3 May 2022
Who does this notice affect?
All Customs Brokers, Importers or Biosecurity Industry Participants
What has changed?
On 7 April 2022, the department successfully implemented an innovative automation solution for Self-Assessed Clearance (SAC) screening. The automation will improve Australia's biosecurity screening through faster and more accurate processing of SAC imports for goods coming into the country less than $1,000 AUD in value. The automation ensures that SAC declarations are assessed effectively and efficiently, in line with import requirements.
What is driving this?
International trade volumes and emerging biosecurity risks are continuing to grow, with a 32 percent increase in the volume of SAC imports coming into the country last year.
While Australia remains free from many pests and diseases, the task to manage biosecurity threats is significantly increasing – 54 million SAC imports arrived into Australia between June and December last year. This automation initiative will significantly assist us in managing these volumes.
How is the department responding?
This automation initiative will help us manage these ever-increasing volumes, providing greater efficiency for industry while also improving management of biosecurity risk.
Deploying this new automation initiative into the SAC pathway was recognised as a key improvement for biosecurity risk management in the airfreight pathway by the Inspector General for Biosecurity.
The new platform has been designed so it can be quickly integrated with any future systems updates as needed.
The technology is also being applied to other areas of our operations and will soon be implemented to automate the Min Docs aspect of the document assessment process as well as Treatment Certification.
How industry can help
The department would like to remind clients to ensure that any document lodgements are complete and include all required information to ensure they can be actioned as quickly as possible. The benefits of the automation will not be realised if inaccurate documents are lodged and then require manual intervention.
The department also continues to monitor non conformity with documentary requirements, and will be enhancing our ability to report and take action on such. Some six million documents are lodged into the department's system each year, and as such requires significant effort from assessment officers to rectify lodgement inaccuracies which penalises all industry members due to resultant delays.