In addition, the NSW and Victorian supreme courts put freezing orders over the $6.2m property portfolio of Rosemary Rogers, the chief of staff of Thorburn’s predecessor, Cameron Clyne.

This will hearten those Australians who have been dismayed by the almost flippant manner in which some of these wretched bankers and directors have given their evidence and which clearly infuriated Royal Commissioner, Kenneth Hayne, and learned counsel.

The commission’s hearings underlined the growing fear of hard working Australians for a number of years now that the banking and finance industries of our nation were being greedily exploited to which the commission added that they were being criminally exploited also in some matters.

Last Friday was, we now see, and hopefully can expect more of, the great clean-up of these industries.

It must be understood it was the Labor Party that pursued the need for a Royal Commission.

There are, however, other aspects of the commission which were not within its scope which have emerged on the sidelines that governments and the private sector and to a much lesser extent, the public service, need to address.

They are issues the new federal government to be elected this year must address with some good old-fashioned government - the “for the people, by the people” approach, an approach ignored by every federal government since Paul Keating’s was defeated.

From the end of John Howard’s second term, followed by Keating’s two ALP colleagues, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, and the latest trio of Coalition PM failures, all those governments have given way to the greed of bankers and miners and the tax-dodging by big business, notably the banks. 

In general, the management of our country since Howard’s second term has been appalling.

This brings us to issues that will play an increasingly important part in the federal election result and, in different ways, emphasise the culture of greed which has emerged in the nation’s financial system.

The Coalition in particular has refused to address either issue.

There is the urgent need for a complete overhaul and restructure of the taxation and superannuation system in this country.

It was Ken Henry who as Treasury Secretary, urged work on the taxation system but no federal government has had the gumption to do so, so much so as leading businessman, Harold Mitchell, pointed out last year, less tax is being collected which makes a government’s task of meeting sufficient revenue for essential public services more difficult.

Major companies sometimes now even boast about avoiding taxes.

PM Morrison doesn’t understand people are more concerned about power costs, water, aged care needs and, especially, wage fairness than scare tactics about boats.

My thoughts, as they sometimes do at times when revelations like those of the Royal Commission crush your respect for those in authority, turned to Captain Charles Sturt’s great family motto, 'for the public good'. 

It's a rule almost forgotten by those charged in the past two decades with governing for us all.

In October, 2016, Andrew Leigh MP, Labor’s current assistant treasurer since 2013, made a speech called The Ages of Ambition, which included some of Labor’s finest ages when they did govern for us all.

Leigh marked three ages for distinction.

The era of PMs John Curtin and Ben Chifley (1941-49) when Labor stood up to Churchill to bring our troops home and its major economic reforms; a broad-based income tax, child endowment, widows’ pension and the pharmaceutical benefits scheme.

Then, the age of Whitlam’s social reforms; Medibank, SBS, the Racial Discimination Act and tertiary education expansion.

However it was the age from 1983 under Hawke and Keating that Labor flicked the switch to economic reform; tariff cuts and global free trade agreements, the float of the dollar, capital gains taxation, universal superannuation and The Accord.

Not since the great Sir Robert Gordon Menzies has a Coalition government worked 'for the public good'; nor does the current lot look capable of doing so.

They might, now, contemplate one of their finest leader’s earthy quotes: “The kind of people I myself represent in parliament; salary earners, shopkeepers, skilled artisans, professional men and women, farmers, and so on, these are in a political and economic sense, the middle class - they are for the most part unorganised and unselfconscious”.