Gibbons' farming experience, his advocacy of policies for wheat and wool price stabilisation to provide financial security to primary producers, and a frenetic 16-day tour of the large electorate were reported as being key to his success.

[27] However, after Ted Theodore assumed the role of Treasurer later that month, Scullin and the Cabinet slowly backed away from full acceptance of the terms of Gibbons' proposal, with attention increasingly drawn instead to the rapidly deepening split in the party and the issue of the renegade New South Wales Premier Jack Lang, who was pursuing his own radical ideas about how to deal with the Depression.

He argued that the Commonwealth Bank's decision to "take up budgetary deficits", the reduction in interest rates in the Premiers' Plan and a bonus for the wheat industry constituted effective adoption.

[36] In August 1931, he accused Lang of "practically stealing...money from wheatgrowers" for directing funds from an impost on flour into consolidated revenue instead of to farmers as they had expected.

[37] In the same month, he declared that the Premiers' Plan was "insufficient to provide for Australia's rehabilitation", suggesting that a "general writing down" may be needed so that landholders could continue to meet their liabilities.

He spoke at a number of United Australia Party rallies in 1932 and it was widely rumoured that Gibbons would follow some of his former Labor colleagues into the conservative UAP; however, this never eventuated.

[48][49] Gibbons became highly active in the Wheatgrowers' Union of New South Wales in the 1930s, becoming its vice-president in the mid-1930s and then its president from 1936 to 1939, a position which made him a prominent public commentator and advocate on wheat industry issues.