Report No. 28

Review of Customs and Excise Decisions: Stage Three Anti-Dumping and Countervailing Duty Decisions, 1987

Summary of the report

The report was transmitted to the Government on 6 February 1987, and tabled in the Parliament on 3 June 1987.

The report contains eight recommendations. In summary, the Council recommended:

that specified duty decisions should be subject to review on the merits,
the issue of Ministerial certificates to exclude review on the merits be open in specified situations,
the repeal of specified sections of the anti-dumping legislation,
that a decision by the Minister in respect of an undertaking should not be subject to merits review,
that specified preliminary decisions should only be reviewable on the merits, in the context of the review of the final decision that subsumes them,
that facultative, transitional and internal administrative decisions should not be subject to merits review,t
that decisions relating to the imposition, or non-imposition, of securities in respect of duties payable, should not be subject to merits review, and
that anti-dumping and countervailing duty decisions recommended for review on the merits, should be reviewable by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

Response to the report

The Council's recommendations were not implemented.

The Government introduced the Anti-Dumping Authority Bill 1988 on 28 April 1988, along with proposed associated legislation dealing with anti-dumping and countervailing duty decisions. That legislation was passed and came into operation on 1 September 1988. It implemented the Government's response to Professor F H Gruen's 1986 review of the Customs Tariff (Anti-Dumping) Act 1975. The Council's consideration of review matters under the anti-dumping legislation was referred to by Professor Gruen in his report. It was apparent from the new legislation that the Government had not accepted the Council's recommendations in Report No. 28.