PM Transcripts

EMBARGO NOT TO BE PUBLISEED BROADCAST OR TEL2CAoT BEFORE
8 P M. ON MONDAY, NO1EMBE. 18.
BROADCAST NO, 2
BROADCAST BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE RT. HON. SIR
ROBERT MENZIES OVER ABC NATIONAL STATIONS AT 8 PM.
ON MONDA, NOVEMBER 18, 1963
In an earlier broadcast, I disposed of the campaign
being conducted by my opponent, in a mixture of shouting and
whispering, about my alleged imminent retirement from office
after the election.
But Mr. Calwell's tactics do not end there.
Clearly in a straight-out conflict of policies, having
in mind the record growth of Australia in the last ten years,
and having in mind also the vital importance of a clear and
unequivocal Australian foreign policy and Australian relations
with our allies, Mr. Calwell has no groat faith in victory.
That is why he is busy raising these sidc-issues on which he
thinks he can secure votes either by fomenting animosities or
by creating fears in the public mind.
The one I want to mention briefly on this occasion is
his statement that if my Government is re-elected, it will impose
another far-reaching " credit squeeze", presumably out of a
spirit of sheer hardheartedness. I don't like this because, as
all my colleagues know9 I am not a hardhearted person. Now1,
if Mr. Calwell knows anything about public finance, he must
know that severe economic restrictive measures can be needed or
produced only in order to check or defeat an inflationary boom.
He knows, or should know that a prosperous economy in which the
extravagances of speculation have been checked, as they
undoubtedly have been in the last two years, an economy in which
effort is concentraded upon production and supply and in pushing
forward works and national deveJopmentl both public and private,
is not an economy which invites extreme measures at all.
We have had the benefit of a great deal of experience
in these matters in recent times. For myself and for the
Government, I see no reason why continued economic growth should
not continue to be associated with stability of costs and prices.
qe will do all in our power to avoid a cost-price spiral because
we know that inflation, the fall in the value of money, hits
ordinary citizens far more than it hits a well-to-do minority.
But did you hear or read Mr. Calwell's Policy Speech? I hope
you did. It contained the longest and most extravagant and
expensive series of bids for your votes that have iarked any
election in my time. Really, it treated you as if you had your
vote for sale! In his eagerness to achieve office ( because I
suppose that for him this may well be the lost chance), he
proposed to add to the supply of money in this country on such
an astronomical scale that he has left himsclf, in the event of
victory, with the choice of two evils. One is to have an
inflationary boom so violent that even a Labour Government would
be compelled to take the most stringent measures to counteract A
it, or alternatively, such an enormous increase in taxation,
including no doubt new forms of taxation, as would be well
calculated to destroy business confidence and lead to an acute
depression. Mr. Calwell tries to make your flesh creep with imaginary
fears of which we would do. I would strongly advise you to got
out of this realm of fiction and do some hard thinking about the
price that you would have to pay one way or the other for the
policy on which he asks you to elect him,