The AER invites stakeholder to provide feedback on proposed conditions within the Retail Exempt Selling Guideline (Retail Guideline), as part of its Review of the exemptions framework for embedded networks.
On 17 March 2025, the AER published a draft Retail Guideline, alongside a revised draft Network Exempt Selling Guideline and an accompanying Notice of Decision for public consultation. Submissions closed on 28 April 2025.
We received 34 submissions that were generally supportive of our goal to enhance consumer protections to embedded network customers, provide clarity and ensure consistency of language throughout both guidelines.
We have considered issues raised throughout the consultation process. To inform our finalisation of the guidelines, we are inviting feedback from interested parties about two further proposed Retail Guideline conditions that were proposed by stakeholders and have not been publicly consulted on to date. These new conditions require an exempt seller to:
- include contact of the relevant energy ombudsman scheme on their residential customers’ energy bills
- refund any credits applied to its customer’s account upon termination of the customer’s energy supply agreement.
We have published a consultation paper that discusses these proposed amendments, and this should be read in conjunction with the draft guidelines and notice.
The proposed new conditions, draft guidelines, notice and submissions are available on the Review of the exemptions framework for embedded networks page.
Feedback should be submitted to AERexemptions
aer [dot] gov [dot] au (AERexemptions[at]aer[dot]gov[dot]au) by COB Monday, 7 July 2025.
Due to the extension to our consultation, we now anticipate the final instrument to be released on or before 29 August 2025.