Section 92 of the Constitution of Australia

Section 92 of the Constitution of Australia as far as is still relevant today is:

This provision has been the cornerstone of significant Australian constitutional jurisprudence, which has also been quite complex. As the High Court of Australia observed in Cole v Whitfield:

20. The creation of a limitation where none was expressed and where no words of limitation were acceptable was a task which, having regard to the diverse and changing nature of inter-State trade, commerce and intercourse, was likely to produce a variety of propositions. And so it has. Sir Robert Garran contemplated that a student of the first fifty years of case law on s.92 might understandably "close( ) his notebook, sell( )his law books, and resolve( ) to take up some easy study, like nuclear physics or higher mathematics." ... Some thirty years on, the student who is confronted with the heightened confusion arising from the additional case law ending with Miller v. TCN Channel Nine would be even more encouraged to despair of identifying the effect of the constitutional guarantee.

The full text of Section 92 is as follows:

But notwithstanding anything in this Constitution, goods imported before the imposition of uniform duties of customs into any State, or into any Colony which, whilst the goods remain therein, becomes a State, shall, on thence passing into another State within two years after the imposition of such duties, be liable to any duty chargeable on the importation of such goods into the Commonwealth, less any duty paid in respect of the goods on their importation.

Before the beginning of the first Constitutional Convention in Sydney in 1891, Sir Henry Parkes originally proposed the following resolution:

That the trade and intercourse between the Federated Colonies, whether by means of land carriage or coastal navigation, shall be free from the payment of Customs Duties, and from all restrictions whatsoever, except from such regulations as may be necessary for the conduct of business.

At the Convention itself, the wording of the resolution that was presented was altered to read:

That the trade and intercourse between the Federated Colonies, whether by means of land carriage or coastal navigation, shall be absolutely free.

As Parkes said at that Convention, in explaining the nature of his proposal:

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