The 2011 Hunter Valley Coal Network Access Undertaking (HVAU) requires the Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC) to send documents to the ACCC for an annual compliance assessment. As part of this assessment, we examine ARTC's operating costs, including overheads.
ARTC’s overhead costs have increased since 2012. Stakeholders have expressed concerns about these increases. In our 2018 compliance assessment we commented that the ACCC would closely monitor and engage with ARTC about these costs. This is a separate stream of work from our annual compliance assessments. We may use findings from the benchmarking work to help with compliance determinations.
The ACCC engaged Arup to help with benchmarking ARTC’s overhead costs against its competitors. Arup has prepared its benchmarking report for the ACCC, which we published on 8 February 2023. We are considering Arup's findings and sought stakeholder submissions to help inform our views.
The report and stakeholder submissions are available at the web pages below.