Disrupting household energy rights: Examining the policy origins of prepayment for electricity services in Australia

Abstract

Prepayment for household electricity services disrupts energy access by privatising the risks of disconnection within vulnerable households, justifying critical appraisal of the rationalisations and policy settings for its use. In Australia, prepayment is ubiquitous in remote Indigenous communities but is rarely used or banned in other locations. Despite a growing literature documenting the potential harms of prepay and its concentration in remote and predominantly Indigenous households, these issues have received limited attention in Australian energy policy debates. To progress the policy discourse, this qualitative study examines the policy origins and dominant rationales for use of prepay in different parts of Australia using causal process tracing. Drawing on an original dataset of over 1650 publicly accessible documents from the period 1973–2023, a chronology is established showing that prepay systems were first introduced in remote Indigenous communities in Queensland and the Northern Territory with subsequent use in varying contexts in Tasmania, Western Australia and South Australia. Policy motivations differ between grid interconnected regions and remote Indigenous settlements. In interconnected regions, prepay emerged as a voluntary product associated with competitive retail market reforms and was subject to varying degrees of regulation but is now either banned or no longer offered by retailers. By contrast, in remote and some urban Indigenous communities prepay endures as a default or mandatory payment system – highlighting how settler colonial energy policies have consistently prioritised supply-side objectives within under-served communities subject to past and present injustices including pervasive energy insecurity.