90 Roberts Rd, Subiaco WA 6008, Australia
Perth Modern School
35 Stirling Hwy, Crawley WA 6009, Australia
University Of Western Australia
Houghton St, London WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom
London School of Economics
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Reserve Bank
Reserve Bank
Canberra ACT 0200, Australia
Australian National University
1948
Coombs at the Lapstone Conference
90 Roberts Rd, Subiaco WA 6008, Australia
Perth Modern School
35 Stirling Hwy, Crawley WA 6009, Australia
University Of Western Australia
Houghton St, London WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom
London School of Economics
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Reserve Bank
Reserve Bank
Canberra ACT 0200, Australia
Australian National University
(After more than two hundred years, one of the most import...)
After more than two hundred years, one of the most important moral issues facing Australian society in the 1990s remains the need for reconciliation with its indigenous people. In this selection of essays, H. C. Coombs reflects on the nature of Aboriginal identity and the importance of autonomy for Australiaas Aboriginal people. He also suggests strategies by which self-determination might be achieved in practice. Many of the chapters have been written especially for this volume - including one in which Dr Coombs makes a thoughtful and provocative contribution to the Mabo debate, linking the High Courtas historic 1992 decision on native title to prospects for Aboriginal autonomy. Dr Coombs writes with the conviction that mainstreama Australia stands to gain as much, if not more, than Aboriginal people from the fulfilment of Aboriginal aspirations. It is a personal and passionate plea for a just society, from one of white Australia's most influential and eloquent advocates of self-determination for its indigenous people.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521446376/?tag=2022091-20
(In recent years the distinguished Australian economist, D...)
In recent years the distinguished Australian economist, Dr. H.C. "Nugget" Coombs has worked, spoken and written on the related areas of resource use, resource allocation and the environment. His papers and essays are brought together here to form a lively challenge to many current assumptions of policy makers. A new chapter, written especially for this volume, looks forward to the challenge in policies and needs in the 1990s. In particular the essays draw attention to the changing role of governments, under pressure to conserve resources but also to exploit and develop them to satisfy consumption. Dr. Coombs argues a case for the economic system to serve social responsibilities more justly
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521368960/?tag=2022091-20
Herbert Cole Coombs was born on February 24, 1906, in Kalamunda, Western Australia, the oldest surviving child of a family of six. Herbert's father was a country railway stationmaster and his mother was well-read. He was known as "Nugget" all his life, after the gold mined in his native Western Australia, because of his small size but great and universal worth.
After being educated in a small town, Herbert won scholarships to Perth Modern School and the University of Western Australia (UWA) and then to the London School of Economics as a research student. London, in the grip of the depression years, had a life-long effect on him. He observed the effects on people of the squalor and social injustice caused by economic conditions.
He graduated from UWA as a Bachelor of Arts with first-class honours in economics and won a Hackett Studentship for overseas study. He also earned master's degree from UWA.
His study of banking in British dominion countries examined how the central banks were dealing with the problems of the depression and brought into sharp relief the relationship between government inaction and society's ills.
After Coombs completed his doctorate in 1933 at London School of Economics, he became a disciple of John Maynard Keynes.
During his studies, Coombs held several teaching positions. After Coombs returned to Australia in 1934 he was appointed as an economist first in the Commonwealth (government controlled) Bank, and then in the treasury in Canberra to work on financial and economic policy. Here, in the intimate political and bureaucratic circles of the national capital, Coombs's star shone brightly. He began to strike up personal relationships, nearly all of warmth and respect, with those who would be active in Australian government over the next two and more generations. He was especially close to both J. J. Curtin and J. B. Chifley, successive Labor prime ministers. He became Director General of the Department of Postwar Reconstruction and had a chance, together with leading politicians, to develop a strategy for the whole of Australian society.
Coombs's commitment to a program of reform and social betterment initiated through positive government action showed in the 1945 White Paper on full employment, an influential policy paper of originality and of international note, and in the beginnings of Commonwealth participation in education, out of which grew university scholarships and a national university.
He was active also on the international economic scene. In 1943 he participated in the first Australian bilateral discussions with the American Treasury about the international financial organizations which later became the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
But Coombs was not a "dismal" economist. In the midst of traditional Australian insularity, Coombs was remarkably internationalist in outlook, and his interests ranged widely beyond his official duties. Two significant strands of his thinking – social intervention of governments and development of the young – thus came together in the plan to establish a special kind of university which would make Canberra not only Australia's political but also its intellectual capital. Australians at that time were ignorant about the countries of Asia and those bordering the Pacific and had no organization whose aim was to study Australia's relations with these countries. The Research School of Pacific Studies was intended to fill this gap. And, as it was recognized that governments would require economic and social knowledge to enable policies planned for the postwar period to be made effective, the Research School of Social Science was created. In much the same way the idea for the Research School of Physical Sciences arose because of the importance attached to the field of physical science, especially with the development of atomic power.
When Coombs returned to the Commonwealth Bank as governor in 1949, at the age of 42, the work of implementing post-war reconstruction was well under way. Coombs knew how important it was that significant social institutions be under the leadership of those who understood the needs of the time. Yet the next 20 years or so brought him no smooth transitions. The Labor government which he had so outstandingly served fell at the elections in 1949 and was replaced by a government under Sir Robert Gordon Menzies which was suspicious of the "socialist planner" Coombs. The new government did eventually come to see his worth, however. He was re-appointed governor in 1956 and again in 1960 (to what then became the Reserve Bank).
Coombs used his position as bank governor to make efforts in artistic and Aboriginal policy which touched many Australians. He became the first chairman of the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust in 1954 and held that position until 1968. In that year he retired from the Reserve Bank to become chairman of the Australian Council for Aboriginal Affairs and of the Australian Council for the Arts. In the same year, he also became chancellor of the Australian National University.
He became a close advisor to the Labor leader Gough Whitlam in the years before Whitlam became prime minister in 1972, and he largely wrote Labor's policy on Aboriginal affairs, particularly the commitment to Aboriginal land rights. From 1972 to 1975, Coombs worked as a consultant to Prime Minister Whitlam, but his influence was resented by other ministers. He found the experience of the first Labor government since 1949 disappointing.
Coombs traveled regularly to outback Australia to spend time among unknown Aborigines in their camps and stations. He espoused a Makarita, or treaty, between Aboriginal and white Australians. In 1986 he published Towards a National Aboriginal Congress, which truly brought the plights and concerns of the Aborigines to the entire world. In 1989 he co-wrote with three other authors, Helen McCann, Helen Ross, and Nancy M. Williams Land of Promises: Aborigines and Development in the East Kimberley, which reported on economic and social changes arising from resource development.
Coombs was probably the most outstanding civil servant Australia has produced, but he will be remembered for being more than a civil servant. His influence touched almost every aspect of Australian life since the Second World War: the economy, banking, education, the arts and, most profoundly, the advancement of Aborigines.
He served seven prime ministers, from John Curtin during the Second World War to Gough Whitlam in the 1970s. He was the senior and almost the only adviser to span the long gap from one Labor government in 1949 to the next in 1972.
Coombs was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in the first years of the Order on the Queen's Birthday in 1975. But he resigned from the Order in 1976 upon the introduction of the grade of knighthood to the Order.
A new suburb in the Canberra district of Molonglo named Coombs.
(After more than two hundred years, one of the most import...)
(In recent years the distinguished Australian economist, D...)
In his youth, Coombs was a socialist, but during his studies at the London School of Economics, he became converted to the views of John Maynard Keynes, who was a Liberal.
Later, when The Australian Labor Party under John Curtin came to power in 1941, Coombs began to support their views.
Quotations: "We must rely on governments for reform. Since governments reflect fairly accurately the prejudices, hopes and intellectual preconceptions of the community generally, the broad requirements of policy suggested by theory must be thrashed around and mulled over in communication and controversy between academics, scientists, politicians and the community generally until they become, as did the objectives of full employment, part of the ethos of the community."
Coombs possessed an outstanding tolerance, sense of fair play and cultural humility.
Quotes from others about the person
"He was one of the most important Australians this century. I don't think there was any white Australian who gave a more continuing, practical commitment to the Aboriginal people." - Bob Hawke
In a June 2009 article in The Monthly, "In the Garden", Fiona Capp reported the story of the 25-year secret love affair between two of Australia's most well-known and well-loved public figures, the famous poet Judith Wright and Coombs.
