Summary

In helping low-income households access the Victorian Government’s Power Saving Bonus (PSB), CPRC identified a significant gap between those eligible for energy concessions and those receiving their concession on their energy bill. CPRC’s analysis of published departmental and regulatory datasets of the total number of concession card holders and concessions received suggests this gap is
generalizable across the broader population

Key findings

In reviewing bills of low-income consumers living in public housing towers, between one in three and one in five Victorians were missing out on their energy concessions.

Why are people missing out?

Rather than being automatically applied to bills, the onus lies with eligible concession holders to ensure their concession is applied and updated on each bill, or to apply for the rebate directly.

• Low awareness about schemes due to difficulty finding and understanding information about schemes
• Low awareness concessions need to be regularly updated. This is complicated by energy bills that can be difficult to understand and identify whether their concession has been applied or not.
• Language barriers for those with low English proficiency.
• Pay-on-time discounts are mistakenly understood by some households as receipt of applicable concessions
• In many states consumers in embedded networks (caravan parks and some high rise buildings) need to apply directly to the relevant government department – their concession isn’t applied to their bill but is received via check

But even when consumers have taken required steps:

• Consumers with expired concessions aren’t contacted by their retailer to update concession details
• Concessions aren’t applied to bills even when concession details are current in the retailer’s system
• Concessions aren’t applied to both energy sources when consumers have bundled supply
• Name fields on forms and minor client name spelling differences between systems – Services Australia, Centrelink and energy retailers – creates unnecessary errors and means consumers miss out on their concession. This is particularly problematic for non Anglo-Saxon names

Where to from here?

CPRC welcomes the opportunity to work further on this issue with government, regulators, policy makers, academia and the community sector. CPRC recommends:

• The Commonwealth Government, working with state governments and energy regulators, conduct a coordinated review of the concessions framework.
• State governments working with energy regulators to conduct a ‘sludge audit’ to identify unnecessary friction consumers face when accessing and applying for utility concessions.
• State governments to play a stronger system stewardship role to monitor, evaluate concessions framework and publish robust outcomes data.
• National cabinet to adopt data sharing about concessions as priority work area.
• Departments, regulators and energy retail business to implement default mechanisms to automatically apply, re-validate or roll-over concessions to reduce administrative burden on consumers.
• Regulators to require that energy bills more effectively communicate when concessions are applied.

* On 9 November 2022, made a correction to our data and our report. Due to a calculation error, the numbers for the ACT were initially incorrect.
The percentage of people we model to be missing out on concessions was 41%, it is now 31%. Correct data is now displayed