Clip description
Dr HC Coombs, the great Australian public servant and advisor to six Australian prime ministers, talks about whether it’s possible to be an entirely neutral public servant.
Curator’s notes
Dr Herbert Cole Coombs was educated in Western Australia before obtaining a doctorate in economics at the London School of Economics in 1933 for a thesis on central banking. Dr Coombs was enormously influenced by John Maynard Keynes and spent his career finding Keynesian solutions to Australia’s economic problems. He never sought public office or joined a political party although he was advisor to or worked in the administration of six Australian prime ministers.
Some examples from such Coombs’s own experiences might have added colour and depth to this rather dry and formal interview.
The interviewer was the journalist Robert Moore. He later moderated the highly successful Monday Conference from 1971 until his untimely death in 1978.