver outcomes that support our goal.
Read our public engagement summary below.
Submissions to the draft strategy consultation
Resources
'Getting to fair' final report
'Getting to fair' progress report
'Getting to fair' strategy
Submissions to the draft strategy
We received 25 submissions, from the energy sector, water sector and community sector, and one comment through our feedback form. Overall, submissions were supportive of the need to develop a strategy addressing consumer vulnerability. Submissions covered topics including:
- The definition of vulnerability and appropriate terminology.
- Partnerships and relationships with relevant government departments, industry, community sector and other regulators.
- The consultation process to develop the draft strategy.
- Accessible communication.
- Existing assistance and best practice approaches.
- The measures of success for the initiatives.
- Feedback on specific initiatives, including the review of the Payment Difficulty Framework.
Our draft strategy
Engagement resources
Getting to Fair 2021-2024
About the Getting to Fair 2021-2024 strategy
This page provides information about our 'Getting to Fair' 2021-2024 strategy, which concluded in August 2024.
Our ‘Getting to fair’ strategy was released in August 2021. The strategy gives us a roadmap to address consumers' experience of vulnerability and break down the barriers they can face.
The aim of the strategy is to create fairer more equitable access for all Victorians, regardless of which of our regulated services they use.
All customers benefit from this approach, but particularly people who may be struggling with changes in circumstances or who are enduring difficulties. During difficult times, the inability to access essential services, like clean drinking water, affordable lighting and heating, sustainable council rates, should not be a cause for further difficulty.
12 August 2021
The strategy document presents our strategy and a summary of the information we considered when developing the strategy.
(pdf, 951.71 KB)
12 August 2021
The decision paper presents our strategy and includes all information we considered when developing the strategy.
(pdf, 1.06 MB)
Final report 2024
The final report on our ‘Getting to fair’ strategy demonstrates our commitment to incorporating the voices of consumers into our work and influencing positive change for consumers who are experiencing vulnerability.
At the conclusion of the three-year strategy, all action items have either been ‘implemented’ or well ‘in progress’ – with many actions embedded into our organisational and regulatory work.
We will continue to focus on protecting consumers and breaking down the barriers that block access and engagement with essential services.
What the strategy means for consumers
‘Getting to fair’ outlines the actions we are taking to ensure all consumers, regardless of circumstances, have equitable access to the essential services we regulate and administer.
The proposed changes in how we go about our work will take place over time.
In the short-term, we will ensure that the voices of consumers are reflected in our work.
Over time, consumers will see a more consistent approach to tackling the problems that cause these barriers. We will be better prepared to respond during times of need.
Our objectives
‘Getting to fair’ is built around three key objectives:
- working with consumers
- working with regulated businesses
- working on ourselves:
Objective 1: Consumers experiencing vulnerability are supported to better understand and exercise their rights and can influence our work.
Objective 2: Services we regulate are more responsive, inclusive and accessible.
Objective 3: The commission is more responsive, inclusive and accessible as an organisation.
Each objective is supported by a series of actions to be further developed and implemented over the next three years.
Delivering the strategy
While we implement the strategy, we will continue to engage with:
- regulated and administered businesses
- consumers and community advocates
- other parts of government.
Consultation will take the form of informal and formal processes, events and actively building partnerships with these groups.
In August 2023 we released our Getting to fair progress report.
Feedback on the draft strategy
We released our draft strategy for public feedback on 6 May 2021. We received 25 submissions, from the energy, water and community sectors, and one comment through our feedback form. Overall, submissions were supportive of the need to develop a strategy addressing consumer vulnerability. Submissions covered topics including:
- The definition of vulnerability and appropriate terminology.
- Partnerships and relationships with relevant government departments, industry, community sector and other regulators.
- The consultation process to develop the draft strategy.
- Accessible communication.
- Existing assistance and best practice approaches.
- The measures of success for the initiatives.
- Feedback on specific initiatives, including the review of the Payment Difficulty Framework.
Our final strategy is grounded in what learnt during our 18-month research, engagement and capability building program. It was shaped by what we heard during consultation on the draft.
Developing the strategy
We undertook an 18-month research, engagement and capability building program which has guided the development of our ‘Getting to fair’ strategy.
Research to capture experiences and emerging data trends
To help us understand the experience of vulnerability in recent times we:
- interviewed community workers and volunteers on consumer experiences in the energy market (conducted by the Consumer Policy Research Centre)
- collected data on the systemic factors affecting consumers in the current environment (compiled by ACIL Allen).
Engagement process
Our ongoing engagement is intended to build strong relationships with stakeholders and establish trust and to provide assurance that we will act appropriately on issues related to consumer vulnerability.
Engagement included:
- roundtable meetings every two months with community agencies on the social and economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
- a reference group made up consumer and community representative organisations to test our ideas and provide advice at each stage of the process.
- a deliberative panel of 37 people representative of our community to provide recommendation of what areas we should be focusing on, as well as to provide a definition of ‘consumer wellbeing’ to help guide us.
- discussions with industry in the form of roundtables and cross-sector workshops to share insights and examples of better practice approaches to consumer support.
- a range of activities with staff at the commission to ensure all staff understand the problems the strategy is seeking to address, and in formulating options that to help achieve meaningful change.
Thought leadership and building capability
Our strategy will be supported by frameworks for engaging with consumers experiencing vulnerability to build our engagement capability and share better practice:
- Guidance for working with victim-survivors of family violence, developed in partnership with Domestic Violence Victoria. It will inform the next stages of our work on family violence, which will require direct engagement with victim-survivors.
- Guidance for sensitive and appropriate engagement with consumers experiencing vulnerability, developed in partnership with the University of Melbourne’s Social Equity Institute. This includes a tool to assess the accessibility of online communications, and a roadmap for engagement for the vulnerability strategy.
We are committed to growing our capabilities and demonstrating thought leadership. We will continue to share insights and build knowledge in a collaborative and inclusive way.