People's Panel - Induction and Onboarding
Every five years, SA Power Networks undergoes a regulatory reset process, submitting a Regulatory Proposal to the Australian Energy Regulator (AER), detailing our proposed business operations and service delivery.
Following on from our Broad and Diverse engagement workshops and Focussed Conversations, the People’s Panel is the culmination of our engagement process.
When
The first weekend of the People's Panel was held on November 26th and 27th at the Adelaide CBD, bringing together the Panel for an induction-and-onboarding weekend. The session was facilitated independently by democracyCo with staff members from SA Power Networks' observing.
What did we discuss?
The weekend provided an opportunity for the Panel members to:
- Gather an understanding of who SA Power Networks is and what they are responsible for
- Building understanding of the Panel's process and how it fits within SA Power Networks' engagement process
- Presenting the Panel with key stakeholder perspectives, with representatives from Business SA and SACOSS briefing the Panel on what's important to them
- Deliberation on and developing the assessment tool that they will use to assess the recommendations from the Focussed Conversations.
The session allowed the Panel to better understand the process and what was important to them in the supply of energy. It also provided them with a chance to assess the recommendations from the Focussed Conversations more rigorously and objectively.
Participants were also introduced to the notions of critical thinking and bias within deliberative work, encouraging them to arrive at 'public judgement' in a robust way, and not be influenced by persuasive agendas.
What's next?
The Panel will meet for its next session in February 2023.
Over the next few months, the Panel members will be partaking in conducting some stakeholder interviews to help build understanding amongst the participants of the issues and the complexities and trade-offs around these topics.
The Panel will be consulted on who they want to interview, with short 20–30-minute interviews done via Zoom to ensure participation of the regional Panel members.