OPINION: 1 January 2022 – a new year is not fun for everyone!
MANY people look forward to a new year as a time for celebration. However, for importers and exporters and their service providers, including licensed customs brokers and freight...
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: It’s all about container dwell time
THERE are currently more than 70 containerships anchored off the Long Beach/Los Angeles coast waiting for a berth at one of the container terminals to discharge their containers....
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: Legislation proposed for the construction of the ABF’s “regulatory sandbox”
MANY of you would be aware that one of my professional dreams is for the Customs Act 1901 to be replaced with a new version written to modern regulatory standards. Those affected...
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: Shipping lines should invest more in new technology
IN a recent article published in the DCN, I mentioned that container shipping lines collectively are set to make more than US$100 billion this year, with Maersk alone forecasting...
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: Shipping lines are making huge profits – but will it last?
DREWRY’S Container Forecaster report is predicting that annual profits for the industry could exceed US$100 billion. Maersk, the world’s biggest container shipping line, is...
INSIGHT: Landlocked micronation San Marino's new ship registry
LANDLOCKED San Marino, a country of approximately 30,000 inhabitants situated in northern Italy, has joined the ranks of countries offering their flag for the registration of...
INSIGHT: GST on low-value imports held to account
MANY of those in industry will remember the controversy that was associated with the introduction of GST on “low value import transactions” (LVT) on consignments three years ago....
INSIGHT: Don’t worry – Olympic medals aren’t subject to import duty
ONLY a trade lawyer nerd who also happens to be a sports tragic would start to think about whether customs duty or GST are payable on Olympic medals when brought back into...
OPINION: How much should shipping pay for its emissions?
A LOT has been written about whether shipping should be subject to a carbon tax. About 90% of the world trade is transported by global shipping and it accounts for nearly 3% of...
INSIGHT: Senate to look at forced labour-produced imports
CONCERNS for human rights have manifested themselves in many ways over the course of many years and led to a range of responses over that time, whether by unilateral national...
LETTER TO THE DCN: Where is the incentive to improve port performance?
I WOULD like to comment on the recent opinion article by Peter van Duyn, published in the DCN, about container port performance. I read with interest the Shipping Australia...
