The Australian Government has indicated to the AER that it will adopt the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) recommendations 30, 49, 32 and 50 in its retail electricity price inquiry (REPI). Specifically, the Government has asked the AER to develop by 30 April 2019:

• maximum prices for the default market offer to apply from 1 July 2019 for customers not subject to state-based price regulation.
• a mechanism for determining a reference bill amount for each network distribution region, from which headline discounts can be calculated.

On 12 February 2019, the Government confirmed that the AER was not required to determine default market offer prices for any Victorian network regions. In March, we provided our advice on the protections for consumers under the Victorian Default Offer (VDO), as requested by the Government. Both are published below.

*Please note this timeline is subject to change.

On 9 November 2018 the AER released its position paper on default market offer prices. Our position paper is designed to canvass stakeholder views on a number of matters including:

• the background and policy objectives from implementing DMO prices
• the AER's proposed process for consultation and development of DMO prices
• our preliminary views on the proposed pricing methodology for determining DMO prices for initial implementation on 1 July 2019.

We invited written submissions on our position paper. Submissions closed on 7 December 2018.

As part of our consultation process on the position paper, we held a public forum in Sydney NSW on 5 December 2018.