Where "Bottom of the Harbour" Comes From
"Bottom-of-the-harbour" refers to a tax avoidance scheme that became one of Australia's largest white-collar scandals of the 20th century. The scheme worked by purchasing companies with accumulated tax liabilities, stripping them of all their assets, then deliberately losing control of the company — allowing it to "sink" with its obligations unfulfilled. The name came from the image of the stripped company sinking like a body dropped into water: disappearing without a trace, taking its tax obligations with it.
The scheme operated primarily through the 1970s and involved an estimated 6,688 companies and between $500 million and $1 billion in avoided revenue. It was named and criminalised by the federal government in 1980, following a series of investigations and royal commissions. The phrase entered Australian English as both a label for a specific historical event and a more general metaphor: to describe something as a "bottom-of-the-harbour scheme" implies deliberate concealment and the disappearance of something that was supposed to be accounted for.
"The businessman was caught up in a bottom of the harbour scheme from the '70s."
How Aussies Actually Use It
"Bottom of the harbour" is used, usually attributively, to describe this specific type of tax avoidance scheme or anything reminiscent of its shady, disappearing-act nature.
It remains a byword in Australian business and political history for large-scale, brazen tax avoidance from the 1970s.
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