A crucial piece of eye-witness history on Australia's brush with the global financial crisis featured in the witness statement by former prime minister, Kevin Rudd, to the Royal Commission into the Home Insulation Program.

Rudd recounted a vital weekend meeting of the Strategic Budget and Planning Committee of Cabinet.

Rudd wrote that: "Cabinet was informed that unless the Government moved immediately to provide a Government guarantee for every Australian's bank account, there was a real prospect of a run on the banks, as had occurred abroad."

"We were also advised that the Government also needed to provide a guarantee for the inter-bank lending requirements of Australia's private banks because global credit markets had already frozen."

The Government did, of course, follow this advice.