00:00Look, we're very supportive, I think, of initiatives that improve access to affordable
00:07energy products. We've been engaging with the government now for several months around
00:12its review of the default market offer and we've been very supportive of the proposed
00:20outcomes from that review. What we were concerned about and disappointed about is that this
00:25announcement in relation to the solar sharer tariff where we were not consulted on and
00:31really didn't know that it was going to be announced until the government made the release
00:36today.
00:37So you acknowledge though that this move, despite it being a shock, does make sense to
00:43give free power to people when there's lots of it, when there's excess of it from the solar
00:51power initiative around?
00:56This is actually a product that a number of our retailers already offer and that customers
01:00can actually opt in for in certain states right across Australia. So this isn't actually a
01:06new idea or a new concept, this is something that our retailers actually do implement as
01:11we speak. I think the question that we have for government is why they see the need to have
01:16it regulated when it's something that's already offered in market at the moment.
01:20So is there an issue also for your members that people will push their electricity used
01:25to the middle of the day when it's free and will therefore use less when they have to pay
01:30for it outside that free window so your members' profits are reduced?
01:35It's actually a lot less about profit and retailers ensuring they're just able to recover their costs
01:41through these types of tariff constructs. So as I've mentioned, there are a number of retailers
01:46that actually already offer a number of free energy hours during the middle of the day
01:51because we are seeing excess energy being generated at that time of day. So it does help for retailers
01:57to try and incentivise customers to shift their energy use to other times of the day and if
02:02a lot of customers do that then there will be benefits to the costs of supplying electricity.
02:07But it needs to be structured in the right way and it needs to be affordable for customers
02:11and retailers do need to recover their costs.
02:14So do you think that for those retailers who don't offer that free window that they might
02:20put their prices up for electricity use during other parts of the day?
02:24We just need to consider the construct of the tariff carefully. So where this tariff is actually
02:30offered by retailers voluntarily at the moment, generally the charge that comes from the companies
02:37that operate the poles and wires still exists for that middle of the day, but retailers are
02:42effectively covering that cost in the middle of the day. For smaller retailers in particular,
02:49we need to think carefully about whether they can actually kind of cover those costs that
02:53they're being charged by the power, the poles and wires providers and make sure that those costs
02:58can be recovered through the construct of the tariff. Or alternatively, we can work with, I think,
03:04the poles and wires providers to actually change their tariffs so that they're more aligned with
03:09what will work for customers.
03:11So this change came as a shock as you've described it. When did you hear that the government was
03:15planning this move?
03:17Yeah, look, we've really only heard about it in the last 24 hours. We need to take some
03:22time to assess the proposal and make sure that it actually does work for customers. I think
03:28it's important to note that the way in which the government proposes to regulate this tariff
03:32in particular through something called the default market offer, only about 8% of customers are
03:38currently using this tariff. So I think we would love to see a way to actually broaden this tariff
03:46offering to other customers while ensuring that retailers can recover their costs.
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