The Minister for Trade and Customs:

Messrs Burns Philp and Company on 14 July 1902 wrote the following letter to the Comptroller-General of Customs:

Our Managing Director, Mr A.B. has just returned from a visit to our various Queensland branches, and while at Townsville he learned that you required a bond for a considerable amount to cover our bonded warehouses and wharves at that place.

He has also been informed bonds will be required for our various lighters in Cleveland Bay, as well as lorries carrying Custom House goods.

As he anticipates these new Commonwealth regulations will probably affect the whole of the branches, as well as the head office of the Co. in Sydney, and as we have some sixteen or eighteen branches throughout Queensland, Western Australia, and elsewhere, we would be glad to know whether you would accept a general bond to cover all that is required in the various places where our Co. carry on business.

We would also be glad to know whether our Managing Director, Mr A.B. or some of our other Directors would be allowed to give the necessary bonds for the Company.

The Minister for Trade and Customs on 23 August 1902 wrote the following minute on the file:

To arrange (subject to the opinion of the Attorney-General) for any consolidation of bonds desired but not affecting more than one State. The sufficiency of security to be a matter for the Comptroller-General or State Collector; the form to be approved by the Attorney-General or State Crown Solicitor.

The papers were forwarded to this Department for consideration of the Attorney-General on 16 October 1902.

The different matters mentioned in the letter of 14 July 1902 in respect of which security is to be given are: bonded warehouses; licensed lighters; licensed carriages.

Section 42 of the Customs Act 1901 enacts that 'The Customs shall have the right to require and take securities for compliance with this Act and generally for the protection of the revenue of the Customs . . .'

Section 44 enacts that 'When security is required for any particular purpose security may by the authority of the Comptroller be accepted to cover all transactions for such time and for such amount as the Comptroller may approve'.

Security may be given to comply with the Act generally but it would not obviate the necessity for a particular security in cases where a particular security is required by the Act or regulations. In these cases failure to give the particular security would in itself amount to a technical breach of the condition of the general security-a result not intended or desired by either the Customs or the subscribers to the general security.

Under section 44 a security framed to cover any number of matters of the same class may properly be accepted. And I see no objection to a consolidated security relating to different classes of matters, provided that the security contains all the conditions prescribed by the Act and regulations in respect of all the matters included.

[Vol. 2, p. 342]