Trade Practices Act Part 3A sets the regime for the accessing of essential facilities (excluding telecommunications) by a two step process involving determination whether a facility is "essential" and then setting out an arbitration process when the parties are unable to agree on access arrangements or pricing.
On 7 April 2009 the Federal Government announced that it had commenced negotiations with the states and territories on a package of reforms to this access regime.
Briefly, it proposed that the reforms will:
- implement COAG competition and infrastructure reform agreement commitments to introduce binding time limits on the procedure and limited merits review to challenge any arbitral determination;
- streamline the Part 3A decision-making criteria and processes and improve regulatory certainty by providing scope for binding no-coverage rulings and fixed principles in access undertakings; and
- reform ACCC administrative processes and Australian competition tribunal review processes, to improve the time limits of outcomes.
The Federal Government proposes to introduce legislation to amend the access regime with such legislation expected to be introduced in mid 2009.