promoted Elizabethan theatre). In 1967, he persuaded Prime Minister Harold Holt to create the Australian Council for the Arts (the non-statutory predecessor to the Australia Council) as a body for the public funding of the arts, and in 1968, he became its chairman. He worked closely with Prime Minister John Gorton to secure funding for an Australian film industry. He also became chancellor of the Australian National University (1968–1976), which he had helped found in 1946. He delivered the 1970 Buntine Oration, titled "Human Values – Education in the Changing Australian Society." Coombs's most important post-retirement role was as a supporter of the Australian Aboriginal people. In 1967, he became chairman of the Council for Aboriginal Affairs, set up by the Holt Government in the wake of the referendum that gave the Commonwealth Parliament power to legislate specifically for the Aboriginal people. He was, however, disappointed that the Gorton and McMahon Governments took up few of the Council's recommendations. He became a close advisor to the Labor leader Gough Whitlam in the years before Whitlam became prime minister in 1972, and he largely wrote Labor's policy on Aboriginal affairs, particularly the commitment to Aboriginal land rights. In 1972, he was named Australian of the Year. From 1972 to 1975, Coombs served as a consultant to Prime Minister Whitlam, but his influence was resented by other ministers. He found the experience of the first Labor government since 1949 disappointing. He disapproved of the events that led up to the Loans Affair of 1975 and the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, which led to the dismissal of Whitlam's government by the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr. He advised Whitlam not to resort to unorthodox means of financing government operations when the Senate blocked supply, but Whitlam did so anyway. Although he regarded the dismissal as scandalous, his estrangement from Whitlam meant that he took little subsequent part in politics. In 1975, he was chairman of a Royal Commission on Australian Government Administration, which was tasked with examining the purpose, functions, organisation and management of Australian Government bodies and the structure and management of the Australian Public Service. Nevertheless, the Royal Commission report was largely ignored by the incoming Liberal government of Malcolm Fraser. In 1976, Coombs resigned all his posts and became a visiting fellow at the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies at the Australian National University, where he developed a new interest