When war came all four were rapidly summoned.

Brigden was quickly made the Economic Adviser to the new Department of Supply and Development that had just replaced the old Munitions Supply Board. On 1 January 1940 he became its Secretary.^[7] Copland also became an adviser to government at the outset of the war. Appointed Commonwealth Prices Commissioner in 1939, he was appointed Economic Consultant to the Prime Minister in 1941, and held both positions until the end of the war.

Menzies had intended to appoint Wilson as his economic adviser for the duration of the war. But Wilson had been successfully arguing for the establishment of a Department of Labour and National Service, and on a train journey from Sydney to Canberra, Harold Holt, the designated minister for the new department, offered Wilson the position of Secretary. In October 1940 Wilson was appointed (Cornish 2002, p. 23).

At Wilson’s urging, Giblin was brought to Canberra at the age of sixty-six to be Chairman of the Financial and Economic Committee (F&E), a committee formally constituted as part of Treasury in September 1939.^[8] It was composed of Wilson, Melville and Giblin, with Copland, Brigden and Coombs recruited later.^[9] In Wilson’s vision this committee would ‘constitute a small central thinking committee’, with ‘its services … available to Cabinet or to any other department’. The research was done by Wilson, Brigden, Melville, and Coombs; Copland was the conduit to the Prime Minister; and Giblin, ‘the one full-time member [who] appears to have served as a one man synthesiser’ (Maddock and Penny 1983, p. 31).