Make a competitive neutrality complaint

Complaints process

First steps

If you are contemplating making a complaint against a state government business, the first step is to contact the relevant business to discuss your concerns and to make an attempt to resolve the complaint.

If you do make a formal competitive neutrality complaint, you will be required to provide information showing that an attempt was made to resolve the complaint with the state government agency. We may refuse to investigate a competitive neutrality complaint if we believe a genuine attempt was not made.

Our investigation process

If your attempt to resolve the complaint directly with the government agency has not been successful, you may submit a competitive neutrality complaint to us. We are required to investigate all complaints that we receive that fall within the scope of Part 4 of the QCA Act, unless:

1. we believe the complainant is not, and could not be, in competition in a particular market with the government agency
2. we believe the complainant has not made a genuine attempt to resolve the complaint with the government agency
3. we formally requested more information from the complainant (with a written notice under section 42 of the QCA Act), and the complainant has failed to provide this information without reasonable excuse
4. we believe the complaint is frivolous or vexatious.

We encourage you to contact us if you have any queries about the competitive neutrality complaints process or about your specific competitive neutrality concern.

If the complaint is in scope and we decide to investigate it, our investigation will examine whether the government agency breached the principle of competitive neutrality.

The outcome of the investigation

We will investigate a complaint and provide a written report to the Minister about the investigation and our findings. This report provides advice and recommendations only, and the Minister is not required to accept the advice.

Once we receive the Minister’s response to the report, we will publish the report on our website. We may recommend that the publication of the report be delayed, and the reasons for this recommendation will be included in the report. If this recommendation is accepted by the Minister, the report will be published at the end of the recommended delay period.

You can submit your competitive neutrality complaint and supporting documents on our competitive neutrality complaints submission page.

Complaints process

First steps

If you are contemplating making a complaint, the first step is to contact the relevant local government business to discuss your concerns and to make a genuine attempt to resolve the complaint with that business entity and the local government that owns or controls that business.

Legislation requires that a local government must have a process for resolving competitive neutrality complaints, including a process for resolving a dispute before a formal complaint is lodged. We strongly encourage you to contact your local council to engage in its complaints process and to attempt to resolve the issue before lodging a formal complaint with us.

If you do make a formal competitive neutrality complaint, you will be required to provide information showing that a genuine attempt was made to resolve the issue with the local government. We may refuse to investigate a competitive neutrality complaint if we believe that such an attempt was not made.

Our investigation process

If your attempt to resolve the issue directly with the local government has not been successful, you can submit a formal competitive neutrality complaint in writing to us, or directly to the local government. If a formal complaint is made directly to the local government, it will refer that complaint to us to investigate. We are required to investigate complaints that we receive that fall within the scope of competitive neutrality provisions of the Local Government Act 2009 and Local Government Regulation 2012 (or the City of Brisbane Act and the City of Brisbane Regulation 2012 section 39, for complaints relating to Brisbane City Council), unless we consider that:

1. the complainant has not made a genuine attempt to resolve the issue with the local government
2. the complainant is not, or will not be, in competition with the relevant local government business activity
3. the complainant is not, or is unlikely to be, adversely affected, even if the business activity does not comply with the competitive neutrality principle
4. the complaint is frivolous or vexatious.

Our investigation will examine whether the local government business activity breached the competitive neutrality principle. We are required to consider the competitive neutrality criteria in our investigation — these criteria are set out in section 51 of the Local Government Regulation and section 39 of the City of Brisbane Regulation 2012 (Qld).

The outcome of the investigation

We will investigate a complaint and provide a written report to the relevant local government and the business entity itself (if it is a separate legal entity to the local government). The report will state whether we consider the complaint to be substantiated. If we decide that the local government business entity has a competitive advantage (or disadvantage), the report will also include recommendations on addressing this advantage (or disadvantage).

This report provides advice and recommendations only, and the local government is not required to accept the advice. The local government must decide, by resolution, whether to implement the recommendations in our report, and the resolution must state the reasons for the local government’s decisions.

A copy of the report must be available for inspection by the public at the local government’s offices. There is no requirement for the report to be published on the local government’s website or our website.