Atlee Hunt

Atlee Arthur Hunt CMG (7 November 1864 – 19 September 1935) was a senior official in the Australian Public Service.

An early fruit was his role as assistant counsel in the Proudfoot case, arbitrated by Edmund Barton, in which Hunt obtained a remarkable 2 815 pounds in fees, three times the annual salary of the most senior minister in the New South Wales government.

[7] During Barton's Prime Ministership Hunt assumed the testing task of implementing the often draconian provisions of the Immigration Restriction Act, the legal vehicle of the White Australia Policy.

In 1903, when SS Petriana grounded on rocks at Portsea Back Beach, he, against all traditions of seafaring, warned its Chinese seamen that if they abandoned their wrecked craft and landed on Australian soil, they risked a 100 pound fine.

[9] Closely associated with Barton, and later Deakin, Hunt's star dipped as Labor's rose, but he was nevertheless assigned to prepare the Norfolk Island Act 1913, which removed from her inhabitants their last portions of self-rule.