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The Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Cities and Regional Development manages the policy and regulatory framework for Australian airports and the aviation industry. It also manages the administration of the Government's interests in privatized airports under the Airports Act, 1996, and provides policy advice on the efficient management of airspace, and on aircraft noise and emissions.

Table 3.7 Imports subject to prohibition or non-automatic licensing, 2019
Item: Pesticides and other hazardous chemicals
Justification: Public health or safety concerns
Measure: Permission to import organochlorine chemicals may be granted by the Minister for Agriculture if certain conditions are met.

Table A3.1 Non-agricultural subsidies notified to the WTO, 2016/17 and 2018/19
(AUD)
FEDERAL PROGRAMMES
Environment
Sustainable Rural Water Use and Infrastructure Program:
New South Wales State Basin Pipe – Stock and Domestic: (...)
Private Irrigation Infrastructure Operators Program for New South Wales: (...)
Queensland Healthy Headwater Water Use and Efficiency Program: (...)
Goulburn Murray Water Connection Project Stage 2: (...)
Victoria Farm Modernisation Project: (...)
New South Wales State Water Metering Scheme (including pilot): (...)
On-farm Irrigation Efficiency Project (including pilot projects): (...)
New South Wales State Irrigated Farm Modernisation Project (and pilot): (...)
Water for the Environment Special Account:
Commonwealth On-Farm Further Irrigation Efficiency Program (pilot): (...)

As Australia's frontline border law enforcement agency, the ABF assists in the implementation of various pieces of legislation that prohibit outright the importation of certain goods, restrict certain imports, and subject importation to the fulfilment of specific conditions. On its website, the ABF identifies approximately 60 instances of "prohibited" imports (Table 3.7). Many of these restrictions or conditional measures reflect concerns related to public health and safety, measures affecting the domestic production and marketing of identical, similar or like goods, or stem from Australia's participation in international agreements and arrangements to regulate trade in particular products, such as chemical weapons, radioactive and nuclear materials, hazardous waste, ozone-depleting substances and synthetic greenhouse gases, cultural heritage goods, or the cross-border movement of endangered animals and plant species (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species - CITES ). The conditions applicable to CITES-related imports are distinct from biosafety and quarantine regulations enforced as sanitary and phytosanitary measures (...).

Australia notifies its expenditures on agricultural programmes to the WTO Committee on Agriculture on a regular basis. The latest such notification, covering the period 1 July 2017 to 30 June 2018, was circulated in October 2019.[13] Nearly all the notified support concerns measures falling within the Green Box, in particular general services and environmental programmes (Chart 4.2). At times, natural disaster relief has also been an important component of Australia's Green Box support in the past, but such payments have been insignificant since the Exceptional Circumstances programmes ended in 2013.

[13] WTO documents G/AG/N/AUS/129; and G/AG/N/AUS/130, 9 October 2019.

Australia played an active role during the review period on the plurilateral Environmental Goods Agreement (EGA), including as Chair of those negotiations. The EGA’s aim was to eliminate WTO bound tariffs on an extensive list of environmental goods. Australia views the EGA as important in promoting the trade, uptake and production of goods and new technologies that help address environmental objectives, including climate change. The EGA has not been finalized and the last negotiations took place in November-December 2016.

Table 3.11 Exports subject to licensing or other restrictions, 2019
Item: Endangered animal and plant species
Justification: International commitment (CITES)
Measure: CITES-listed species generally require an export permit issued by the Department of the Environment and Energy. Further regulations or restrictions, administered by the Department for Agriculture, apply to exports of live animals and plants.

Australia’s FTAs have secured significant new market access and rules in evolving areas of trade like e-commerce, intellectual property, trade and environment, SOEs, and investment liberalization over the review period.

The main development in the area of sanitary and phytosanitary measures in Australia in the period under review was the entry into force of the Biosecurity Act, 2015, replacing the Quarantine Act, 1908, on 16 June 2016.[85] (...) The Act is flexible by design to respond to changes in technology, biosecurity challenges, and the need for more adaptability to increasing passenger traffic and trade. As at November 2019, 117 legal instruments related to biosecurity had been issued, in addition to the Act itself and the two basic regulations (the Biosecurity Regulations, 2016 and the Biosecurity (Human Health) Regulations, 2016). Most of these legal instruments were determinations of first point of entry, i.e. goods that may, or may not, enter a specific location in Australia.

[85] Australia notified its draft biosecurity legislation to the WTO in 2012. See WTO document G/SPS/N/AUS/298, 9 July 2012 and its addenda 1 to 3, supplemented by WTO document G/SPS/N/AUS/298/Add.4, 2 December 2014.

At the Commonwealth level, three separate institutions are entrusted with the formulation of policy and international negotiations, fisheries management and fisheries research, based on the Fisheries Management Act, 1991, the Fisheries Administration Act, 1991, and related regulations. The Department of Agriculture is responsible for the setting of regulatory policies for fishing in Commonwealth waters, operationalized by the Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA), a statutory authority governed by an independent Commission. Further, around 80% of fisheries are assessed under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, 1999, which promotes the ecologically sustainable management of fisheries and provides for the assessment of environmental performance.