| 1804 | Deputy Commissary Leonard Fosbrook, the settlement’s finance and procurement officer, arrived at Sullivan’s Cove at 4.00 pm on board the Ocean, five weeks after leaving Port Phillip.
It was only three days since a committee of senior officers and settlers had met to prepare for Lieutenant-Governor Collins a list of the recommended prices that convicts could charge for specified types of work done outside their set hours of Government labour.
La Trobe Collection State Library of Victoria
For security reasons, the settlement’s finance and procurement officer, Leonard Fosbrook, was instructed to erect his marquee on Hunter Island, near the store tents, following his arrival at Sullivan’s Cove on 25 June 1804. |
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| 1810 | Leonard Fosbrook had held the position of Treasurer of the newly established local fund (then called the Police Fund of Van Diemen’s Land) for ten days. |
| 1818 | Lieutenant-Governor William Sorell had recently been advised that, because the British Parliament had never ratified the imposition of taxes and duties in the Australian colonies, the collection of revenue in Van Diemen’s Land was illegal. |
| 1827 | The Colonial Treasurer’s office was dealing with the consequences of a robbery carried out on 18 June in which 1 250 pounds had been taken from the Treasurer’s Chest. The Colonial Treasurer, whose annual salary was ₤800, was legally liable for the loss if negligence could be proved. |
| 1828 | In London, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Sir George Murray, reluctantly endorsed Lt-Governor George Arthur’s decision (of November 1827) to rent a large warehouse in Hunter Street at £500 a year to provide additional space for the Government stores. Murray considered the rent to be exorbitant. |
| 1829 | Lt-Gov Arthur presented the Legislative Council with abstracts of the Colonial Revenue and its appropriation for the years 1826, 1827 and 1828, with a supplementary abstract for 1825. These abstracts had been prepared by the Auditor. The Council was ‘of the opinion that the statements were sufficient to lay before the public, and that the arrangement afforded a clear exposition of the Revenue and Expenditure’. |
| 1836 | An investigation had revealed that local distillers were avoiding excise duty and, instead of using locally grown grain, as required, were importing large quantities of sugar. The Council increased the duty to four shillings a gallon but the distillers created such a fuss that by 25 June it had been reduced to two shillings a gallon. |
| 1841 | The Hobart Town Gazette reported that Lieutenant-Governor John Franklin had proclaimed an end to ‘that period when the Public Means were not more than adequate to the ordinary expenditure’. This claim was made a few months before the colony plunged into a major three-year economic depression during which the Government almost went bankrupt. |
| 1849 | The Treasurer, Peter Fraser, back from 20 months’ recreational leave in England, had just taken over from Dr Adam Turnbull who had been Acting Colonial Treasurer and Collector of Revenue since November 1847. |
| 1866 | The Colonial Treasurer, Charles Meredith, was preparing a case for introducing income tax in Tasmania. With revenue consistently falling short of expenditure, the Government believed that new taxes were needed as it could not continue to increase customs duties, then the main source of government revenue. |
| 1881 | The Assistant Colonial Treasurer, William Windsor, was organizing a reply to a letter from a London Bank notifying the Treasurer that a £300,000 loan had been raised on the London Stock Exchange. |
| 1897 | It was three weeks since Treasury officials had supervised the first Tattersall’s sweep held in Tasmania under Government licence. The sweep was on a race run at Randwick in Sydney. |
| 1902 | Arrangements were in place for Treasury to operate from 1 July as a Commonwealth sub-Treasury with responsibility for paying all Commonwealth employees in Tasmania |
| 1917 | The Government was in the midst of persuading Parliament to approve two new revenue sources: a motor tax, with proceeds dedicated to road maintenance; and a tax on share transfers. |
| 1934 | Edmund Dwyer-Gray, a member of the ‘secessionist fringe’ of the Labor Party, had just become Treasurer in Albert Ogilvie’s Ministry and was planning major changes to the Treasurer’s Department. |
| 1935 | Premier Albert Ogilvie had only recently declared that the test of good government was not the ‘condition of Treasury finances but the happiness and prosperity of the people’. |
| 1942 | Treasury’s offices at 21 Murray Street were considered to be ‘cramped, dim, poorly ventilated, cold and noisy’. There were no toilets suitable for women, so the eight female employees used the Taxation Department’s toilets at 34 Davey Street. |
| 1952 | Kenneth Johnston Binns had held the positions of Under-Treasurer and Commissioner for Taxes for 12 days |
| 1993 | The Institute of Public Affairs was about to assess the Tasmanian Government as having developed, for 1993-94, the ‘most responsible Budget of all governments in Australia’. |
| 2004 | Treasury commemorated 200 years of Treasury in Tasmania and launched From Commissariat to Treasury. |
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