Australian
Screen

Dr HC Coombs was one of Australia’s best known and highly respected public servants who never joined a political party or sought public office but who exercised political influence from within as an administrator and advisor. Interviewer Robert Moore is an ABC current affairs journalist probably best known for chairing the ABC’s Monday Conference.

The program takes the form of an interview between Robert Moore, ABC current affairs journalist probably best known for his chairing of the ABC’s Monday Conference (1971-1978), and Dr HC Coombs, one of Australia’s best known and highly respected public servants, who never joined a political party or sought public office but exercised political influence from within the bureaucracy as an administrator and advisor to six Prime Ministers.

The program is rather rigid and the questions too formal to allow much in the way of a human story to emerge. There’s a hint of what might have been when Dr Coombs describes that while he began his working life as a school teacher, when he saw the unnecessary cruelty of the Great Depression and its terrible impact on ordinary people, he decided to dedicate his life to understanding economics.

HC Coombs was made director of rationing during the war, Director General of postwar reconstruction, Governor and Chairman of the Commonwealth Bank, Governor and Chairman of the Reserve Bank, Chancellor of the Australian National University, Chairman of the Australian Council for the Arts and Chairman of the Council for Aboriginal Affairs.

This program was one of several made for the series Profiles of Power in 1970. Others include interviews with Sir Frank Packer, BA Santamaria, Archbishop Knox, Tom Dougherty, Laurie Carmichael, the Reverend Alan Walker, Gordon Barton, Bob Hawke and Sir Thomas Wardle (Tom the Cheap).

You can watch an interview with HC 'Nugget’ Coombs at Australian Biography.