R v Barger
| R v Barger | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Court | High Court of Australia |
| Full case name | The King and the Minister of State for the Commonwealth Administering the Customs v Barger The Commonwealth and A. W. Smart, Collector of Customs v McKay |
| Decided | 26 June 1908 |
| Citation(s) | [1908] HCA 43, (1908) 6 CLR 41 |
| Case history | |
| Related action(s) | Ex Parte H.V. McKay (Harvester case) (1907) 2 CAR 1 |
| Case opinions | |
|
(3:2) the Excise Tariff Act 1906 was invalid as: (1) it was not in substance a tax; (2) even if it was a tax, the Act dealt with matters other than taxation; & (3) it interfered with matters reserved exclusively to the States. per Griffith CJ, Barton and O'Connor JJ |
|
| Court membership | |
| Judges sitting | Griffith CJ, Barton, O'Connor, Isaacs & Higgins JJ |
R v Barger is a High Court of Australia case where the majority held that the taxation power did not permit the Australian Parliament to use an excise tariff as a means of protecting manufacturers who paid "fair and reasonable" wages to their employees.
The first decade after the Federation of Australia saw a series of minority governments until the 1910 election. The Protectionist Party formed the first government with the support of the Australian Labor Party, on the understanding that the Protectionists would implement a number of social reforms desired by Labor. In 1906 the second Deakin government was in power, with support from Labor. Prime Minister Deakin's ‘New Protection’ provided tariff protection to employers in exchange for ‘fair and reasonable’ wages for employees.
Isaac Isaacs was the Attorney-General in Deakin's government. The secretary of the Attorney-General's Department, Sir Robert Garran, later recalled that Isaacs "had a remarkably keen brain but it was apt to be sometimes too subtle for my liking. When we were drafting a bill whose constitutionality was not beyond doubt, his devices to conceal any possible want of power were sometimes so ingenious as to raise, rather than evade, suspicion".
H. B. Higgins was a member of the Protectionist Party, but was in broad agreement with the Labor party social reforms. When the Labor Party sought to amend the Conciliation and Arbitration Bill to cover State railway employees, Higgins was one of the radicals who supported the amendments and helped bring down Deakin's government. When Labour formed a minority government in 1904, Higgins became Attorney-General in the Labor ministry, because Labor had no suitably qualified lawyer in Parliament.
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