The Essential Services Commission has today welcomed the release of a discussion paper designed to help the energy and water sectors identify risks and prevent harm for customers experiencing family violence.
In 2024, the commission formed a partnership with leaders in family violence and economic abuse prevention to promote the design of safer systems and processes for energy and water businesses that support customers experiencing family violence.
The Safety by Design partnership brings together a team of independent experts, including Thriving Communities Australia, Flequity Ventures (Catherine Fitzpatrick), Safe and Equal and the Centre for Women's Economic Safety. Safety by Design is a framework to anticipate, detect and eliminate harm before it occurs and puts the onus on providers to ensure their products and services are safe.
The resulting paper, Designed to Disrupt: Safety by design for essential services, is part of a series by Catherine Fitzpatrick to promote improvement across industries. It draws on the work of experts and the experience of victim-survivors of family violence, to help create a blueprint and better guidance for the energy and water sectors.
The paper recommends an essential safety by design framework, which aims to prevent the misuse of essential services and be clear on the rules and consequences of misuse. It says energy and water businesses should bring family violence risk into workplace safety culture and reconsider joint and several liability in relation to joint debts.
Other recommendations for industry, government and regulators include:
- introducing policies, terms and conditions that make it clear that essential services are no place for domestic and financial abuse
- adopting a shared industry financial abuse customer service standard for energy and water providers
- measuring the effectiveness of industry interventions to identify what works to prevent or lessen the harm of financial abuse to victim-survivors
- ensuring collaboration, data sharing and encouraging consistency across government and regulators.
This paper will help guide the commission's future work on family violence.
Quotes attributable to Essential Services Commission Chairperson and Commissioner Gerard Brody
"The Essential Services Commission is pleased to have facilitated this important research paper, which is informed by twelve months of engagement with victim-survivors of family violence, water and energy sectors, community sector, ombuds and regulators."
"Reading the experiences of victim-survivors and how utility accounts are used to exert power, cause fear and hold financial control, provides a stark reminder of why we need to keep focussing on this issue and challenge ourselves to do more."
Quotes attributable to Ciara Sterling, CEO, Thriving Communities Australia
"This Designed to Disrupt discussion paper plays a vital role in shining a light on the risks and harms that occur when safety isn't embedded into essential services—and why organisational culture is so critical."
"We continue to see the serious consequences when systems aren't designed with victim-survivors' needs at the centre. The commission's leadership in fostering collaboration across regulators, ombuds, industry and the community sector continues to support a better practice approach to lasting change."
Quotes attributable to Catherine Fitzpatrick, Social entrepreneur and Adjunct Associate Professor, University of New South Wales School of Social Sciences
"The Essential Services Commission Victoria's safety by design partnership has afforded me a unique vantage point to compare perpetrator tactics and domestic abuse safety risks across sectors."
"I'm shocked but not surprised by the pervasiveness of financial and tech-facilitated abuse across all sectors of the economy."
The opportunity now is for energy and water providers to use this roadmap to extend their workplace safety culture to consider the risks for customers experiencing domestic and financial abuse and to move from compliance to prevention. Victim-survivors deserve nothing less."
Background
In Victoria, energy and water businesses must protect customer information, ensure access to payment assistance and provide customers with connections to specialist family violence services. These rules have been in place since 2018 for water businesses and from 2020 for energy retailers.
The Essential Services Commission takes family violence protections seriously, with Origin Energy companies recently paying penalty notices totalling $1,597,668 for failing to comply with family violence provisions.
