 |
Australian Customs and Border Protection (ACBP) Notice No. 2015/14 dated 31 March 2015 announced that the Customs Regulation 2015 (2015 Regulation) and Customs (International Obligations) Regulation 2015 (International Obligations Regulation) take effect from 1 April 2015. These regulations remake the Customs Regulations 1926 (the 1926 Regulations), which sunset on the same date. According to the notice, the new regulations have undergone changes to significantly improve their operation including repealing redundant provisions, simplifying language and restructuring provisions that were difficult to navigate in the 1926 Regulations. Exposure drafts of the new regulations were published earlier in 2015. Provisions relating to Australia’s international obligations including Free Trade Agreements, Duty Drawback Scheme and Dumping and Counterveiling measures are contained in the International Obligations Regulation. These provisions are exempt from sunsetting requirements and have been placed in a separate instrument to ensure that they are not subject to sunsetting in the future. The notice explains that the new regulations are necessary because the Legislative Instruments Act 2003 (LIA) provides that all legislative instruments, other than exempt instruments, progressively ‘sunset’ according to the relevant table set out in the LIA. The purpose of this is to ensure that a suitable review mechanism exists so that legislative instruments remain relevant, necessary and fit-for-purpose. The relevant table provides that any legislative instrument made a year before 1930 is to sunset on 1 April 2015. As such it was necessary to re-make the 1926 Regulations to ensure that relevant provisions continued post 1 April 2015. The new regulations do not introduce any substantive changes to existing government policy, but they have .a different look and feel to the 1926 Regulations. Sections and numbering within the 1926 Regulations have necessarily been restructured and the contents split into two instruments as part of the process to enhance its overall operation. Explanatory statements about the 2015 Regulation and the International Obligations Regulation are available. Finding tables are also available indicating the location of sections from the previous 1926 Regulations within the remade regulations and vice versa. The new section numbering means the location of duty refund reason types within the new regulations differ from their location within the 1926 Regulations. More detail about these changes is available within the updated ‘Refunds of Customs Import Duty’ fact sheet. The notice states that: The new regulations contain transitional provisions to ensure that things done under the 1926 Regulations, before those regulations were repealed, will continue to have effect (if there is a corresponding provision in the new regulation) as if it had been done under the new regulation. |
