Australia Just Made It Easier to Penalise Counterfeit Imports. Here's What CEP Operators Need to Know.

The Australian Border Force has been seizing counterfeit goods at the border in growing volumes for years, driven largely by the explosion in low-value parcel flows from Asian e-commerce platforms. For most CEP operators - couriers, express carriers, and the customs brokers handling their inbound clearances - counterfeit goods have historically felt like someone else's problem. ABF enforcement was targeted at commercial importers, and the legal bar for action required proving "commercial quantities."

That is changing. The Customs Legislation Amendment (False Trade Marks Infringement Notices) Bill 2026 was introduced and debated in the House of Representatives on 25 March 2026. The Coalition did not oppose it, but referred it to a Senate inquiry for further scrutiny - specifically citing concerns about the strict liability approach and limited stakeholder consultation since 2020. The bill is expected to pass. When it does, the ABF will be able to issue infringement notices for any quantity of goods bearing a false trademark, including the individual low-value parcels moving through your operation every day. For high-volume operators, that is a material shift worth understanding now.

What the Law Actually Changes

Under the current framework, the ABF can seize goods suspected of infringing intellectual property rights, but pursuing a penalty meant civil litigation - a slow, costly process mostly suited to large-scale commercial seizures. The commercial quantity threshold (previously set at 25 or more items) meant individual parcels rarely triggered serious consequences.

The new bill does two things that matter operationally.

First, it removes the commercial quantity threshold entirely. The reasoning is straightforward: modern storage devices can hold thousands of counterfeit digital goods, and physical counterfeit items now arrive in quantities of one or two, hidden across thousands of legitimate parcels. The old threshold was built for a different era of trade.

Second, it introduces a strict liability offence. That means the ABF does not need to prove intent - only that the goods were imported with a false trademark. ABF officers retain discretion in applying infringement notices (first-time offences and genuine mistakes of fact will be considered), but the legal framework has shifted from prosecution to penalty notice. The practical effect: it becomes significantly easier and faster for ABF to pursue action against importers of counterfeit goods - without needing to go near a court.

Where CEP Operators Sit in This

The risk is not that you are knowingly importing fake Nikes or counterfeit luxury goods on behalf of criminal networks. The risk is the ordinary, daily exposure that comes with processing millions of low-value B2C parcels from Asian marketplaces.

Asian e-commerce marketplaces account for a significant and growing share of inbound CEP volumes into Australia. The counterfeit risk in these flows is not straightforward. The major, well-known platforms are generally not the source of the problem - established brands selling through these channels typically hold legitimate trade mark licences and operate within authorised distribution arrangements. The risk sits elsewhere: with smaller, often anonymous sellers who manufacture goods under licence for a brand and sell surplus or unauthorised units on the side, or who apply brand markings to products without any authorisation at all. These sellers are not identifiable at the platform level. They are only identifiable - if at all - at the level of the individual product description in the declaration.

Understanding where liability actually sits matters here, and it is not straightforward. The strict liability offence attaches to the importer - in a typical B2C parcel flow that is the end consumer. But depending on the nature of the clearance arrangement, there are circumstances where a broker or operator processing declarations could be considered the responsible party for the importation - and therefore directly exposed. This is a question Australian law has not clearly resolved, and it is exactly the kind of issue the Senate inquiry into this bill should be examining. Where a broker or operator knowingly continues to lodge declarations for goods they have reason to believe are counterfeit, however, the agent defence disappears entirely - with potential exposure under existing fraud and aiding-and-abetting provisions in the Customs Act 1901 well beyond this bill.

The more common and operationally relevant risk sits in the quality of declaration data itself. Even where direct liability does not attach to the operator, a CEP business that routinely lodges declarations with generic, brand-free descriptions - "women's top," "accessories," "electronics" - is actively reducing ABF's visibility of potential infringement flowing through its lanes. If ABF investigates and finds a pattern of vague descriptions across a high volume of flagged shipments, the operator's ability to claim "genuine mistake of fact" - the specific defence the bill provides - becomes harder to establish. The compliance posture of your operation, and your ability to demonstrate that you acted on the information provided by the shipper, becomes material.

What this means operationally: the accuracy and completeness of product description data flowing through your declarations now carries IP compliance exposure, not just duty classification risk. A false trademark is invisible when the declaration says "women's top" or "accessories." It only becomes visible when the product description is specific enough to flag the brand and product type. Vague, shipper-provided free-text fields are not just a tariff problem any more.

What Good Looks Like From Here

No system will perfectly filter counterfeit goods from legitimate imports at CEP volumes. That is the ABF's job. What you can control is whether your declarations give ABF the best possible visibility - and whether your operation has a defensible compliance posture if a shipment is flagged.

A few practical areas to look at now.

Declaration data quality. Generic product descriptions create IP compliance exposure alongside the duty misclassification risk you are already managing. Operators who systematically capture accurate product names, brand information, and HS codes are in a materially better position than those relying on whatever the shipper put in the free-text field.

Compliance records. Under the bill, ABF officers are expected to consider first-time offences and whether there is evidence of a genuine mistake of fact. Operators who can demonstrate a history of clean, consistent declaration data - and show they acted on information provided by the shipper - will be better placed than those who cannot.

Data flow from shipper to declaration. If customs data is flowing through a manual process or a system with limited validation, you have less visibility and less control than you need. The integration between shipper-provided data and declaration submission is the key risk point, and it is where errors compound at volume.

A Note on What Gondola Does

This is the territory Gondola works in. For CEP operators and customs brokers managing high declaration volumes, the quality of the data flowing into each declaration is not a back-office detail - it is the compliance foundation everything else sits on. We built Gondola to give operators visibility and control over that data at scale, because the consequences of getting it wrong keep increasing.

Finally

The False Trade Marks Bill is the latest signal in a broader tightening of compliance expectations for high-volume logistics. ABF enforcement will not ramp up overnight - but the legal tools are being put in place. Operators who use the next few months to improve their declaration data quality and strengthen their compliance posture will be in a different position when ABF begins leaning on this legislation. The window to get ahead of it is open. It will not stay that way.