The Network has responded to the Australian Energy Regulator's Retail Guidelines Review which directly affects every aspect of First Nations energy experience—from billing and concessions, to hardship pathways, to protections for prepayment customers, to conditions for meaningful participation in the energy transition.

The Network has responded with a submission to the Australian Energy Regulator’s 2026 Rate of Return Instrument (RORI) Review.

Persistent inequities that prevent First Nations households—especially in remote and regional areas—from accessing safe, affordable and reliable energy must be corrected.

Every aspect of First Nations energy experience — from billing and concessions, to hardship pathways, to protections for prepayment customers, to conditions for meaningful participation in the energy transition — is directly impacted by the Australian Energy Regulator’s (AER) Retail Guidelines Review and the consolidation of the Benefit Change Notice Guidelines, Better Bills Guideline, Customer Hardship Policy Guideline and Retail Pricing Information Guidelines. 

The Network strongly supports this review as a critical opportunity to align retail regulation with recent significant national reform, including the First Nations Clean Energy Strategy as a whole-of-government blueprint for achieving equitable First Nations participation and outcomes across the energy system; the National Energy Equity Framework (NEEF) which establishes a nationally consistent equity standard for all energy policies and programs; major reforms to customer protections under the Better Energy Customer Experiences (BECE) program; and growing evidence of energy inequities affecting First Nations peoples (as evidenced in the recent Original Power The Right to Power report). 

Overarching recommendations 

The Network recommends that the combined Retail Guidelines include: 

1. A dedicated “First Nations and Equity” section — Setting out obligations regarding accessible communication, cultural safety, translator services, community engagement, and support pathways. 
2. Inclusion of prepayment customers across all guideline elements — The current exclusion of prepayment customers is inequitable, inconsistent with the NEEF, and produces harmful outcomes. 
3. Automatic concessions and rebates — Manual application processes are a structural barrier. The NEEF explicitly endorses auto-enrolment where friction exists. (see NEEF, “Accessibility barriers and friction”, p.12). 
4. Proactive hardship identification — Using hardship indicators such as payment patterns, missed bills, inactivity, or involuntary self-disconnection (recognised in NEEF as a valid hardship indicator; p.15). 
5. A Priority Services Register — To ensure identification and protection of customers with medical, cultural, technological or geographic vulnerabilities. 
6. Mandatory data collection and reporting — Including First Nations status (self-identified), postcode-level analysis, and prepayment disconnection events. 
7. Clearer, simpler, more culturally appropriate communication standards — Drawing on behavioural insights, First Nations languages, visual design and trusted communication channels such as Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations (ACCOs) and community radio. 

Read our submission

For many First Nations households who experience disproportionately high energy hardship, limited access to consumer energy resources (CER), and structural barriers to switching or reducing consumption, Rate of Return Instrument (RORI) decisions can have immediate and severe affordability consequences. 

The Australian Energy Regulator (AER) has an opportunity in this 2026 Rate of Return Instrument (RORI) review to acknowledge and respond to the lived experiences of First Nations consumers, to adopt a cautious and consumer-protective approach to rate-of-return settings, and to help ensure that the energy transition delivers fair and affordable outcomes for all. 

In 2024, all Australian Energy Ministers endorsed the First Nations Clean Energy Strategy as a priority action under the National Energy Transformation Partnership. The Strategy commits governments to ensure First Nations people are not left behind in the energy transition, to improve affordability and essential service access, and to reduce structural energy disadvantage. Given the Strategy’s ministerial endorsement and its explicit relevance to consumer outcomes, it should inform the AER’s interpretation of the long-term interests of consumers in this RORI review. 

The evidence is clear: First Nations households are more vulnerable to energy price increases, more exposed to network charges, and less able to mitigate costs through CER. For these reasons, the AER must adopt a cautious, equity-focused approach to rate of return settings. Past examples of network over-recovery — including the substantial uplift received by Ausgrid under the introduction of the trailing average cost of debt, and widespread over-recovery under earlier inflation methodologies — demonstrate how technical regulatory choices can have unintended but very real consequences for affordability. The AER should avoid repeating this pattern. 

The Network’s view is that the AER should apply a distributional lens to the RORI review, carefully assess affordability impacts on First Nations consumers, and recognise that strong First Nations engagement reduces risk and improves investment certainty. In which, we recognise that network businesses are highly responsive to financial incentives and that the RORI could be a lever for embedding better and more equitable outcomes for First Nations customers if reviewed and audited. However, the long-term interests of consumers, particularly those experiencing structural energy hardship, must be central to the AER’s decisions. 

Read our submission

The Network considers Ergon Energy’s waiver application should not be granted at this time by the Australian Energy Regulator, because the waiver fails to demonstrate how it could meaningfully and materially reduce current widespread experiences of energy insecurity for households and communities in the target region.

Download the submission here

Thanks for the photo by Jack T on Unsplash