Project timeline

Overview

Consultation Paper

This review is an opportunity to refresh and consolidate our guidelines to better reflect the energy market of today and tomorrow. 

On 12 November 2025, we released a consultation paper seeking stakeholder views on opportunities to simplify and improve the guidelines. We invite feedback on 5 overarching issues that our guidelines can influence:

  • Improving retailer communications by using design principles, making communications more accessible and improving benefit change notices
  • Managing increasing complexity by communicating secondary settlement points, differentiating certain types of offers and making plan names easier to understand
  • Making it easier to access a better offer by clarifying better offer messages, providing them in more places and defining the deemed better offer
  • Improving price transparency by making fees and charges easier to understand and improving transparency for embedded network customers of authorised retailers
  • Improving payment assistance information by making hardship policies more consumer friendly and helping customers access concessions and rebates. 

Retail guidelines review - Consultation paper - November 2025

We are looking at what we can do to simplify energy communications and ensure customers are receiving clear, useful and timely information and support.
To do t
Authors
AER
Content type
Document

Submissions

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Stakeholders are invited to provide feedback on the consultation paper by Tuesday, 23 December 2025. You can provide feedback by:

  • emailing a written submission to consumersataer [dot] gov [dot] au (consumers[at]aer[dot]gov[dot]au)
  • mailing a written submission to the Executive Director, DMO and Consumers at GPO Box 3131, Canberra ACT 2601
  • providing verbal feedback by booking a 45-minute video call here.

Joint written submissions are welcome. Public submissions will be published here in early 2026.