TradeLane

The Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) in Australia recently published DIBPN 2016/35, Voluntary Disclosures under Section 243T and Section 243U Customs Act 1901. In this notice, DIBP highlighted their commitment to working with industry to encourage higher levels of voluntary compliance by providing increased transparency to the regulatory trade environment.

A voluntary disclosure is the communication of a written notice of an error, omission or adjustment in statements made to DIBP. If you make such disclosures voluntarily, before DIBP instigates any queries or proceedings, you will likely be protected from penalties that would otherwise be imposed.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas… an Aussie Christmas with sunny skies, blistering heat, packed beaches and rapidly depreciating personal bank accounts. But if that’s not enough to get you excited, there is, of course, the recently released Goods Compliance Update (“The Update”) from the Australian Border Force (“ABF”).

The Update aims to highlight pertinent issues identified by the ABF, compliance areas of focus, and provides some statistics on the Compliance Programme results for the 2015/2016 Financial year. I’ll reiterate that second point - the ABF highlight the compliance areas of focus, hence if your activities fall within these areas it is recommended that you assess, and if appropriate address, any risks.

As one of the newest members of the Tradewin team, having joined our South Pacific practice as a Trade Analyst earlier this year, I have been looking forward to writing my first post here on our blog, so here goes!

In July 2015, shortly after the first phase of the pilot for the Australian Trusted Trader Programme (ATT) commenced, my colleague Jess Cordeta introduced our readers to some of the benefits and requirements of participation.  

Almost 12 months later, the third phase of the pilot is well underway and the Australian Government has recently announced additional funding for the programme over the next four years. The ATT is set to become operational on the 1^st of July, 2016.

The ChAFTA will also open doors for investment projects and create new jobs thus boosting the economy.

The jobs, however, seem to be creating serious concerns amongst Australian labor force. The Australian Union, who was campaigning against ChAFTA, is arguing that the easing of labor market restrictions will inevitably jeopardize Aussie jobs and flood the country with unskilled workers. This is of course is a political debate that continues as I type these words; not for a humble trade consultant to comment on!

The long discussed, debated, and awaited China-Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA), which was first proposed in 1999 and since then has been in the works, was finally signed on June 17, 2015 in Canberra.

With China-Australia Free Trade Agreement having been the third in the quick succession of three Free Trade Agreements Australia signed with its major trading partners, Korea, Japan and China in almost one year, Australia's exports and GDP are predicted to grow significantly.