You are at the mercy of the customs person processing the package. If they're in a good mood they'll just pass it through.

If not, you have to get a customs clearance and pay duty and GST.

If it's below $1000 then you can do the paperwork yourself. It's easy enough and the customs people are helpful. You have to classify the item against a schedule of different categories and depending on the category you pay an import duty of around 5%, and 10% GST. You should be able to find the form with a bit of googling.

If it's above $1000 then you need to get an agent to do it. If the package is coming through DHL then they will do the clearance for you at a charge of about $30, plus the tax and duty.

A friend of mine went through the rigmarole recently importing a mountain bike from an online shop in the UK (who wouldn't undervalue the bike for customs purposes). He actually had to register as an importer to release the bike, and of course he paid GST.

It was a major hassle. In the end he did get it cheaper than Oz, but it took about 3 weeks of toing and froing with paperwork.

thanks for the info guys.

It really seems there is no easy away around it. Does it only occur on new goods?

I was just thinking that if you bought something off ebay, 2nd hand, that was worth more than 1k, why should you have to pay GST and customs.

If you go on the customs site there's a section on buying stuff off the internet that spells out how you pay for duty and GST and how it's calculated. Something like - Duty on cost of item and cost of shipping and then GST on cost of item, shipping, and the Duty oh and they charge something like 0.9% if you want to pay them with a credit card.

Customs also use their "exchange rate" which can be found on the Customs website and they tend to do 2cents lower/worse than the "daily rate" you look at on-line.

The only way around it is if you know someone in the country it is coming from. You can get it sent to them and they post it as a gift for you. Has worked for me for wetties from the US but can also come unstuck if you do it too often.