Economic Regulation Authority (WA)
A short factsheet on the Economic Regulation Authority: WA's independent economic regulator for electricity, gas, water and rail access, and how its decisions can be reviewed.
Learning outcomes
- State the ERA's establishing Act and its core function across electricity, gas, water and rail access regulation.
- Identify that the ERA is not a prosecuting authority, and describe the accountability mechanisms available against its decisions.
- Recognise the ERA as a concrete example of the 'regulator imposing a licence condition' scenario used generically in the shared administrative-law articles.
Act: Economic Regulation Authority Act 2003 (WA).1
Established: 2003, consolidating economic regulatory functions that had previously been spread across separate industry-specific offices.
Purpose: The ERA is WA's independent economic regulator for the electricity, gas, water and rail industries. Its stated purpose is to promote strong economic outcomes for current and future consumers through effective, independent regulation of these essential-service industries.
Powers conferred under the Act
The Act confers inquiry, reporting, access-regulation and licensing functions. In practice this means the ERA: licenses providers of electricity, gas and water services; sets or approves regulated revenue and network-access arrangements (for example, third-party access to WA's rail network); investigates and reports on referred economic matters; and monitors compliance with licence conditions. This is the concrete institution behind the generic "regulator imposing a licence condition" example used in What is administrative action?.
Is it a prosecuting authority?
No. The ERA is a regulatory decision-maker, not a prosecutor. Its licensing and access decisions are administrative action in the sense explained in the shared national article, and are susceptible to the accountability mechanisms administrative action generally attracts — internal or tribunal review where the relevant enabling provision confers it, and judicial review for legal error. No specific leading case is cited here. A student relying on case law specific to the ERA should verify current authority independently rather than assume this factsheet is exhaustive.
Self-check
- Have I named the specific industries the ERA regulates, rather than describing it only as "a regulator"?
- Have I distinguished the ERA's licensing/access functions from any prosecuting or criminal enforcement role, which it does not have?
- Have I flagged that this factsheet does not assert a confirmed leading case for the ERA?