Mr SLIPPER (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance and Administration) (4:41 PM) —I move:

Customs Tariff Proposal No. 6 (2000), which I have just tabled, contains three schedules of alterations to the Customs Tariff Act 1995. The first two of these schedules relate to item 17 in part II of schedule 4 to the act. Item 17 provides concessional entry for goods that have been exported from Australia and are subsequently reimported in an unaltered condition. The principle of the application of this concession is that duty is only payable on imported goods once, and that the concession should not be utilised where a duty liability has not been previously acquitted. The current provisions do not adequately reflect the original intent of the concession.

The alterations contained in schedule 1 redefine the eligibility criteria of item 17 and add new item 17A. They have previously been gazetted to commence on 4 July 2000 and are now being tabled in the House in accordance with section 273(EA) of the Customs Act 1901. Revised item 17 and new item 17A provide separate sets of entry conditions for each of a number of uniquely different import transactions. Schedule II contains alterations to items 17 and 17A, which have previously been gazetted to commence on 14 August 2000. This second gazettal was required to provide for additional eligibility criteria in relation to this concession, which were inadvertently omitted from the first gazettal.

The third schedule of this proposal reintroduces the five per cent duty rate on certain woven fibreglass fabric from 1 September 2000. The duty on these goods was removed from 15 December 1999 as part of the nuisance tariff exercise. The criteria used to determine the existence of a nuisance tariff were that the duty collected under an item was insignificant, and there was no local production of the goods covered by the item. The list of 268 nuisance tariffs, of which this item was one, was constructed after extensive and repeated consultations with industry and industry associations.

Despite that consultation process, a producer of a certain woven fibreglass fabric identified itself after the duty reductions had been introduced. As the intention of the government was not to disadvantage local manufacture, the duty on these goods is being reinstated. A summary of the alterations contained in this proposal is being circulated for the information of honourable members. I commend the proposal to the House.

Debate (on motion by Mr Stephen Smith) adjourned.