Commonwealth Numbered Regulations - Explanatory Statements

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TELECOMMUNICATIONS (CARRIER LICENCE FEES) REGULATIONS 1991 NO. 358

EXPLANATORY STATEMENT

STATUTORY RULE 1991 No. 358

TELECOMMUNICATIONS (CARRIER LICENCE FEES) REGULATIONS

Issued by the Authority of the Minister for Transport and Communications

Section 8 of the Telecommunications (Carrier Licence Fees) Act 1991 provides that the Governor-General may make regulations for the purposes of the Act.

Section 4 of the Act provides for a fee to be payable by the holder of a general telecommunications licence or of a public mobile licence. Paragraph 5(1)(b) of tie Act provides that regulations may prescribe a procedure in accordance with which the amount of the fee is to be determined.

The Telecommunications (Carrier Licence Fees) Regulations provide for each carrier licence fee to have a fixed and a variable component.

The Regulations set the fixed component to be $500,000 a year for each general telecommunications and each public mobile licence. This fixed component will be calculated pro rata. Consequently, where, on 1 July of a given year, the licence holder has not had a licence for the full period of the immediately preceding financial year, the amount of the fixed component payable will be a pro rata amount of that fixed fee ($500,000), according to the proportion of the immediately preceding financial year for which the licence has been in force.

The Regulations also set a formula for calculation of the variable component and provide that the total of the variable componenets will be payable by the licence holders in accordance with their share of the telecommunications market (as based on their share of timed traffic, in accordance with section 305 of the Telecommunications Act 1991).

The variable component is defined as AUSTEL's appropriation in the "relevant" financial year (this is the financial year before the financial year ending on 30 June of the calendar year in which the fee is payable), less all of (a) AUSTEL's expenditure in the relevant financial year on public inquiries under Part 14 of the Telecommunications Act 1991 which are not related to the regulation of carriers' activities, (b) AUSTEL's revenue in the relevant financial year other than carrier licence fees and (c) the fixed components to be payable.

Section 6 of the Telecommunications (Carrier Licence Fees) Act 1991 provides that the total of the fees that are payable under the Act must not exceed AUSTEL's appropriation in the financial year immediately preceding the 1 July on which the fee is payable.

To give effect to section 6, the Regulations provide, if the use of the above formula were to lead to a contravention of section 6, for the variable component to be calculated in a different way (subregulation 3(2)) or, if necessary, for the fixed component to be set in a different way (subregulation 3(3)).


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