Update on Market Monitoring Information Orders

Following extensive stakeholder consultation in December 2024 on our draft Market Monitoring Information Orders, the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) has decided not to make the Orders at this time. Instead, we have decided to further engage stakeholders on some of the issues raised during the draft consultation phase before making any Orders.

Consistent with the principles stated in our Enhanced Wholesale Market Monitoring Guideline, we are committed to making sure that in collecting information, we have appropriately considered the feedback we receive. Our decision to further engage stakeholders has been informed by the enduring nature of the Orders, the comprehensive nature of the feedback, and our ongoing commitment to our information handling arrangements. We will also continue to strengthen our approach to data collection, management and security risks raised by stakeholders during consultation. 

We still intend to collect information to fulfil our enhanced wholesale market monitoring and reporting functions as this is necessary to properly undertake our role, improve market transparency and provide well-informed advice and analysis that will benefit industry and government. In the short term, we will do this through existing information collection methods and targeted Notices. It will also enable deeper insights into retail markets and drivers underpinning prices that are ultimately paid by consumers.

We will also be engaging on new draft Orders later in 2025, including our new portal for collecting information and will provide participants an opportunity to test the portal. We encourage stakeholders to continue engaging with the AER as we progress this work.

We will continue to provide further updates on the progress of our work. Requests for more information should be sent to the Contract Market Monitoring Team at ContractMarketMonitoringaer [dot] gov [dot] au (ContractMarketMonitoring[at]aer[dot]gov[dot]au).

Background

In December 2024, we consulted on our draft Market Monitoring Information Orders for electricity and gas. The consultation sought stakeholder feedback on the following topics:

• the burden and cost the Orders would likely impose;
• the clarity of the Orders’ requirements;
• the proposed information required;
• the proposed response timeframes; and
• our proposed data portal and our approach to data management.

We received feedback on areas including regulatory burden, collection of qualitative information, and data security.