QCA levy

We made a final decision to approve Queensland Rail’s proposal for the 2018–19 QCA levy on 14 December 2018.

We published our draft decision to approve Queensland Rail’s proposal for the 2018–19 QCA levy on 18 October 2018.

Stakeholders were invited to comment on this draft decision by Friday, 9 November 2018.

No submissions were received by this deadline.

The 2016 access undertaking (AU1) allows Queensland Rail to include a QCA levy component in its access charge.

• The QCA levy is the amount that a regulated entity recovers from its customers, to recover the QCA fee.
• The QCA fee is the amount charged by the QCA to a regulated entity.

The QCA levy component of the access charge is determined from year to year, based on the amount Queensland Rail has paid the QCA. It is ‘allocated amongst Train Service types in a manner approved by the QCA’ (cl. 3.7).

On 4 September 2018, Queensland Rail submitted its proposed 2018–19 QCA levy, seeking to collect $1.69 million in levies during the 2018–19 financial year. This amount reflects how much the QCA charged Queensland Rail, for work related to:

• Queensland Rail’s compliance with its obligations under AU1
• investigating the 2020 draft access undertaking.

Queensland Rail subsequently submitted a letter to amend its proposal for the reconciliation of the QCA fee 2017–18 on 28 September 2018. We received two submissions on this proposal, from New Hope Group and Pacific National.

On 21 June 2018, we made a final decision to approve Queensland Rail’s proposal for the 2017–18 QCA levy.

Our final decision notice and related documents can be downloaded below.

The 2016 undertaking provides that an access charge can include a QCA levy component to be collected by Queensland Rail. The QCA fee is the amount charged by the QCA to a regulated party, while the QCA levy is the charge to customers through which the regulated party recovers the QCA fee it has paid.

The QCA levy component is determined from year to year based on the amount paid to the QCA by Queensland Rail and ‘allocated amongst Train Service types in a manner approved by the QCA’ (cl. 3.7).

On 5 January 2018, Queensland Rail submitted its proposed 2017–18 QCA levy, seeking to collect $2.2 million in levies to recoup:

• a $2.0 million under-recovery of QCA fees accumulated between 2010–11 and 2016–17
• the $198,000 QCA fee for 2017–18.

We received three submissions on Queensland Rail’s proposal.

We did not receive any submissions from stakeholders on our 23 May 2018 draft decision to approve the proposal.