George Albert Reginald Gibbons was an Australian politician.
18 Facts About George Gibbons
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George Gibbons was an Australian Labor Party member of the Australian House of Representatives from 1929 to 1931, representing the regional New South Wales electorate of Calare.
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George Gibbons received a primary education before becoming a farm labourer and then a farmer.
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George Gibbons was an inaugural organiser and then NSW state secretary of the short-lived Rural Workers Union of Australia, which amalgamated with the Australian Workers Union in 1913; Gibbons remained a member of the AWU thereafter.
5.
George Gibbons was secretary of the Tichborne branch of the Political Labour League and the party's Calare federal electorate council.
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George Gibbons later became a farmer and stock and station agent and justice of the peace at Parkes, operating a 1700-acre property, "The Plains", in conjunction with his brother.
7.
The Scullin Labor government proved repeatedly unwilling to stabilise prices on the profitable terms George Gibbons had advocated, which led to repeated criticism in regional media for making promises he could not deliver.
8.
George Gibbons supported the proposed Burrendong Dam, though it would not be built for many years, and was unable to gain support for a Commonwealth Bank branch in Parkes.
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George Gibbons was critical of the Scullin government's early response to the Great Depression in Australia, preferring using the Commonwealth Bank to extend loans and extending the terms of existing loans rather than the Cabinet's mix of austerity measures and increased debt.
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George Gibbons' proposal was supported by a majority of the Labor caucus in November, triggering a crisis that would lead to the resignation of Treasurer Joseph Lyons and laid the seeds for the 1931 Labor split.
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George Gibbons continued to press his demands for fixing higher wheat prices, which saw the Labor caucus agree to instruct Cabinet to prepare a bill guaranteeing wheat prices at a fixed level and to call a double dissolution election if it were blocked either by the Senate or by the Commonwealth Bank board.
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George Gibbons was defeated by Country Party candidate Harold Thorby in a three-cornered race with a Lang candidate at the 1931 election, a widely speculated outcome due to his unexpected win in 1929 and the fallout of that year's split in the Labor Party.
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George Gibbons finished last of the three candidates behind Thorby and the Lang candidate, with Thorby winning an absolute majority of votes.
14.
George Gibbons had a stormy relationship with the Labor Party in the period immediately following; in January 1932, he was expelled from the Lang-controlled state Labor Party, responding that he had never been a member of the "Lang Labor Party", and in April 1932 resigned from the Labor Party entirely, lashing Lang for his rejection of the Premiers' Plan.
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George Gibbons spoke at a number of United Australia Party rallies in 1932 and it was widely rumoured that Gibbons would follow some of his former Labor colleagues into the conservative UAP; however, this never eventuated.
16.
George Gibbons became highly active in the Wheatgrowers' Union of New South Wales in the 1930s, becoming its vice-president in the mid-1930s and then its president from 1936 to 1939, a position which made him a prominent public commentator and advocate on wheat industry issues.
17.
George Gibbons was appointed to a series of industry boards by Labor governments in the 1940s: the federal Fodder Conservation Commission and Australian Meat Board, as well as both the NSW Wheat Advisory Board and Australian Wheat Board later that decade.
18.
George Gibbons made one final attempt to enter politics as the Labor candidate for his old seat of Calare at the 1949 federal election, but was soundly defeated.