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King O'Malley was the founder of Australia's National bank. Born in the United States, O'Malley travelled to Australia in the late 1880s after working on the campaign of U.S. President James Garfield. He was a proponent of the approach to economics then known as the American System. Upon arriving in Australia, O'Malley began to campaign for a national bank, an idea which was eventually accepted as part of the young Australian Labor Party's (ALP) "non-negotiable platform" in 1908, and which he pushed through Parliament in 1911. The ALP took the spelling of "labor" after the American, as opposed to the British spelling, signifying labor's aspirations to establish an American-style republic in Australia. O'Malley's bank, called the Commonwealth Bank, funded the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, among other things, until its powers were significantly cut back during the 1920s.

In a speech in federal Parliament on his proposed national bank on Sept. 30, 1909, O'Malley emphasized, "The private banking system of the Commonwealth is only a legalized monopoly for the gathering of wealth from the many, and its concentration in the hands of the privileged few." The Hamiltonian system should be counterposed to this, he said, adding, "I am the Hamilton of Australia. He was the greatest financial man who ever walked this earth, and his plans have never been improved upon."

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