Regulation Impact Statement – Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications
On 1 September 2020, the Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts, the Hon Paul Fletcher MP announced changes to the Telecommunications in New Developments (TIND) policy.
The changes are designed to provide people in Australia moving into new apartment and housing developments with better and cheaper access to high speed broadband services, by removing competitive constraints on NBN Co under the previous TIND policy, noting there are generic and telecommunications-specific laws to deal with anti-competitive conduct and NBN Co is subject to Commonwealth competitive neutrality policy.
The Office of Best Practice Regulation (OBPR) assessed the RIS as adequate against the Government’s impact analysis requirements.
The OBPR considers that, while the analysis presented is of a high standard, to be consistent with good practice, the RIS should have been submitted to OBPR for second pass final assessment before the announcement of changes to the TIND policy. OBPR acknowledges that the Minister was provided with and noted the RIS (a draft of which had previously been considered by OBPR as having met the required standard of analysis) before the final TIND policy was agreed and announced.
The RIS estimates total regulatory costs at $37,986, born by NBN Co to update material and train staff.