Introduction

1 Purpose

The purpose of this document is to define the minimum requirements which must be met by documents presented to AQIS to support risk assessment of imported cargo, whether for quarantine or imported foods purposes.

2 Background

The Quarantine Operations Division uses a range of measures to assess the quarantine risk posed by imported goods, including the assessment of documentation and certification accompanying imported goods. This documentation comes from a range of government and commercial sources and in some instances is issued by AQIS.
Based on the assessment of documentation and certification, authorised quarantine officers direct imported goods to either be released or ordered into quarantine for subsequent action. The suitability of documents presented for assessment as part of the import process has previously been assessed against the non-commodity policy outlined under the Broker Accreditation Schemes and a number of ICON Alerts relating to specific document types/classes.
This policy consolidates and expands this information to ensure a consistent approach to assessing documentation presented to AQIS.

3 Key Outcomes

The key outcomes of this policy are as follows:

1. Clear minimum requirements for determining the acceptability of documents presented for assessment.
   
2. Clear parameters to establish whether documents presented for assessment are linked to a consignment.
   
3. Clear parameters to establish whether documents presented for assessment are linked to each other.

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