I also applied 2 days ago (Friday night) and with in few hours by Saturday early morning got an email from Homeaffairs (australia) to submit a background check application on their portal with a new option added for GEP with 0$ (free) - most likely will be charged during phase 2.

However it fails as it still passes this 0$ fee to the treasure site and treasure site fails with "Invoice content contains error" !). So unable to submit the application for the background check !.