AUSTRALIA: Absolute Embargo

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.