The new Biosecurity Portal for booking import inspections has been up and running for several months.
We are experiencing significant delays with Inspection Bookings, on average a booking is taking 2 week to be confirmed in Portal.
There are also delays with Document Processing, the average time The Department is taking to process in 1 week.
The Department advised that they are extremely short staffed and still feeling the effects of COVID.
GPSM has sent several complaints to The Department, but we have not received any follow up.
Our Industry Body has had meetings with The Department and they have made enhancements to the new Portal System however it had not resulted in any real time improvement to the actual inspection booking appointment time.
The Department was due to release a Notice explaining the issues however this also has not occurred.
In the Notice attached it was suggested that Overtime options were available however these appointments are also delayed.
Attachment