Not worth the paper it is printed on:
Supporting vulnerable customers
The government recognises that rising energy costs and the unwinding of cross-subsidies have uneven distributional impacts on households, and that lower-income households face proportionally greater impacts than high-income households (see Chapter 3: Future energy trends and challenges). Therefore, retail price deregulation and greater consumer empowerment must be accompanied by appropriate protections for vulnerable customers, such as effective hardship policies, strong marketing rules, select standard terms and conditions for energy contracts, and close monitoring of market outcomes.
Ensuring that consumers, particularly those who are most vulnerable, are able to manage energy costs effectively is also increasingly important. The continued provision of adequate assistance to vulnerable consumers through a sound general safety net, well-targeted jurisdictional concession regimes and appropriate community service obligations remains critical.
Such assistance should be transparent and not undermine competitive pricing structures, which reflect, as efficiently as possible, the underlying costs of supply. It is more efficient for assistance to be provided through properly targeted social policy settings, rather than energy policy settings, to ensure that energy market signals are preserved.
Full Commonwealth Energy White Paper 2012 here.
