Mr Stockdale, who presided over the biggest sell-off of government-owned infrastructure and enterprises in Australia's history, told a Sydney conference on utilities regulation that government ownership of certain assets meant NSW was not getting the full benefit of energy market reforms.

Mr Stockdale also mentioned that the non-competitive conduct by generators as a problem.

Also attending the conference was the chief of the British energy regulator Ofgem, Callum McCarthy, who told industry executives trying to encourage consumers to change retailer that levels of switching between such utilities can outstrip those between banks.

The Ofgem boss said that in the three years since competition was fully introduced to British households, about 37% of customers had changed gas suppliers and 38% had switched electricity suppliers.

In contrast to the UK situation, since the introduction of full retail competition in the Victorian and NSW markets earlier this year, fewer than 25,000 out of 4 million customers have elected to switch to a new electricity retailer.

The low level of switching represents a big problem for energy retailers, particularly those that lack sufficient scale, according to industry consultant Stuart Pearce, who added there are economies of scale in mass-market energy retailing.

"Some of these retailers have gas customers, which allows them to capture economies of scope," Mr Pearce said.

"However, there are too many retailers for the customer base and this is driving industry rationalisation, such as the sale of two retail businesses in Victoria, Pulse Energy and CitiPower.

"This trend is set to continue and begs the question of how some of the smaller, mostly state-owned, retailers will compete."