Policy

The rules for Australia’s 225,000 life support households are changing. If you are one of them, you do not have to do anything

More than 225,000 Australians are registered for life support protections, which is what stands between a household running dialysis, oxygen or a ventilator and an unannounced power outage. On 25 June the national rule-maker made a final rule changing how those households register and how they get told about outages, taking effect in December 2027. We are leading with the reassurance because the AEMC did: existing protections are identical, and if you are already registered you do not need to re-register or do anything differently.

Life support registration is one of the few genuinely protective mechanisms in retail energy. Register the household, and the retailer and the distributor are obliged to treat it differently: notice before planned interruptions, and constraints on disconnection. It matters most in exactly the situation where a rule change is most frightening, which is why the first thing worth saying about this determination is what it does not do.

It does not require anyone to re-register. It does not change any existing protection. AEMC Chair Anna Collyer put it in terms unusually plain for a rule-maker: “If you're already a life support customer, you won't need to re-register or do anything differently. You'll continue to receive exactly the same protections. We've updated the system to work better, not added burden to people already managing difficult circumstances.”

What actually changes

The rule reshapes the administration around the protection rather than the protection itself. On the AEMC's own account:

• You choose how you are contacted about planned outages, by SMS, email or letter, and you can nominate an emergency contact person to be notified as well. For a household where the person on life support may not be the person able to act on a text message, that second part is the substantive one.
• Registration moves to the retailer. Retailers will manage registration and deregistration, so there is one clear party to contact, and every retailer will use the same standardised medical confirmation form, developed by the Australian Energy Regulator and Victoria's Essential Services Commission.
• Annual check-ins. Retailers must check each year that details are still accurate and life support is still required, and must remind customers to review their emergency backup plan.
• Faster deregistration when you ask for it, with penalties for retailers who fail to comply.
• Retailers must ask every new customer, at sign-up, whether they require life support protections.

That last one deserves more attention than it will get. Today the protection largely depends on a household knowing it exists and asking. Making the question part of sign-up changes the default, and defaults are what determine who is covered.

The part that involves your doctor

The rule also lets medical practitioners indicate whether a customer has life-threatening energy needs. The AEMC's stated purpose is to give distributors better information for planning outages and coordinating emergency responses. It is careful on the point that follows: protections remain identical for all life support customers, so this is not a tiering of who gets protected. Over time, as the standardised form comes in, existing customers and their doctors will have the option to indicate it. Distributors will be required to publish on their websites how they use that information.

Our view, and it is a view. A flag on a household record saying the consequences of an outage could be fatal is genuinely useful to a network planning works, and it is also sensitive information about a person's health sitting in an energy company's systems. The requirement that distributors publish how they use it is the safeguard the AEMC has chosen, and it is a reasonable one, but it is a transparency safeguard rather than a limit on use. That is the thing worth watching between now and December 2027: what those published statements actually say.

Where it came from, and when it lands

The determination responds to a rule change request from SA Power Networks and Essential Energy, with the Commission making what it calls a more preferable final rule that incorporates many of the elements proposed. The AEMC says it worked with Victoria's Essential Services Commission so the form and processes are consistent across the National Electricity Market.

Commencement is December 2027. That is a long runway, and it is the reason this is worth reading now rather than then: retailers and distributors have eighteen months to build the systems, and the standardised form and the sign-up question are the pieces most likely to change who is protected. If you look after someone who depends on mains power, the useful thing to do in the meantime is unchanged: make sure the household is registered with the retailer, and have a backup plan that does not assume notice.

What the proponents asked for on penalties, and what the Commission refused

This is in the determination rather than the announcement, and it is the part worth knowing. Breaches of the life support obligations for planned-outage notification and for deregistration are currently Tier 1 civil penalties, the highest tier in the energy rules, and a breach has to be reported to the Australian Energy Regulator immediately.

The rule change request asked for that to be softened. SA Power Networks and Essential Energy proposed that a failure to notify customers they classed as using assistive life support equipment, rather than life-sustaining equipment, should drop to a Tier 2 civil penalty, and that reporting to the regulator should drop from immediate to half-yearly. The determination records the reason given as reflecting the lower potential harm caused.

The Commission did not agree, at draft stage or at final. It records that outage notifications and regulator reporting are key protections and incentives for retailers and distributors to meet their obligations, and that it does not propose to change or reduce penalties or reporting requirements for breaches relating to life support customers. Every stakeholder that commented directly on the proposed penalties supported them, including the AER, the Energy and Water Ombudsman, COTA and SA Power Networks itself.

One caveat the determination is explicit about: the AEMC cannot prescribe clauses of the retail rules as civil penalty provisions itself. It will recommend, jointly with the AER, that the Energy and Climate Change Ministerial Council classify the relevant provisions that way. So the penalties attached to the new obligations are a recommendation at this stage, not a settled fact, and that is a thing to watch rather than assume.

Our view, labelled as such: asking for a lower penalty tier is a legitimate position to argue in a rule change, and the same two networks proposed the whole reform, which is the reason these protections are being improved at all. It is still worth reporting that the softening was sought and refused, because the strength of a protection is the penalty behind it.

The date before the date

December 2027 is not the only deadline. The standardised medical confirmation form has to be developed and published on the AER's website by 1 March 2027. The final rule gives the regulator three months longer than the draft did, which the determination attributes to the AER saying it needed the time for adequate consultation, and which the Commission judged would not negatively affect consumers or industry. That form is the piece most likely to decide who ends up registered, so it is the first thing to look at when it appears.

Sources

1. Australian Energy Market Commission, Final rule to improve life support processes, 25 June 2026 (read 28 July 2026): the 225,000 figure, the December 2027 commencement, the statement that existing protections are maintained and no re-registration is required, all five listed changes, the medical-practitioner indication and the requirement that distributors publish how they use it, the SA Power Networks and Essential Energy rule change request, the work with Victoria's Essential Services Commission, and both quotations from AEMC Chair Anna Collyer.
2. Australian Energy Market Commission, Rule determination: Improving life support processes (RRC0064), 25 June 2026 (downloaded and read 1 August 2026): the Tier 1 status of the outage-notification and deregistration breaches and the immediate AER reporting requirement, the rule change request's proposal to reduce these to Tier 2 and half-yearly for "assistive" customers and the reason recorded for it, the Commission's refusal at draft and final and its reasoning, the list of stakeholders that supported the proposed penalties, the statement that the Commission cannot itself prescribe civil penalty provisions and will recommend classification to the Energy and Climate Change Ministerial Council, the 1 March 2027 deadline for the AER to publish the medical confirmation form and the three extra months granted against the draft, and the confirmation that the 225,000 figure originates in AER data.
3. Australian Energy Market Commission, National Energy Retail Amendment (Improving life support processes) Rule 2026 No. 2, 25 June 2026 (downloaded 1 August 2026): the made rule instrument itself.

Methodology. Every figure, date and quotation above is from the AEMC's media release announcing the final determination, read in full, and from the 71-page final determination itself, which we downloaded and read on 1 August 2026 (see the update note below: the first version of this story was written from the release alone and said so). Where the release says protections are identical, that is the Commission's characterisation. The 225,000 figure is the AEMC's; the determination confirms it originates in AER data. We have not audited the made rule instrument clause by clause, so we describe obligations as the determination states them. The 225,000 figure is the AEMC's, described in the release as recent data on people registered for life support protections. This story is about the National Electricity Market rules; Victoria runs its own framework through the Essential Services Commission, and the release describes the two bodies working for consistency rather than Victoria adopting this rule. Nothing here is advice about any individual's medical or energy circumstances.

Updated 1 August 2026. The first version of this story was written from the AEMC's media release alone, and its methodology note said so. We have since downloaded and read the 71-page final determination. Nothing in the original was wrong and no figure changed. Two things were added because they are in the determination and not in the release: the rule change request had asked to cut the civil penalty for failing to notify "assistive" life support customers from Tier 1 to Tier 2 and to relax immediate regulator reporting to half-yearly, which the Commission refused; and the AER must publish the standardised medical confirmation form by 1 March 2027, three months later than the draft proposed.

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