In a submission to the Productivity Commission’s inquiry into road and rail infrastructure pricing, the rail operator said there could potentially be significant economic benefits from such a development.
But QR said its support was conditional on regulatory arrangements being flexible enough to accommodate differences in the market and operating circumstances of individual business.
“QR believes that a regulatory regime which delivers greater accountability and transparency and which reduces the risk of regulatory error occurring is more critical than the question of whether there should be a single national regulator,” the submission said.
“QR believes that it is possible to achieve greater consistency in rail regulation and a more effective regulatory framework without moving to a single national regulator.”
The rail operator said this could be achieved by implementing a range of reforms to existing state-based regimes, with amendments to the National Access Regime and the reforms agreed to in the COAG Competition and Infrastructure Reform Agreement suggested as a good starting point.
“Consistent with these national developments, QR believes that the necessary reforms to access regimes should cover the following key areas: greater regulatory accountability; the need for a more light-handed form of regulation; and the need for a regulatory framework that provides incentives for efficient whole of supply chain management,” the submission said.
The Productivity Commission released a discussion draft from its inquiry last month, in which it claimed road user charge revenues from heavy vehicles more than covered their attributable infrastructure costs and just covered their fully allocated costs.
QR said in reaching these conclusions the commission appeared to rely on the National Transport Commission’s model of cost allocation. It said this model allocated costs based on engineering and equity principles rather than through an economic approach and the Ramsay pricing method would have been more appropriate.
