Bigge was also appointed in response to complaints to London from leading colonists including John Macarthur about Macquarie's policies of remediating ex-convicts back into society.

Bigge extensively praised Macarthur and advocated for his policies of providing large assignments of convicts to 'men of real capital' in order to labour upon their sheep stations.

He praised the 'perseverance and intelligence' of John Macarthur and promoted his view that the most skilled convicts be assigned to the large sheep farming estates of not less than 50 acres belonging to the wealthy away from the towns.

He also wanted a crackdown on the number of pardons and early releases given, and that no land grants be offered to emancipated convicts, who should instead form the basis of a future class of landless labourers.

It analysed the farming and grazing systems in the Sydney district, the newly colonised area west of the Blue Mountains and in Van Diemen's Land.

He advocated to the British government the policy of Macarthur to provide large grants or sales of land to rich colonists and make available to these settlers three convicts per 200 acres.

[2][6] Although Macquarie attempted to answer the criticisms in a letter to the secretary of state, Lord Bathurst in 1822, he had already felt obliged to resign from the position of Governor of New South Wales two years beforehand.

[1] Brisbane re-established Norfolk Island and oversaw the formation of new penal colonies at Port Macquarie and Moreton Bay to serve as dreaded places of isolation and punishment for the convicts.

He approved large land grants to rich and well-connected colonists, including a contract of a million acres to a consortium of entrepreneurs led by John Macarthur known as the Australian Agricultural Company.

The arduousness of travel and climate tolled heavily on Bigge after he suffered a leg injury in falling from his horse at the Cape, for which, it is reported, he was treated by noted surgeon James Barry.