ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how compliance and performance were framed by various parties and how subjective views of performance increasingly outweighed compliance, even the views of the regulators. It shows that key low-income consumer advocates did not support the meta-regulatory enforcement model. In mid-2004 consumer advocates and Energy and Water Ombudsman of Victoria (EWOV) lobbied the Essential Services Commission (ESC) and government to take action to address increased disconnection rates. Regarding the effectiveness of the regulator, the very existence of the wrongful disconnection legislation, which legislated for compliance with existing regulatory provisions, showed that the government had accepted the consumer advocates' claim that the ESC was under-performing. The actions taken by the government through the legislation fundamentally undermined the ESC and its own work programme to identify and resolve the sorts of concerns that were raised by consumer advocates and EWOV in the first place.
