Australia sold its gold in 1997, in a sale timed to suppress the price of gold, to bury it forever, and replace it with government paper:
Then-treasurer Peter Costello agreed to sell most of its holdings in 1997.
The decision prompted cries of betrayal from the gold industry and, with the benefit of hindsight, was incredibly poorly timed. Since the sale of 167 tonnes of gold for $2.4 billion, or just over $400 an ounce, gold in Australian terms has rallied to record highs. The price peaked last July at $1819.44 an ounce, at which point the gold Australia sold for $2.4bn would have been worth $10.7bn. …
Australia is in the paper camp, with the monetary progressives:
The RBA’s current gold holdings, in the Bank of England’s vaults, now total just under 80 tonnes.
That’s less gold than is held by the central banks of Iraq, Poland and Romania, according to figures compiled by the World Gold Council, and is just a sliver of the amount held by similarly sized economies such as Spain (281.6 tonnes) and Russia (1706.8 tonnes).
Check out the Russian gold reserves
