Page 3572 - Week 12 - Thursday, 20 September 1990
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Finally, Mr Speaker, let the Labor Party speak from the past. In 1934 the Parliament of Tasmania, with Premier A.G. Ogilvie, appointed a select committee to inquire into and report upon the money system. The committee reported back to the Parliament on 29 October 1935. This report is available from the archives. The terms of reference were:
(1) Whether the people are being prevented by any removeable banking or financial circumstances, factor, law, or condition from possessing, consuming, and/or utilising and enjoying the increase of wealth and/or the actual and potential increase of production over the last thirty years; and, if so, the cause, and what remedial steps should be taken ...
The reply, when the report was concluded, was this:
On the evidence presented before it the Committee finds that the people are being prevented from possessing, consuming, and/or utilising and enjoying the increase of wealth and/or the actual or potential increase of production over the last 30 years; that the cause of this is shortage of purchasing power in the hands of the community as a whole; and that this can be effectively remedied only by -
(1) Restoration to the sovereign community of effective control over money in all its forms, and
(2) The establishment by the Commonwealth Parliament of machinery which would secure regular equation between the community's production and the community's purchasing power.
Mr Speaker, I quote Sir Denison Miller who was the first Governor of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia:
The whole of the resources of Australia are at the back of this bank, and so strong is this Commonwealth Bank ... Whatever the Australian people can intelligently conceive in their minds and will loyally support, it can be done.
Mr Speaker, we have seen that, indeed, the banks do create credit out of thin air. We have seen that the Constitution of Australia, under section 51 (xiii) can, by the use of parliamentary State and parliamentary Federal banks, create all credit required and necessary for public works. This is not an unlimited creation of credit as is touted by some persons not equipped with the facts. It is the creation of credit by the people through their parliamentary representatives in place of that credit now created by the private banking system and for which the people of the Commonwealth of Australia are taxed beyond belief to pay profits to what amounts to nothing more than a private
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