The decisions we make and the actions we take affect a wide range of individuals, businesses and organisations. Effective and meaningful engagement with stakeholders across all our functions is essential to fulfilling our role, and it provides stakeholders with an opportunity to inform and influence what we do. Engaging with those affected by our work helps us make better decisions, provides greater transparency and predictability, and builds trust and confidence in the regulatory regime. Our Stakeholder Engagement Framework sets out our commitment to engaging with consumers and their representatives, industry participants and peak bodies, and other stakeholders.
Our Customer Consultative Group (CCG), Consumer Challenge Panel (CCP) and Consumer Reference Group (CRG) provide important input to our work and bring a wealth of experience across consumer advocacy, engagement, economics, finance and regulatory decision making.
The CCG comprises a diverse range of 13 organisations from across Australia and provides us with advice on cross-cutting issues as well as connecting into the wider consumer landscape. The CCP has 9 current members whose role is to provide input on key consumer issues during individual network determinations, including an assessment of networks’ consumer engagement and the extent to which proposals reflect consumer preferences. The role of the CRG is to help us implement the consumer consultation process during the 2020 inflation review and development of the 2022 rate of return instrument.
The AER is a member of the Energy Intermarket Surveillance Group (EISG), the peak international group for coordination between energy market surveillance and enforcement bodies. The AER also participates in international regulators forums such as the World Forum on Energy Regulation and has staff exchange agreements with overseas energy regulators.