Commonwealth Numbered Regulations - Explanatory Statements

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CUSTOMS REGULATIONS (AMENDMENT) 1994 NO. 351

STATUTORY RULES 1994 No. 351

Issued by the Authority of the Minister for Small Business, Customs and Construction

Customs Act 1901

Customs Regulations (Amendment)

Section 270 of the Customs Act 1901 (the Act) provides in part that:

"(1)       The Governor-General may make regulations not inconsistent with this Act prescribing all matters which by this Act are required or permitted to be prescribed ... for giving effect to this Act or for the conduct of business relating to the Customs, ..."

Part XVA of the Act provides for the duty-free entry of certain goods via a TCO where it is established that the duty-free entry of those goods is not likely to have a significant adverse effect on the market for Australian made substitutable goods. Section 269SJ of the Act provides that the Comptroller must not make a TCO in respect of goods declared by the Regulations to be goods to which a TCO should not extend.

Regulation 185 and Schedule 2 to the Customs Regulations exclude certain goods from the Tariff Concession System (TCS) by listing goods by the tariff heading or subheading of such goods in Column 2 of Schedule 2. Column 3 of the Schedule provides the facility to list goods within the restricted tariff class for which a TCO can be made.

Schedule 2 fists broad classes of consumer items as well as goods which are the subject of the Government's specifically targeted industry assistance plans such as the Passenger Motor Vehicle (PMV) Plan. It does not, however, specifically cover replacement parts for goods which are the subject of the PMV Plan.

In the 1991 Industry Statement the Government indicated that the automotive industry would continue to be excluded from the TCS and more recently in the White Paper, reaffirmed that the broad framework for this sector would remain in place until the outcome of the PMV industry review in 1996.

Subregulation 2.1 amends regulation 185 to specifically provide that in addition to the goods listed in Column 2 of Schedule 2, all goods in respect of which the customs duty specified in Customs Tariff Act 1987 is 15% are goods to which a TCO should not extend (new paragraph 185(a) refers). As the term "PMV replacement parts" potentially covers thousands of individual goods failing to many tariff classifications, it was considered that the use of the current mechanism in Schedule 2 to the Regulations of listing goods by their tariff classification would have been unsuitable to give effect to the desired policy. By simply referring to goods which have a general rate of customs duty of 15% the regulation automatically extends to all the relevant goods as the only goods which have a duty rate of 15% are PMV replacement parts.

The Regulations commence on gazettal.