OPINION: Overzealous ABF officers with power tools or a legitimate threat to the border?
A COUPLE recently received visas to enter Australia and to relocate to Melbourne, and they shipped their personal effects via air from Canada. Their effects included a Canadian...
OPINION: Layer upon layer of Quarantine inefficiencies
I REMEMBER from my earliest days of having Quarantine files processed face-to-face with a quarantine officer at Rosebery NSW, that we would receive a Quarantine paper direction...
OPINION: Russian imports levied with an additional 35% import duty - is it enough?
ON 13 APRIL the Australian Border Force issued Australian Customs Notice No. 2022/21, advising that there would be a new rate of customs duty for imported goods from the Russian...
OPINION: Quarantine – an unfair charging system
AS A corporate customs brokerage we pay the Australian Border Force $2400 for a three-year customs brokerage licence; in 2017 the Department of Agriculture, Water and the...
OPINION: How to lose $46,500 in one shipment
AS A customs broker, we see and hear things that immediately alight our instincts that just don’t add up or make sense. A customs broker is licensed to undertake tasks alongside...
OPINION: Alcohol and tobacco – once bitten twice shy
TWO of the highest taxed goods that enter Australia are tobacco and alcohol. Recently, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that 2 million packets of cigarettes disappeared from a...
OPINION: The new era of DAP shipments and all its complexities
OVER the years, more and more shipments are sold on an informal delivered-at-place (DAP) basis. The importer makes contact with overseas suppliers who, in turn, offer a one-stop...
OPINION: Quarantine will cancel Christmas – believe me
FURTHER to my piece from 19 October, nothing has changed in regards to entry processing with the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources (Quarantine). The dire situation has...
OPINION: Never mind the shipping crisis, we have a quarantine crisis
YES, I will show my age in this opinion piece (or maybe I will show my 23 years of experience). In the olden days we could take our quarantine files to a quarantine office, take a...
OPINION: Fremantle: the last major mainland container port without a lifetime lease
AUSTRALIA’S major container ports in most cases have been leased for a lifetime: Melbourne, Port Botany, Brisbane, Darwin and Adelaide have all been leased for 99 years and...
OPINION: The problem of export declaration numbers
IN AUSTRALIA, the Customs Act 1901 does not require a Licensed Customs Broker to submit an Export Declaration Number (EDN) to the Australian Border Force. An EDN is required for:...
OPINION: Is dumping really 'dumping' or just being competitive?
THE TERM “dumping” is used in international trade when goods are imported to Australia and sold to Australian importers at lower prices than they would be sold in the home country...
INSIGHT: Methyl bromide and the road to 2047
AUSTRALIA is a signatory to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, this protocol was signed in 1987 and entered into force in 1989. The protocol has...
OPINION: A packing quagmire
PACKING declarations have been in operation since around 1998/1999. International sea freight trade into Australia has changed dramatically since that time; sea freight shipments...
OPINION: Why do quarantine declaration charges need to increase by $23 million?
ON 11 December 2019, Agriculture [quarantine] advised that effective 01 January 2020 that: Air Full Import Declarations will increase from $33 to $38 and Sea Full Import...
