Proposal for a National Energy Advocacy Body: Directions Paper

This submission responds to the Directions Paper outlining the proposal for a new National Advocacy Body (NAB). While PIAC has also submitted a detailed response in a joint submission with other key energy advocacy organisations, this submission draws on PIAC’s experience and views as a key NSW energy consumer advocate. Primarily, this submission addresses why PIAC does not support the proposal to fund only one organisation per jurisdiction, via a single Capacity Building Grant administered and provided by the NAB. In PIAC’s view, such a move would not add value to the current capacity of the sector.

PIAC has some concerns about tying Capability Building Grants to co-contributions. In PIAC’s view, there are unanswered questions around how funding will be matched, the length and nature of funding for advocates, security of funding, and whether funding will impact on an advocacy organisations’ work objectives. For these reasons, PIAC is unable to support the co-contribution model because of the risks involved.  PIAC believes that the fundamental criteria for assessing any proposal for reform of energy consumer advocacy should be whether it provides a net positive to the overall capacity of the sector.