In the round resplendence of their portly verbiage, verbatim copies of the new Australian Customs Proclamation were read in Manhattan last week, with relish for their quaintness, with dismay for their portent.
PROCLAMATION
Commonwealth of Australia to wit.Stonehaven Governor General
By His Excellency the Governor-General of the Commonwealth ofAustralia.
Whereas by the Customs Act 1901-1930 it is enacted that all goods the importation of which may be prohibited by Proclamation are prohibited imports:
And whereas it is desirable to prohibit the importation of the goods enumerated hereunder, unless the consent in writing of the Minister of State for Trade and Customs has first been obtained:
Now therefore I, John Lawrence, Baron Stonehaven, the Governor-General aforesaid, acting with the advice of the Federal Executive Council, do hereby prohibit the importation into the Commonwealth of Australia of the following goods unless the consent in writing of the Minister of State for Trade and Customs has first been obtained:
Glucose
Biscuits
Laundry Blue
Cheese
Candles
Confectionery
Eggs in shell or otherwise
Lemons
Oranges
Dried Fruits excepting dates and figs
Fruits preserved in liquid
Vegetables, salted or preserved in liquid or partly preserved or pulped
Cornflour
Jams and Jellies
Jelly Crystals and Powders
Lard and Edible Fats
Meats, preserved in tins or other airtight containers
Pork, preserved by cold process
Milk, dried or in powdered form
Milk, malted
Cocoanut, prepared
Peanut Butter
Onions
Pickles, Sauces and Chutney
Seed, Canary
Soap and Soap Substitutes
Starch
Starch Flour
Custard Powders
Furs and other skins partly or wholly made into apparel or other articles
Blankets (excepting Printer’s Blankets) and Blanketing
Rugs except floor rugs
Curtains and Textile Blinds
Tents and Sails
Barbed Wire
Cultivators, except Handworked Cultivators
Harrows
Stump Jump Ploughs
Drills (Fertilizer, Seed and Grain)
Reaper Threshers and Harvesters (including Stripper Harvesters)
Horsedrawn Hay Rakes
Chaffcutters and Horse Gears
Agricultural Scarifiers
Petrol Pumps including parts thereof
Electric Heating and Cooking Appliances
Wireless Receiving Sets partly or wholly assembled
Wireless Headphones
Batteries, including Dry Cells and Accumulators
Bolts, Nuts, Rivets, Engineers’ Set Screws
Rail Dogs and Spikes
Wire and other Nails
Electric Smoothing Irons
Plated Ware other than Spoons, Forks and Cutlery
Aluminium Ware other than Spoons and Forks
Baths and Sinks
Tiles
Opal Sheet Glass
Sanitary and Lavatory Articles of earthenware and glazed or enamelled Fireclay
Glue
Cements and prepared Adhesives
Gelatine of all kinds
Vinegar and Acetic Acid
Cast-iron Pipes and Cast-iron Fittings for Pipes
Shafting (other than flexible)
Iron and Steel Beams, Channels, Girders. Joists, Columns, Trough and Bridge Iron and Steel
Portland Cement
Ale and other Beer, Porter, Cider and Perry,— Spirituous
Potable Spirits
Perfumed Spirits and Bay Rum
Wines including unfermented grape wine
Vermouth
Manufactured Tobacco
Cigarettes
Cigars
Snuff
Matches and Vestas including book matches
Locomotives
This Proclamation may be cited as Customs Proclamation No. 186
Given under my Hand and the Seal of the Commonwealth, at Canberra, this fourth day of April, One thousand nine hundred and thirty, and in the twentieth year of His Majesty’s reign.
By His Excellency’s Command,
F. M. FORDE
for Minister of State for Trade and Customs.
God save the King!
In Canberra last week Australian canaries were beginning to feel the pinch of singing on Australian seed instead of the imported sort to which they have been used. The embargo on chutney, peanut butter, cigarets and wine means that “Major Grey’s Chutney,” “BeechNut Peanut Butter,” “Abdullah Cigarets” and “Mumm’s Cordon Rouge” are totally excluded from Australia. It is not a question of scaling a tariff wall. This is an absolute embargo: “Peanut butter shall not pass!” The exclusion is as rigid against products of Mother England as against those of the U. S. or China.
It was Laborite Prime Minister James Henry Scullin who put through this amazing Act (TIME, April 14). With as deeply rutted a single-track mind as Lenin’s or Mussolini’s he has highly resolved that Australia shall reverse her unfavorable trade balance, cut down her spending and resultant borrowing abroad, and rescue the Australian worker from unemployment by forcing the creation of new home industries. Australians shall raise birdseed, crush peanuts into butter, perfect their imitations of Champagne, build snorting locomotives, and jump homemade Stump Jump Plows.
Nor is this embargo all. Last week the Prime Minister, who is also Commonwealth Treasurer (he has been called “The Snowden of Canberra”), made his budget speech. He began by announcing that the Commonwealth Treasury has a deficit of £14,000,000 ($68,000,000). Then, leaning from the rostrum tense and resolute he said, displaying a sheaf of papers: “I have in my hand a new table of tariffs, the most sensational in the history of the Commonwealth.”
Nor was this all. In addition the Prime Minister proposed, with every prospect that they will be carried, a schedule of internal taxes under which the Treasury would receive 2½% of the sales price of everything bought in Australia other than certain selected commodities. Conservative opponents of Laborite Scullin figured out hastily and announced with vociferous shouts: “Such tariffs and taxes will increase the cost of living £i a head [$4.86] a week! Shame!”
Quietly but inflexibly Mr. Scullin retorted that his Government must have this money. He estimated that to make ends meet temporarily the Commonwealth will have to borrow another $150,000,000 in London. After that he hopes that Australia, by rigid economies and much hard work (Australians have the reputation among other white peoples of the British Empire of being “easy going,” virtually loafers), will be able to pay her way. In general the Commonwealth Treasury’s present deficit is due to much “advanced” legislation doggedly passed by the Laborites to pay unemployment doles and confer other benefits upon the proletariat.
Naturally the Scullin embargo is a Death blow, so far as Australia is concerned, to the British scheme of “Empire Free Trade” just endorsed by foremost London bankers (TIME, July 14). Under “Empire Free Trade” there would be no barriers to trade among nations of the British Commonwealth. That could go on as smoothly as does trade between the 48 U. S. states. But around the Empire would rise a tariff wall.
Pear cider.
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