BackCommonwealth Ombudsman Michael Manthorpe today released an own motion report into the Department of Home Affairs (Home Affairs) and the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources (DAWR) processing of international containerised sea cargo.
Numerous complaints have been received by the Ombudsman’s Office regarding delays in the processing of containerised sea cargo by the Australian Border Force (ABF) resulting in additional costs for importers.
This investigation identified that while the ABF has well-established administrative processes to manage containerised sea cargo compliance, more could be done to manage backlogs at Cargo and Container Examination Facilities. This in turn could reduce delays and the costs imposed upon industry.
The report recommended that the ABF should consider introducing a timeliness target for performing its scrutiny of containers to ensure that it does not lose sight of its facilitation role in the performance of its border protection mandate. The report also noted that inspection targets should be set according to available resources.
The report made a total of 10 recommendations. Home Affairs has accepted nine of the report’s recommendations that related to it. Six of these recommendations were supported in full and three in part. DAWR has partially supported the two recommendations in the report that are relevant to it
The Ombudsman will make no further comment on the report.
Read the full report here.
Source: Commonwealth Ombudsman
