Chris Ellison (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Hansard source

As a result of my own initiative, I established a roundtable working group, which met no less than eight times over a period in excess of 18 months, and I dealt closely with industry. There was a decision made to proceed with the cut-over. At that roundtable we had representatives from software developers, shipping, air cargo, customs brokers and freight forwarders—the whole range of industry that interacted with us. It was always acknowledged that this was a complex task. In fact, since Federation, this is the greatest change that the Australian Customs Service has seen in the way we deal with the modern facilitation of imports and exports. This system is a platform for us to build world’s best practice for this country and we are intent on achieving that goal. We have always been working and will continue to work with industry to do so. That is exactly what Michael Carmody, the CEO, is doing.