During our recent Federal election campaign, very little of practical value was unfortunately debated or said about urgently correcting Australia’s current $1,000,000,000,000 (trillion) national debt now running at about $38,000 per head of every man, woman and child in the country.

In addition to this largely unsolved and growing financial problem, history has repeated itself from the 1930’s Great Depression days when the ruling Scullin Government went on another over-spending spree and tried unsuccessfully to control our central bank to resuscitate an ailing economy, fix ruling interest rates and thus encourage more votes for its Labor Party re-election.

As we all now know, the Albanese Government virtually did the same thing last year by heaving political pressure on our central bank, currently known as the Australian Reserve Bank.

Prime Minister Albanese’s virtual demand was for the Reserve Bank to cut the prevailing cash rate in an effort to once again appease inflation, put his government ahead of the Opposition and bring in more party supporters and voters.

From this, we can see that history in this regard so far this year has once again repeated itself some 90 years later.

When I recently studied the 2025 pre-election promises of all political parties, I was struck by the obvious need for a financial wizard who will once again balance interest rates and restrict all government overspending, mis-spending and outright losses.

My mind immediately came up with my knowledge of a highly prominent Melbourne industrialist and businessman, some of whose descendants are today living around the Clarence Valley.

The person in question was Robert Gibson who, in the 1930’s Great Depression years, was chairman of the Commonwealth Bank Board which then also acted as our reserve bank. He is well recorded in history for having literally controlled the Scullin Government financially and for warning all concerned that politicians should always leave the financial running of a country to top qualified financial and businesspeople and not to those of their ilk.

The success story of Robert Gibson started in September 1930 when, as Labor Prime Minister, Scullin had a meeting with him, the then chairman of the Commonwealth Bank Board. Scullin’s intention was to dismiss Gibson as he feared that Gibson would not agree to the Prime Minister’s spending habits and plans.

Scullin wanted Gibson, as head of Australia’s central bank, to be sympathetic to Labor’s monetary habits during what was the start of the Great Depression. If Gibson would not do this, the Prime Minister wanted him to immediately resign.

With his Scottish background in full working order, Gibson told the Prime Minister off, causing Scullin to eventually relent, allowing Gibson to continue in his capacity as head of the country’s combined central and commercial bank.

In doing so, Australia’s elected Scullin Government soon became secondary to Gibson who, in reality, monitored, changed and issued the orders on all the Scullin Government’s national financial dealings.

A study of the history of these times tells us that Scullin’s decision to continue working with Gibson fortunately allowed Australia to escape the full damage caused by the Depression which continued until the outbreak of war.

During the main Depression years, Gibson outshone the Government on all financial decisions and kept in rein the spending habits of the entire Scullin Cabinet and bureaucracy.

He was unofficially dubbed by the media as being Australia’s unelected Prime Minister and was celebrated as the genius behind Australia’s recovery from the full vigours of the Depression and having improved the former weak standing of the nation’s vital Treasury Department.

At one stage, Gibson had to seriously intervene when Scullin tried to quietly make more short-term borrowings from foreign funds overseas. On this occasion, Gibson informed the Prime Minister in no mean terms that Australia would go bankrupt as the interest to be paid on the loans could never be sustained.

At another heated meeting between the two men, Gibson vowed to completely veto any further funding of Treasury bills until such time as the Government could commit to balancing the country’s official annual budget.

In spite of his differences with Scullin, Gibson was awarded a knighthood in 1932 for his stewardship of Australia’s fast-depleting finances and for steering the Scullin Government out of further stormy financial waters.

We can now only hope that Australia’s newly elected government of 2025 may take a leaf out of Sir Robert Gibson’s personal financial manual of all those years ago and immediately set its sights on reducing our record — and growing — $1,000,000,000,000 debt.

With all the billions of dollars of election promises made by our political parties in recent months, one wonders just where the money for these promises is going to be found. The only answer can be either higher taxes or from drastic cuts to existing taxpayer funded services.

This article appeared in the Clarence Valley Independent, 7 May 2025.