Customs duties on imports were traditionally the most important source of government revenue. In the first year of the Australian Federation, customs duties raised 86.2% of Commonwealth tax yield. By 2020, however, that proportion had dropped to 4.4%. As new colonies hived off from New South Wales (Western Australia was settled separately), each established their own systems of government, including competing customs services. Such was the colonial rivalry over customs duties that customs posts were established far upstream on the Murray River, and the police forces of New South Wales and Victoria came close to armed conflict.
Customs houses were often magnificent buildings, as can be seen not just in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney but in numerous ports around the country. Most of these buildings have been repurposed as cultural centres or hospitality venues but in their heyday were powerful symbols. These buildings did not simply act as colonial counting houses, they were emblematic places where control over immigration, hygiene, and morality was exercised.
The architecture of colonial-era customs houses in Australia, as well as usually following the principles of neoclassical architecture, is distinctly symbolic. Neoclassical design, which incorporates proportionality, symmetry, and balance, is commonly employed to communicate freedom and democracy, but also state power. The ideas that Australian customs houses conveyed include Crown authority over territories previously occupied and tended by indigenous peoples, and aspirations for the formation of ‘new Britains’ in the South.
Crown authority
The proliferation of customs houses symbolised the spread of Crown authority across the continent, but arguably, the extant Sydney Customs House (construction started 1844), the site of the first assertion of customs-levying power is the most symbol-laden customs building. It is an imposing edifice off Circular Quay, allegedly built on the spot where the Union flag was raised by the First Fleet in 1788. The creation of the dock at Circular Quay was not done for taxing purposes but cross-border trade and customs duties are closely linked. ‘Gadi’, the indigenous name for the area, was erased, and traditional gathering of cockles and oysters by the Gadigal people was prevented by the building of the dock on the foreshore.
Imagining and creating a national community require both inclusion and exclusion. Customs houses embodied, on the one hand, dispossession of indigenous peoples and, on the other hand, control of immigration. Indigenous trade and tax-like traditions, notably the centuries-old trading relationships between the Macassars of modern-day Indonesia and people on the northern coast, who controlled Macassar sailors’ entry onto their territory to harvest sea cucumbers, were extinguished. So-called poll taxes, which penalised Chinese efforts to settle or sojourn, were administered by customs officers based in some of the grandest public buildings in the colonies. Exemplified by its enforcement of the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 (Cth), the customs service was central to the implementation of the nascent ‘White Australia’ policy (1901-1958).
Federation and customs compromise
A distinct Australian national identity only emerged during World War I. Before then, people tended to fail to imagine themselves as members of an Australian nation. In the 1870s, separate colonial flags were adopted and flown on public buildings. Flags are remarkably potent symbols of nationhood but, before 1901, there was no Australian national flag. Other absent national symbols included a coat of arms. Instead, the British royal coat of arms was invariably incorporated into the facades of customs houses. This emblem signified Crown authority and conveyed a message to foreign traders about a colony’s power to levy duties.
John Stuart Mill, the most influential economist of the mid-nineteenth century, was a leading proponent of free trade but made an exception for infant industries in new countries to allow them space to become established before facing full competition. From the time of foundation, Victoria adopted this exception enthusiastically. At the beginning of the 1860s, Victoria had half as many factory workers as New South Wales, and so was dependent on imports. An 1865 tariff reduced duties on staple foods but imposed an ad valorem import duty on other imports, which was increased in 1867. By 1871, the number of factory workers in Victoria had increased by roughly 300%, whereas the number of New South Wales factory workers had increased by only 10%. Whether or not these differences are attributable to Victoria’s protectionist tariff, some connection seems likely. The wealth of the gold rushes also contributed to policies of separate colonial development.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the complexity of different colonial tariffs was recognised as a reason for federation. Also, manufacturers believed that a single Australian market would be to their benefit and would counter overseas competition. Unification required a federal government to return 75% of customs revenue to the constituent states for the first 10 years after Federation. Western Australia would only join if it was fully reimbursement for five years. The colony had only become self-governing in 1890, was remote geographically and culturally from the eastern colonies, and close to half of its revenue came from inter-colonial customs duties.
Conclusion
Customs houses perhaps more than any other buildings symbolised the formation and development of Australia from a single, fiscally precarious settlement to a cluster of thriving and competitive colonies, to a federal dominion.
The colonies needed funding, principally, from customs duties, and the transplantation of Britishness required exclusion of indigenous peoples and non-British immigrants. Magnificent customs buildings announced the colonies’ and, later, the Commonwealth’s unique power to control and tax entrance of people and things into Australia. The buildings’ typical neoclassical style referred to an ancient authority to tax, social order, and military force. Large customs houses have typically been repurposed and it is most unlikely that a contemporary government would celebrate its power to levy customs duties through the construction of splendid portside buildings. However, the change of the name of the Customs Service to the Australian Border Force hints at the potential for legitimate violence that informs the Crown’s assertion of the power to levy customs duties, and to enforce who and what crosses the country’s borders.
This blog is a summary of the author’s article published in the eJournal of Tax Research, “Symbols of fractured nationalism: custom houses in colonial Australia“.
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