EXPLANATORY STATEMENT
CUSTOMS ACT 1901
CUSTOMS REGULATIONS (AMENDMENT)
STATUTORY RULES 1990 NO. 217
ISSUED BY THE AUTHORITY OF THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR SMALL BUSINESS AND CUSTOMS
Section 270 of the Customs Act 1901 (“the Act”) provides in part that “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 or as may be necessary or convenient to be prescribed for giving effect to this Act …”
Paragraph 126(1)(p) of the Customs Regulations prescribes a refund circumstance in respect of duty-paid petrol when that petrol is returned to a warehouse or to a manufacturer.
Regulation 128F of the Customs Regulations provides for certain requirements to be met by an applicant for refund under the circumstance in paragraph 126(1) (p), including an obligation to give notice of the proposed return of contaminated petrol to an “authorised officer” prior to its return.
Background
The requirement in regulation 128F that notice be provided to an authorised officer has created certain practical difficulties for applicants for refund since the circumstance was introduced in December of last year. In some regions oil companies have been requested to advise out of hours returns to the Customs radio room. This has meant that unless all radio room positions are authorised it is necessary for radio room staff to contact an authorised officer. If an authorised officer cannot be contacted, the conditions of the regulation are not met and a refund cannot be granted.
The Statutory Rules amend regulation 128F by omitting “authorised” wherever it occurs in that regulation and by omitting the definition of “authorised officer” from subregulation 128F(5) (regulation 2).
This will mean that any reference to an officer of Customs is consistent throughout the regulation, and will pick up the definition of “officer” which appears in section 4 of the Customs Act 1901.
The Statutory Rules are to be taken to have commenced on 21 December 1989 (regulation 1), being the date on which the amendments which introduced regulation 128F commenced. However,
since the Statutory Rules confer a benefit in liberalizing the notice requirements, they do not offend the prohibition against retrospectivity in subsection 48(2) of the Acts Interpretation Act 1901.