Independent – Wannon – Robert O’Brien – Peoples Bank

Independent candidate for Wannon, Robert O’Brien, has renewed his call for the re-establishment of a “people’s bank”, a Bank of Australia, set up and run by the Commonwealth Government, on behalf of and for the benefit of, all Australians.

“I want to see the return of a people’s bank, in line with King O’Malley’s original concept, overcoming the complexity of modern finance, with benefits for the people, ensuring a strong and healthy nation for all future generations. I want to see wealth and prosperity for all, and there is no reason why it can’t be like that, if that’s what the Australian people want,” said Mr O’Brien.

Mr O’Brien states that such a bank would provide all necessary funds, tax-free, for the provision of necessary infrastructure, such as roads, schools and hospitals; the buy-back of Australia from foreign ownership; a reduction in taxation and the elimination of foreign debt.

“We all want to see better roads and services. This is the only way to guarantee that the money for these can be made readily available by the government,” said Mr O’Brien.

When the Commonwealth Bank was originally conceived in the mind of former American banker and future Member of Parliament, King O’Malley, it was as a bank able to lend to the government and the people alike at low interest and to eliminate the need for a compounding debt on the Australian people.

During World War One under Governor Denison Miller, The Commonwealth Bank provided £350 million debt free for the war effort. The Govenor advised that this amount was also available during peace-time.

People may be of the opinion that the Commonwealth Bank was ‘lost’ when it was privatised by the Keating government. In fact, the bank was lost in 1924 when, after the death of Sir Denison Miller, the responsibility for the operations of the bank were taken from the Governor and given to a Board of Directors – people from ‘big business’ with conflicting interests.

“Like the Commonwealth Bank, the new people’s bank can be set up and running within two years, and with an educated population to ensure that this bank remains true to the ideas of King O’Malley, the private banks will have to become fair and honest, or face elimination,” declared Mr O’Brien.

Mr O’Briens campaign web-site (www.vote1robert.co.nr) contains further documents discussing the history of money and banking as well as alternatives to the current system.

“I urge people to look for the truth about the banking system. In the words of Robert Hemphill, former credit Manager of the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta, USA, ‘It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our civilisation may collapse unless it becomes widely understood and the defects remedied very soon’ ”.

Mr O’Brien concluded that “nothing any government will ever do is as important as this. It paves the way for a government free to serve its people and provide the benefits and services that it should.”

“Whatever the Australian people can intelligently conceive in their minds and will loyally support, that can be done.”
- Sir Denison Miller, Governor of the Commonwealth Bank, 7th July 1921

“In 1911 the Commonwealth Bank was established, not as a central bank to manage credit for the benefit of the community, but to compete with the private profitmaking banks ‘whose gradual extinction … would follow as a matter of course’.”
- A.G.L. Shaw, senior lecturer in History, University of Sydney. The Economic Development of Australia (Longmans 1944)

“Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of the pen they create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of the Bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits.”
- Sir Josiah Stamp (President of the Bank of England in the 1920’s, and then the second richest man in Britain)

“People who will not turn a shovel full of dirt on project (Muscle Shoals Dam) nor contribute a pound of material, will collect more money from the United States than will the People who supply all the material and do all the work. This is the terrible thing about interest…But here is the point: If the Nation can issue a dollar bond it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good also.
“The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets the money broker collect twice the amount of the bond an additional 20%. Whereas the currency, the honest sort provided by the Constitution, pays nobody but those who contribute in some useful way. “It is absurd to say our Country can issue bonds and cannot issue currency. Both are promises to pay, but one fattens the usurer and the other helps the People. If the currency issued by the People were no good, then the bonds would be no good, either. It is a terrible situation when the Government, to insure the National Wealth, must go in debt and submit to ruinous interest charges at the hands of men who control the fictitious value of gold. Interest is the invention of Satan.”
- Thomas A. Edison

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Robert O’Brien
Independent Candidate for Wannon
www.vote1robert.co.nr