The Minister for Trade and Customs:

The Adelaide Steamship Company Limited desire to be allowed to store temporarily in a hulk at Townsville sugar brought there under bond by small coasting vessels for trans-shipment and suggest that the hulk is in exactly the same position as a lighter, and offer to take out a lighter's licence for the hulk to get over any difficulty.

The Minister for Trade and Customs forwards the papers to me with the following minute:

Does Mr Deakin consider that what is suggested is within the purpose of the Acts and that the Customs except in a licensed warehouse should assume charge of the goods in transit under bond?

The Excise Act 1901 by section 55 provides that partly manufactured excisable goods may by authority and subject to the prescribed conditions be transferred from one factory to another for the purpose of completing the manufacture.

It also provides by section 58 that entries may be made by the manufacturer and passed by an officer and may authorise the removal of excisable goods for-

1. Home consumption.
2. Removal to a licensed Customs warehouse.
3. Exportation.

It also provides by section 60 that the manufacturer shall give security for the due removal or exportation of the excisable goods before any entry is passed for the removal of the excisable goods to a licensed Customs warehouse or for exportation.

Regulation 30 of the Sugar Regulations allows raw sugar juice and syrup in a factory to be removed to a refinery to be manufactured into refined sugar if entered for removal as in the case of goods warehoused under the Customs Act 1901.

The Act and the Regulations therefore contemplate transit under bond and they must also be taken to contemplate everything reasonably necessary to enable the transfer of the goods to be effected.

In the course of transfer goods must in some cases be transferred from one vessel or carriage to another, and pending the transfer must be temporarily stored. For instance goods in transit may have to be carried by ship, railway, carriage, internal navigation and camel train before arriving at their destination and may have to be temporarily stored pending each change from one class of conveyance to another.

The consignor has to give security for the due removal of the goods from place of consignment to place of destination and he and his sureties are responsible for the safety of the goods during transit and so long as they can reasonably be considered to be in course of transit there is no reason why they should be interfered with.

I am of opinion:

1. That there is no legal objection to the sugar being temporarily stored in the hulk pending trans-shipment.
2. That it is not within the purpose of the Acts and Regulations to license a hulk as a lighter.
3. That the Customs should not assume charge of excisable goods in transit except to seize as forfeited any excisable goods which are moved altered or interfered with except by authority and in accordance with the Act.

[Vol. 2, p. 363]