Bath v Alston Holdings Pty Ltd
judgement of the High Court of Australia
Bath v Alston Holdings Pty Ltd, is a High Court of Australia case that discusses the application of the freedom of interstate trade, as specified in Section 92 of the Constitution of Australia. This case followed the unanimous decision of Cole v Whitfield, regarding the interpretation of section 92 as about free trade as opposed to individual rights.
Background
The Business Franchise (Tobacco) Act 1974 (Vic) imposed a licensing scheme for the sale of tobacco. For retailers, the fee was composed of a flat fee and an amount equal to 25% of the value of the tobacco sold in the previous twelve months. The Act also made for the provision of wholesalers, and tobacco bought by retailers from Victorian wholesalers would not be taken into account for the assessment of the retailer fee. This was ostensibly to avoid double-taxing the tobacco sold.
The defendant, Alston Holdings Pty Ltd, was a tobacco retailer in Victoria, who imported tobacco from Queensland for sale in Victoria, but did so without a licence. The defendant sought to challenge the Act on section 92 grounds.
Decision
The unanimous decision in Cole v Whitfield, soothed the confused waters with regards to section 92 of the Constitution. However, this decision, which came only weeks later, brought with it a split bench, but as suggested in Castlemaine Tooheys Ltd v South Australia, "The difference ...
“Bath v Alston Holdings Pty Ltd” enters the record as judgement of the High Court of Australia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Bath, Alston and Holdings can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4868977. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1974.
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