Submissions

We develop submissions to influence policy and legislative changes that will affect Queensland energy or water consumers.

Our views consider the issues customers are contacting us about through our dispute resolution processes, as well as issues raised during stakeholder engagement and community outreach activities.

20 Result(s) found

The Australian Energy Market Commission’s consultation considers the gas connection arrangements currently set out in the NGR as well as gas connection charges, temporary disconnections and permanent abolishments. EWOQ contributed to a joint response with EWON and EWOSA which generally supported the proposal to charge gas customers for the costs of the services – connection, temporary disconnection and permanent abolishment – that can be directly attributed to them compared to spreading the costs across all gas consumers. We however encouraged governments to provide appropriate and targeted funding to those gas consumers experiencing vulnerable circumstances who wish to permanently disconnect from the gas market where they can’t afford the abolishment cost.

 

EWOQ led the development of a joint response with EWON and EWOSA which welcomed the development of the draft Smart Meter Customer Code which has been co-designed through the collaboration of consumer representatives including EWOs, energy retailers, energy distributors and metering providers and supported by the Energy Charter.

EWOQ commented on the Australian Energy Regulator’s (AER) draft decision for its Review of the exemptions framework for embedded networks, along with amendments to the Network Exemptions Guideline and Retail Exempt Selling Guideline. The draft decision provided proposed changes to improve the level of protections for customers and to increase the AER’s visibility and compliance oversight over exempt entities. One of the key proposed changes we supported was the introduction of practical family violence protections for exempt customers.

The Australian Energy Market Commission release their Draft Determination on the proposed changes to assist customer in hardship. EWOQ, EWOSA and EWON collectively reviewed the Draft Determination and generally supported the three key proposed changes to assist customers in hardship which included:

  1. A new principle that requires retailers to ensure that customers on their affordability program pay no more than the deemed better offer, through either providing a financial benefit to the customer when they are not on the deemed better offer or obtaining explicit informed consent from the customer to be moved onto the deemed better offer.
  2. A requirement that retailers explicitly state in their affordability policy that they will check and offer the deemed better offer, both upfront upon a customer entering an affordability program and at least once every 100 days or in line with an agreed billing cycle with the customer.
  3. The addition of new affordability program indicators to be reported to the AER by retailers.
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