Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

For goods above $1,000, my advice is that they get processed through a border model. Goods get stopped at the border before Customs processing. Obviously, there is a much smaller volume, and the treatment of these higher value goods has always been quite different to the more efficient way that low-value goods are processed through the border. Essentially, the revenue per item above $1,000 is obviously higher; the numbers are lower; and there is already a process that takes place as part of the normal border and freight forwarding processes that does not apply to the 33-plus million products below $1,000. We would essentially have to set up a very significant process of stopping all these goods at the border in order to implement the sort of process that Senator Macdonald and others have suggested.

In summary, this has been looked at by experts in all different directions for a very long time. Consistently, the conclusion that has come back is that to most efficiently administer this sort of proposal—to apply GST to products below $1,000—is through a vendor model. People are entitled to different views on these things but that has consistently been the advice to the government and we have not seen anything that would change our view.