Fees and services

State Government’s new Fee Unit Model

The Queensland Government is introducing a new Fee Unit Model (the model) under Queensland Treasury’s Principles for Fees and Charges policy. The Fee Unit Model changes the mechanism for how fees are updated annually to reflect indexation.

The Department of Environment and Science (department) is required to update prescribed regulatory fees by 1 July 2022 at the latest. The model replaces fee dollars with a set fee unit, with the fee unit value prescribed in the Acts Interpretation Act 1954 (AIA).

Under the AIA the fee unit value for 2021–22 fees is 1 fee unit = $1.00. Therefore, if a prescribed regulatory fee in 2021–22 is $6.75, the fee unit is 6.75 fee units.

The AIA prescribed fee unit value was made on 1 January 2022 to allow the department time to convert all prescribed regulatory fees to fee units. The department has converted all regulatory fees dollars to fee units and received Governor in Council approval on 3 March 2022. All regulatory fees are now prescribed as fee units.

Annual fee indexation for 2022–23 will be applied to the AIA to commence on 1 July 2022. The AIA will be updated to increase the 2022–23 fee unit value by the Government Indexation Rate (GIR). For example, if the GIR was 1.7% for 2022–23, then the new fee unit value in the AIA would be 1 fee unit = $1.017.

Calculating the new 2022–23 fee unit dollar value using the above example would be 6.75 fee units x $1.017. Department prescribed regulations contain the dollar value rounding rule which must be applied when calculating the new fee unit dollar value.

The department will use the prescribed rounding rule to calculate the annual fee unit dollar value for all regulatory and non-regulatory fees on 1 July each year. For transparency, the department will continue to publish annually the Schedule of Fees and Services in fee dollars. Other department publications and receipting systems will continue to reference fee dollars for all regulatory and non-regulatory fees as well.