Sir Leslie Galfreid Melville KBE (26 March 1902 – 30 April 2002) was a renowned Australian economist, academic and public servant.
[3] He helped form Australia's central banking system and gave his voice in international economic forums in the years following World War II.
His father Richard Ernest Melville was of Irish stock, and his mother Lillian Evelyn née Thatcher had English forebears.
During World War I, his father lost his job as a bank manager and then invested in a project that failed, bringing the family into severe financial difficulty.
[4] Melville represented Australia at the 1932 Ottawa Imperial Trade Conference, after the Prime Minister Joseph Lyons had revoked Sir Robert Gibson's directive for him not to attend.
[4] In 1944 Melville led the Australian delegation to the Bretton Woods Conference, which laid the foundations for the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
He handled himself most impressively, was clear, cogent and never unreasonable, put his point forcibly yet moderately, yet achieved ... as much as was humanly possible to move matters in the direction he desired.
After his retirement, he remained an honorary fellow of the ANU in the Department of Economics at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies (RSPAS).
[7] When H. C. Coombs was appointed Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, he paid tribute to Melville by advising the government and others that the best man for the job had been overlooked.