The Great Energy Swindle: How We Lost Control of Our Electricity and Gas

By The Fair Go Movement | July 2025

“Behind the retail smile of ‘choice’ lies a cartel of corporations, manipulating supply, pricing, and even your rooftop solar feed-in tariff.”

Australia once prided itself on cheap, abundant power. We built a nation on coal, gas, and hydro—and for a long time, we owned the lot. But in the past three decades, we’ve handed it all over to a complex web of privatised middlemen and corporate giants who now control the on/off switch of our daily lives.

Electricity retailers promise competition. Regulators insist the market is working. But ask any household or business staring down a $600 quarterly power bill—this system is a scam. And we’ve all become the victims of an energy con that rewards everyone but the consumer.

A System Designed to Confuse

The truth is, we don't have a free energy market—we have a rigged one. Here's how it works:

• Retailers offer dozens of "competitive plans" with meaningless variations
• Generators sell energy into a market with price caps far above the cost of generation
• Distributors make guaranteed profits through regulated pricing structures
• Rooftop solar users are underpaid for feeding electricity into the grid

It’s a circular profit machine—and you're the one fuelling it, month after month.

The Solar Lie

Australia has one of the highest rates of rooftop solar in the world. But that success has become a cash cow for the grid owners and retailers. Instead of rewarding households for reducing demand, the system penalises them with low feed-in rates, export caps, and hidden service fees. You invested in energy independence—only to be reabsorbed into the same broken model.

Where the Profits Go

Foreign-owned infrastructure funds, gas exporters, and shell companies headquartered in tax havens are raking in billions. Meanwhile, essential energy services in regional Australia go underfunded, and working families face disconnection notices during cost-of-living crises.

It’s Time for a Royal Commission

The Fair Go Movement calls for a full Royal Commission into Australia’s energy market: generation, transmission, distribution, retail, regulation—and the failed promise of privatisation.

This isn't about ideology. It's about fairness, transparency, and national sovereignty. Energy is not a luxury—it's a right. And it's time we took back control of it.

Published by The Fair Go Movement. All rights reserved.