businesses were often failing, Gellibrand banded together with like-minded individuals to form the Hobart Remembrance Club. This organisation aimed to support ex-servicemen by providing employment and support for their businesses. The Hobart Club inspired the formation of Legacy Australia in Melbourne, which over time became a national movement, expanding its scope to the care of ex-servicemen's widows and their families. The Hobart Club did not join Legacy until 1940, but Charles Bean wrote in 1944 that "coming back to the great and good man from whose original work it all sprang—there was a time when some of us thought that the best monument to John Gellibrand might be the story of Second Bullecourt. Now I feel there will be an even better—the record of Legacy." Gellibrand entered Federal politics in the November 1925 election, at which he was elected the member for Denison on the Nationalist Party of Australia ticket. In his campaign speeches he exploited the fear of communism. As the member for Denison, he supported increased Federal funding for Tasmania, and called for improvements in the way the Australian Army trained future leaders. He was involved in the campaign for the 1926 referendum, which failed. He lost his seat in the 1928 election, and failed to regain it in the 1929 election. After that he returned to farming at Greenhills. He also bought a foreclosed property near Smithton, Tasmania, called Garth, from the AMP Society, of which he was a director. On 1 August 1936, he purchased a new property, Balaclava, at Murrindindi, Victoria, not far from Yea, Victoria, where his son Tom had a farm, and made his home there, selling the properties in Tasmania. In the late 1930s, he was consulted by Prime Ministers Joseph Lyons and Robert Menzies about defence matters. He campaigned for an increase in the size of the Australian Army, writing letters to newspapers, and a series of articles for Reveille, the Returned Sailors and Soldiers Imperial League of Australia's organ. After the outbreak of the Second World War, he lobbied the Menzies government to appoint Blamey as Commander in Chief of the Army. In June 1940, he was appointed commandant of the Victorian Volunteer Defence Corps, the Australian version of the Home Guard, but ill-health forced him to resign in July 1940, to be replaced by Foott. Gellibrand died at Balaclava from a cerebral haemorrhage on 3 June 1945, and was