Developing the Better Bills Guideline – Australian Energy Regulator

Overview

On 18 March 2021, the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) made a rule requiring the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) to develop a mandatory billing guideline setting out how retailers must prepare and issue bills to residential and small customers.

The Better Bills Guideline will provide guidance to retailers on preparing and issuing bills that make it easy for these customers to:

• pay their energy bills
• ensure their bill conforms to their contract
• query their bill
• understand their usage
• navigate the retail market to seek the best offer.

As part of the Guideline development process, we are seeking feedback and input on key questions within the following topic areas:

• The AER's consumer and behavioural insights
• Improving energy bills
• Making energy bills simple and easy to understand
• 'Best offer' information
• Simplifying the regulatory framework and reducing cost to serve
• Other views and information

The questions have been informed by consumer and behavioural research conducted by the Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government (BETA), Hall & Partners, and the Ethnic Communities Council of NSW in collaboration with the AER.

We invite consumer and industry groups, retailers and other interested parties to make submissions on the Better Bills Guideline by Wednesday, 22 September 2021. Responses to the consultation questions can be submitted directly through this online survey. Alternatively, submissions can be emailed to ConsumerPolicy@aer.gov.au.

• Download the consultation questions
• Access the BETA research and insights
• Access the focus group findings

Why your views matter

The Australian Energy Regulator (AER) is developing a Better Bills Guideline to simplify energy bills and make them easier for consumers to understand and use. Our goal is to create a Guideline that ensures bills meet the needs of consumers, now and into the future, in an efficient way that minimises cost and enables industry innovation.

We are seeking your input and feedback on the key issues and insights you consider we should have regard to in developing the draft Guideline, and more broadly. Your input will help ensure we listen to and understand the issues you consider are important as we prepare our draft Guideline, which we are aiming to publish for consultation in late 2021.

When answering the consultation questions, we encourage you to consider (where relevant):

• the relative costs, benefits, risks and opportunities related to the issues discussed in the consultation questions and our consumer and behavioural insights research – for consumers, businesses and other stakeholders
• whether there are opportunities to simplify the retail market regulatory framework (for billing and related matters) to encourage effective competition and reduce cost to serve, noting the potential for benefits to both energy businesses and consumers
• if there is additional or new quantitative and/or qualitative information, data and insights (including de-identified case studies) you are able to share with the AER to support your views and assist our early considerations.

We prefer that all submissions be publicly available to facilitate an informed and transparent consultative process. We will treat submissions as public documents unless otherwise requested. All non-confidential submissions will be placed on the AER's website. For further information regarding the AER's use and disclosure of information provided to it, see the ACCC/AER Information Policy.

We request parties wishing to submit confidential information:

• clearly identify the information that is the subject of the confidentiality claim
• provide a non-confidential version of the submission in a form suitable for publication.