Sue Neales Mercury Comment
Funding such nation-building projects was the brainchild of former Tasmanian premier and federal politician Joseph Lyons. From 1929 to 1930, Lyons was the Minister for Works and Railways in the then-Scullin Labor government and Prime Minister from 1932 until his death in April 1939. The national approach taken by Scullin and Lyons following the Wall Street crash of 1929 is an interesting model that may still have resonance today. In uncanny parallels to the crisis Australia is now experiencing, the 1929 stockmarket crash was immediately followed by a global tightening of credit and loans. Fear and panic swept the world, bankrupt banks closed their doors, followed by thousands of large companies and small businesses. Read more here
