2025 ACCC/AER Regulatory Conference
Regulation in 2025: The need for speed, or a call for caution?
Opening address by AER Chair Clare Savage
Acknowledgment of Country
Thank you Songwoman Maroochy for that stunning Welcome To Country. I’d like to pay my respects to all the Jagera and the Turrbal people on whose unceded lands we are meeting today.
That Welcome was so gracious and is a very moving start to our Conference.
I’d also like to acknowledge all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples joining us today.
Welcome
On behalf of the ACCC and the AER, I’d like to welcome you all to this year’s Regulatory Conference.
It’s a tremendous privilege to open this event and be back with such a diverse and talented group of speakers, moderators, panellists and attendees from around the world.
This conference continues to bring together regulators, academics, consumer advocates, industry leaders, and policy thinkers – all united by a shared interest in building fair, effective, efficient and forward-looking regulatory systems.
The breadth of experience represented in this room, and that we will hear from throughout the conference, is extraordinary – and it’s one of the reasons this event continues to grow.
I’m excited for the conversations we’ll have over the next two days, as we share knowledge, challenge assumptions, and learn from one another.
The thoughtful and dedicated team of individuals across the ACCC and AER who have meticulously planned and executed this event have certainly provided us with another controversial conference theme.
Conference Theme – The Need for Speed, or a Call for Caution?
The theme for this year’s conference is: Regulation in 2025: The need for speed, or a call for caution?
[Plays audio clip from Top Gun]
Now I just had to share that audio clip because it’s all I could think about when I was reflecting on the theme for this year’s conference.
So hopefully you all have a solid working understanding of the plot of Top Gun if you are going to follow my opening comments.
If not, I’m sorry, and I hope you can enjoy this classic film a little later.
In thinking about regulation and the “need for speed” or a “call for caution” I was struck by the dichotomy that has been set up in this conference title.
Arguably Iceman had both a need for speed and an appropriate level of caution.
In Top Gun, Iceman flies “by the book”, keeps separation in the sky; waits for high-probability shots; and criticises risky moves.
But make no mistake – he’s still fast. And clearly, he became a regulator when he hung up his Ray Bans.
We can all be Iceman as regulators in 2025.
But on the other hand, Maverick is bold and tolerates risk.
He is aggressive. He improvises. He buzzes the tower, takes an inverted Polaroid with the MiG and closes too tight.
Maverick innovates and values initiative over procedure.
Perhaps Regulation in 2025 needs a bit of Iceman and a bit of Maverick.
I know we certainly have both on my Board!
One thing we can’t be as regulators though is slow.
The world we operate in is accelerating like never before.
Digital technologies are reshaping industries at speed – from cloud computing to artificial intelligence to digital platforms that connect people and businesses in entirely new ways.
This acceleration is deeply relevant for regulators, presenting challenges and opportunities.
Session one – What is Infrastructure?
Infrastructure is no longer only physical.
Our regulatory frameworks were built for tangible assets like poles and wires, pipes and ports.
But increasingly, critical infrastructure is non‑physical – data sets, digital platforms, and algorithms.
What does access and interoperability look like when infrastructure is lines of code rather than lines on a map?
These questions will be front and centre today in our first session as Professor Martin Cave from the London School of Economics explores how the very definition of infrastructure is shifting and what that means for regulators.
Session two – Interoperability: a silver bullet for digital markets?
We’ll also hear from Margrethe Vestager, former Executive Vice President of the European Commission and a global leader in digital competition, who will discuss interoperability and whether it might be a “silver bullet” for ensuring competition in digital markets.
This session will be chaired by the incredible Gina Cass-Gottlieb (by the way - you can use Slido to vote on whether Gina is more Iceman or Maverick. But please don’t actually vote on this or my interoperability as an ACCC Associate Commissioner might be revoked).
Interoperability is certainly critical in the energy system to ensure consumer devices can communicate, not only with our system operator and electricity networks to keep the lights on, but also with different retailers and other devices.
The risk of customers being “walled” into a Tesla home or a Sonnen home (for example) needs to be addressed to ensure competition can continue to deliver benefits to consumers.
Session three: Pits and pipes to bits and bytes: regulating access to non-physical infrastructure
In session three, we will welcome home (temporarily) ASIC Deputy Chair Sarah Court to discuss the regulation of non-physical infrastructure alongside Commissioner Brakey, Dale Yeats and Anna Barker.
Session four: Supporting innovation, reliability and affordability in the energy transition
And in session four you will be delighted by AER Board Member Lynne Gallagher along with a rockstar panel including Dr Philip Lewis, CEO of VaasaETT, to examine how innovation can progress the energy transition while maintaining reliability and affordability for consumers.
Lynne is a great champion of the critical role of innovation in driving better outcomes for consumers.
You’ll see in your programs that there is a lot this panel will try to discuss in their 45 minutes including the relevance of regulatory sandboxing.
The energy system is undergoing rapid transformation and is, arguably, the fastest transitioning sector in the Australian economy.
Australia’s future prosperity depends on this transition occurring both at pace but also at least-cost.
Our energy system, and its myriad of rules and regulations, were designed to correct for the market failures of the past.
A critical question we must consider is whether the source and nature of market failure remains constant in a rapidly evolving energy system.
This is where regulatory sandboxing becomes essential to test underlying assumptions, trial transitional mechanisms and evaluate the conditions under which different actors (networks, retailers, aggregators, communities) can deliver system value.
Structured trials can inform which functions should rest with the regulated monopoly, which are better suited to competitive provision and how roles and responsibilities might evolve over time.
In this way, sandboxing becomes a critical tool for navigating uncertainty, addressing structural inefficiencies and enabling a more dynamic, decentralised and consumer-centred energy system.
Session five: Short term gain, long term pain: lower bills in economic regulation
And while the nature of market failures may evolve or shift through time so might government failures.
The fifth session today will rightly consider whether regulation is striking the right balance over time and weighing the short and long-term interests of consumers appropriately.
As you are probably aware, the Federal Treasurer has called on all regulators to identify new regulatory reform opportunities that will bolster productivity growth.
We have been asked to find new ways to “directly support productivity, whether by facilitating investment, encouraging new firms and their growth, the rapid adoption of new products and services, or by simply removing unnecessary red tape and getting compliance costs down”.
It has been wonderful to see our people step up to this challenge and put forward really thoughtful and effective ideas around new ways of working and opportunities to be more efficient.
We have responded to the Treasurer’s request with a range of options for streamlining the regulatory environment to reduce business costs, supporting competition and dynamism.
But a key thing we must collectively do in the energy sector is improve network asset utilisation.
Most of our networks are built to meet peak demand that only occurs for a handful of hours each year.
Outside those peaks, significant spare capacity sits idle.
If we can ensure that new sources of supply and demand locate in sensible places and are dispatched or are storing energy for the benefit of the system as a whole then we can potentially lower the per unit cost of electricity – improving not only the productivity of our own sector but every sector of the Australian economy that depends upon electricity as a key input to production.
Importantly, we can also relieve pressure on Australian households.
Session six: Data sharing, AI and privacy in 2025 regulatory markets
Later this afternoon, we will consider how regulators can regulate for and deploy AI effectively in their work while protecting consumers’ privacy and interests. This is a topic close to my heart.
I am currently the Chair of the Australian Government’s Regulator Leadership Cohort.
In this role, I have the opportunity to work with my colleagues across all federal regulators to strengthen regulatory performance and capability, and support the government’s regulatory reform agenda.
I hear consistently from fellow regulators about the challenges of an accelerating environment.
Emerging technologies – especially artificial intelligence – are reshaping not only the sectors we regulate, but also how we regulate them.
Since the move to five-minute settlement in the wholesale electricity spot markets and with the advent of algorithmic bidding, the AER is now one of the Commonwealth’s largest data holders.
In a matter of years, we have gone from ingesting around 750,000 bids per day to over 50,000,000 bids per day.
When you combine that with derivative contract market data, effective cross market analytics relies upon new systems and tools.
AI presents extraordinary opportunities for regulators to improve performance:
- Automating routine processes so we can deploy our resources more efficiently;
- Enabling predictive analytics to anticipate or identify risk;
- Increasing monitoring and surveillance activities; and
- Helping us deliver services to consumers more efficiently.
But it also creates new regulatory challenges.
AI-driven markets are evolving faster than many regulatory frameworks, and we must move quickly to understand their impacts while ensuring data and decision making are protected.
Speed is also about people.
Regulatory workforces need new skills and capabilities to stay fit for purpose.
That’s why the Regulator Leadership Cohort is advancing initiatives like the Regulator Maturity Model and exploring how to build regulatory capability across the Australian Public Service.
Building capability takes time, but the demand for it is urgent – because without the right people and skills, we can’t, and won’t, keep up.
Session seven: Getting to net zero – does speed trump competition?
And in our final session for today, the panel will explore the tension between the need for speed in addressing the climate crisis and the need to ensure effective competition is maintained as the market transitions.
A number of you will have heard me give a lengthy diatribe on this just yesterday.
In an increasingly decentralised system, the separation between networks and generation/retail can make it more difficult to get incentives to align in the interests of the evolving system and customers.
The move to a decentralised system presents a number of potential coordination failures.
In a well-functioning market, individual actors pursue their own interests and the market mechanism aligns those interests to produce efficient outcomes.
But in increasingly complex systems (like our energy system) with orders of magnitude more ‘system nodes’, individual rational behaviour can lead to collectively suboptimal system level outcomes because actors struggle to coordinate their decisions; no single party has the mandate or incentive to solve the coordination problem; and/or critical information is fragmented or unavailable.
The transition is urgent, but urgency cannot be an excuse for inefficiency or for undermining competition – that is, IF competition can deliver a lower cost energy system.
We must consider the nature of the evolving energy system, understand any new sources of market or regulatory failure and regulate (or de-regulate), where required, to address these failures.
Being willing to try different things will be an inherent part of getting this right for consumers.
Session eight: The future of gas in Australia
It really is a jam-packed agenda. Lest you be concerned the conference will run out of puff by day two, tomorrow morning will open with a meaty discussion on the future of gas in Australia.
Regulating gas distribution networks as demand declines has been one of the most interesting and challenging issues I have worked on in my time at the AER.
Over the course of successive regulatory decisions, we have refined our thinking on how core issues such as demand, new connections, capex, depreciation and form of control all work together in a given jurisdiction’s unique policy context.
Session nine: Sticking the landing: regulating essential services during uncertainty
Which ties in nicely to the final substantive session of the conference which will explore the regulation and pricing of other essential services facing headwinds.
Conclusion
And, of course, last but not least, AER Deputy Chair Justin Oliver will be back again to moderate the Great Debate before Gina brings the conference to a close.
Now in this quest for speed or pleas for caution it’s important to recognise that both will be essential at different times and in response to different drivers.
And regulators will make mistakes.
Just as both Iceman and Maverick did (with fatal, albeit accidental, consequences for Goose – actually I should have offered a spoiler alert there).
We can and must act quickly, but we must also take time to pause and reflect when necessary to ensure we are regulating for what will be, not just what is today.
Speed without caution carries real risks.
We can’t sacrifice long-term consumer outcomes for short-term wins.
We can’t allow innovation to proceed unchecked, leaving consumers exposed.
That balance – between speed and caution – is at the heart of good regulatory practice.
And it’s one of the most important conversations we will have at this conference.
Thank you and I hope you enjoy the coming two days.