For the first time, Queensland card-operated meter data has been made available, which means the Right to Power work will be extended into Queensland to build a clear picture of how card‑operated meters and energy hardship are affecting First Nations communities across the state. 

Australia’s clean energy transition is accelerating but First Nations participation and benefit continues to lag behind the pace and scale of change.

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

Calls for a “Consumer Duty” in Australia’s energy market are gaining momentum. Many see this as a way to ensure providers act in customers’ best interests as the system becomes more complex.

But across this discussion, we risk overlooking the people whose experiences most clearly justify a Consumer Duty in the first place: the tens of thousands of Australians – overwhelmingly First Nations households in regional and remote areas – who must rely on prepayment electricity meters. 

Sixty-five thousand First Nations’ households across Australia access electricity through prepayment supply arrangements that mean they can experience disconnection rates as high as an average of 59 disconnections per year, a landmark new report shows.

The affordability of prepaid electricity represents an exceptional yet under examined aspect of the nation's energy transition.

Prepaid electricity — where you pay for electricity before you use it — is in common use in jurisdictions where the proportion of First Nations Australians living remotely is greatest and First Nations poverty rates are uniquely high (above 40 %).

Here we explore a previously overlooked element of the prepaid electricity system in Australia's remote and regional Northern Territory (NT): how it disproportionately burdens high consumption households with a “poverty premium”.

Our findings reveal financial disparities arising from the application of two discrete electricity payment types operating throughout the Territory since 1998: the prepayment tariff versus the residential tariff plus fixed daily supply charge.

By appraising three decades of NT Electricity Pricing Orders (EPOs) we highlight the mechanism by which prepay households using more than a threshold rate of electricity — that has varied over time — are penalised financially.

Using known rates of household energy consumption, we demonstrate that while a subset of households are better off, prepay imposes an annual premium of AUD$57–$253 on those with higher consumption (26-48kWh daily in 2018/19) — homes that incongruously experience both an elevated risk of disconnection during temperature extremes and greater energy expenses than all other Territorians.

Our perspective complicates the trope that prepay is a fairer way to distribute energy costs in Australia's most remote jurisdiction.

Authors: Bradley Riley, Michael Klerck, Francis Markham, Thomas Longden, Vanessa Napaltjari-Davis, Simon Quilty, Jimmy Frank-Jupurrurla, The prepay “poverty premium”: Perspective on Australia's Northern Territory prepayment tariff, Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 127, 2025,
104189, ISSN 2214-6296

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This study evaluates whether residential rooftop solar can serve as a preventative solution to energy insecurity among low- to moderate-income households.

Using a national, matched sample of solar and non-solar households based on detailed and address-specific data, we find that solar leads to large, robust and salient reductions in five indicators of energy insecurity.

Moreover, the benefits of solar ‘spill over’ to improve a household’s ability to pay other energy bills.

• an individual is unable to pay their electricity bill
• they receive a disconnection notice (46% less often)
• a reduction in the likelihood they reduce their energy consumption to save money on energy costs (15% less often)
• a reduction in the likelihood they forgo expenses on household necessities to pay an energy bill, and
• a reduction in the likelihood their home is kept at an uncomfortable temperature.

The results suggest that rooftop solar may be an effective tool for policymakers who seek to reduce energy insecurity.

Authors: Yozwiak, M.; Barbose, G.; Carley, S.; Forrester, S.; Konisky, D.; Memmott, T., et al. (2025). The effect of residential solar on energy insecurity among low- to moderate-income households. Nature Energy, 10(5), 569-580. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41560-025-01730-y Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1st561b6

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