How to compare gas plans in Australia

Household gas is a smaller, quieter market than electricity, which is how people end up on a standing offer for six years. The comparison is not exotic. You need a bill, a network, a year of megajoules, and a refusal to treat “dual fuel” as a discount.

Gas is sold in cents per megajoule (c/MJ) plus a daily supply charge. Electricity is cents per kilowatt hour plus supply. The units are different; the shape is the same. A low usage rate with a fat supply charge wins for a house that barely cooks. A higher usage rate with a cheap supply charge can win for a ducted-heating winter. You will not see that in a Facebook ad.

Competitive retail gas is a network product in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia. Those are the states where a household on a covered distributor can usually pick a retailer. If your street has no gas main, this page will not invent one.

What you need on the table

Find a bill that covers a winter quarter if you heat with gas, and a shoulder quarter if you can. Usage swings harder than electricity for heating homes.

• Your MIRN — Meter Identification Registration Number. It is the gas meter’s ID. Comparison sites use it to lock the distributor. If the paperwork also shows an NMI, that is electricity; NMI and MIRN explains both.
• Usage in megajoules for the period, and whether the bill splits peak and off-peak (less common for residential gas than for power).
• The usage rate or rates, in c/MJ, and any step: first 4,000 MJ at one price, the rest at another.
• The daily supply or service charge.
• Concession details, life-support registration (rare on gas, still important), and whether you are in hardship.
• Whether electricity is with the same retailer, and whether any discount requires both accounts.

If all you have is a dollar total, you cannot compare. Ask the retailer for a usage history. If they will not provide it, that is a reason to leave them, not a reason to guess.

Networks, not states

Retailers do not own the pipes. The distributor does. Your rate card is built on that network’s charges plus the retailer’s margin. Comparing a Sydney Jemena rate to a Melbourne Multinet rate is a category error.

Common covered networks for household gas include:

• New South Wales: Jemena Gas Networks is the large coastal system; Australian Gas Networks and a few smaller networks cover other pockets.
• Victoria: Australian Gas Networks, Multinet and AusNet. Victoria is still the country’s gas-heating heartland.
• Queensland: Australian Gas Networks and Allgas in the south-east. Plenty of the state has no reticulated gas.
• South Australia: Australian Gas Networks.

A plan that is cheap on one network can be ordinary on the next. Enter the MIRN. Do not pick a “Queensland gas plan” off a national brochure.

Households outside those retail markets — much of regional Australia, the ACT’s particular arrangements, Western Australia, Tasmania, the Northern Territory — should check whether a government comparator even lists a choice before they spend an evening on this method. No choice means the work is about usage and appliances, not about switching brands.

If you have just moved interstate, do not reuse last year’s New South Wales fact sheet on a Victorian MIRN. The retailer brand may be the same. The network charges and the standing-offer rules are not. Confirm the postcode and the distributor name on the bill before you trust an old estimate.

Usage rate, supply charge and step tariffs

Read a gas fact sheet the way you would an electricity one.

The usage rate is what you pay for each megajoule that comes through the meter. Some plans are flat. Some are stepped: a higher price for the first block, a lower price after. Heating homes blow through the first block by July. Flats that only cook may never leave it. A step tariff advertised on the cheap second rate is lying by omission if you are the first-block customer.

The supply charge is the daily cost of remaining connected. It pays, in part, for pipes you do not see. It does not care that you went away in January. Households that keep a gas connection “just for the cooktop” often pay more in supply than in usage. That is the moment to price electric versus gas cooking and heating honestly.

Discounts are the same zoo as electricity.

• Pay-on-time discounts that vanish when you query a bill.
• Guaranteed discounts off an inflated base rate.
• Credits that require a dual-fuel account.
• Paper-bill fees that wipe a “saving” for anyone who wants a record.

Rank by estimated annual cost at your megajoules, including supply. Never by the first c/MJ you see.

Dual fuel is a packaging decision

Retailers like dual-fuel accounts because one relationship is stickier than two. Sticky is not cheaper.

Price electricity as if gas did not exist, using the electricity comparison method. Price gas as if electricity did not exist. Add the two best stand-alone results. Then price the bundle. If the bundle wins, take it. If it wins only because a $150 credit is paid in month two, spread that credit over a year and look again.

A bundle that requires you to keep a gas connection you were ready to abolish is not a saving. It is a restraint.

Using the government sites

• Energy Made Easy lists gas plans where the national framework applies, including New South Wales, south-east Queensland and South Australia.
• Victorian Energy Compare lists Victorian gas.
• Enter the MIRN when asked. Enter annual megajoules, or upload a bill.
• Sort by estimated annual cost.
• Open the fact sheets. Check step rates, supply, benefit period and any dual-fuel condition.

Retailer websites will happily compare their own three plans. That is not a market. If a switch call will not let you recreate the quote on the government site, hang up.

Concessions change the estimate. If you hold an eligible card, say so. The state rules are in energy concessions and rebates by state. Hardship is a separate door: tell the retailer before you compare yourself into a contract you cannot pay.

After you choose

Switching gas retailers is a retail transfer, like electricity. The meter stays. The emergency number stays with the distributor. You should not lose supply on a normal switch. The practical sequence sits next to how to switch electricity retailers and, if the move is a relocation rather than a change of brand, moving house electricity and gas connection.

Do this:

• Keep a PDF of the last bill and the new fact sheet.
• Diary any cooling-off period on an unsolicited sale — 10 business days in the usual case.
• Cancel the old direct debit only after the first new bill looks like the quote.
• If you are disconnecting gas entirely, that is a distributor job with a safety visit, not a retailer’s “we will just zero the account”.

Revisit the comparison before winter, not after the first brutal bill, and again when a benefit period ends. Gas wholesale prices and network charges move on their own calendar. If a retailer writes to change the rate, treat that letter as a prompt to reopen Energy Made Easy or Victorian Energy Compare, not as a reason to stay put.

The habit is the same as electricity: your megajoules, your supply charge, your network. Not a slogan, and not a bundle that you did not unbundle. If the numbers say the cooktop is the last appliance and the supply charge is the bill, the next comparison may be whether to keep gas at all.