Joint submission to the Victorian Default Offer Review 2024-2025
This submission represents the shared view of leading Victorian community sector organisations and energy consumer advocates. This a joint submission made by the Victorian Council of Social Service, the Brotherhood of St. Laurence, Consumer Action Law Centre, Council of the Ageing Victoria, Energy Consumers Australia, Financial Counselling Victoria, and Good Shepherd. This group brings a deep knowledge of people’s experiences navigating the Victorian electricity market and the impacts of energy hardship and poverty. Collectively, we work towards a Victoria free from all forms of hardship, where everybody can experience genuine wellbeing.
We believe that the Victorian Default Offer (VDO) has provided an important safeguard for consumers that are unable or unwilling to engage with the electricity retail market, a key benchmark price for market offers, and since September 2020, a crucial maximum price for embedded network customers. Taken together, VDO customers and those on embedded networks number over 400,000 households, businesses, and individuals.1 We strongly support the VDO playing these roles and believe it should continue to do so, while being kept at the lowest reasonable price.
However, given that the Essential Services Commission (ESC) has proposed to use generally the same methodologies as in past reviews for the 2024-2025 period, our submission identifies where there remains work to be done, and VDO cost-stack components where key assumptions and choices should be reconsidered.