LUNCHTIME RALL1, LIBERAL r'A1LTY OF N. S. W.
SYDN'EY TO' 4N HALL. SYDNEY APRIL, 196 j
Speech by the-Prime-Minister, the Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Menzies
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Askin, Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am delighted to find Mr. Askin in such robust form.
I said to him outside before we came in that I didn't have any
reason to believe that he would be defeated by his enemies.
What sometimes happens in our party is that one is defeated by
one's friends. Half-hearted people.
The first thing I want to do is to urge all of you to
be whole-htearted. That will be the way to achieve victory.
( Hear, hear) ( Applause)
My mind goes back, of course, a good way in the history
of the Liberal Party because I had the great honour of beginning
it as Leader of the Opposition in 19' 44, and at that time I had
some hopes, of course, that with hard work, co-ordination of our
ideas, a revision of our policy, the accumulation of fresh ideas
and fresh drive we might win in due course. Well, we werent
successful in 1 I don't think that anybody imagined that
starting from as far back as we were we were going to win in 194+ 6.
We won a seat or two, And immediately ( do you remember? some of
the older of you may) the cry arose, a muted cry, the sort of cry
you hear in the corner of a club room " You will never win with
Menzies" ( Iaugnter) This became qui~ e a slogan, very encouraging
to me as Leader of the Opposition. ( Laughter)
In a reverse kind of way it did encourage me because
it annoyed me so much that I didn't let up for years thereafter.
And although " you couldn't win with Menzies" I suppose there are
some people who have said, " You can't win wih Askin". But we
did win and we have won seven consecutive elections since that
time. pplause) And this to a major extent due to the fact that
we have had inside our party the most fabulous loyalty-a loyalty
that has encouraged us, that has enabled us to ride oui periods
of unpopularity4 We've gone through thesb periods and we: have
gone through them successfully because we have had 1he complete
fidelity of our own people.
Now I think, Sir, that this period, the last twelve or
fifteen years in Australia is the most exciting period in our
history in the most exciting country in the world. ( Applause)
Let me repeat that to you: The most exciting country in the
world. It is part of my task in Canberra and in other parts of
the world to encounter people of significance and influence in
other countries and inevitably they will be heard saying tome,
tYou know, Australia is a tremendously exciting country. We,
ourselves, are taking an interest in it, We ( if they are in'the
financial world) are encouraging our people to invest in Australia"
because there is no country in the world that offers such an
exciting prospect of growth as " Vhis country of ours,
Now let us be proud of that because it is true.
Anybody who moves around Australia wouldn't need to have any
evidence of the facts that I have mentioned. Mr. Askin has just
mentioned the population. It is very interesting to recall that i
since 194ñ 9 I will just take one example the number of dwelling
units in Australia has gone up from 1,970,000 to 3,262,000.
Indeed it would be fair to say that most of the houses in Australia / 2
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today have been built in our time. This is a tremendously
interesting factor and, of course, on all the material sides
black coal, ingot stee, all the area under crop in the country,
the increase in the sheep population all these things have been
going on, with their little variations, of course, from time to
time because life is like that, but in the end result they adAi up
to the most remarkable period of development that you or I have
ever seen anywhere. Now this is a matter that only needs totbe
mentioned, I donst need to elaborate it to you, but I just want
to add one observation if I may.
All this, and many other things that I don't need to
quote to you, have been going on during the period of office of
a Federal Liberal and Country Party administration at Canberra.
( Applause) Now, I am perfectly certain that when this statement
comes to be analysed, I will be told by our political opponents,
" Well but do you claim the credit for it? Do you think you did
it?" 1 And of course the answer is that I don't think I did it, but
I do think that the economic and financial policies of my govern.
ment have created a climate in which this could happen and did
ha ppen.
0 This is tlhe fact of the matter and in case somebody says
that is a little boastful, I want to remind you that at the last
State election in New South Wales, the then State Premier stated
categorically that the Commonwealth Government has had the main
responsibility for economic conditions. ( Laughter) Now he can't
have it both ways, or he couldn't have had the matter both ways.
If we have had, and he is quite right, the main responsibility
for economic conditions, then I think that our policies may be
taken to have contributed in a material way to the results that
I have been referring to.
Of course I know why the Premier said it, After many,
many years, I have a rough working knowledge of Premiers, I see
them with some regularity and I know they are never, professionally
quite satisfied. That's all right. But in thte last
election here we were unpopular. We had almost lost the 1961
" eWleelclt, i ont hearned yZohue reafreo. r e Tihte waCsonm'mto nwae ablatd h iGdoeav, e rnhme entth, o ugthhits, to say,
government that has practically lost your confidence, it has had
the responsibility and look what a mess it has made of it."
This was the whole sermon on that occasion. All right, I accept
it. Let Mr. Renshaw repeat that the Commonwealth Government has
the main responsibility for economic conditions and then Mr,
Askin and all of you will be able to point out that if that is
so then this responsibility has been discharged magnificently for
a long, long time. ( Applause)
ourselves NwowV ~ Mtrh. e reC hahaisr mabne, e n Is utchhi nka idte griese woorft hawchhiileev emaesnkti ngin
Australia, a degree of political success in Australia, and so
high a degree in the National Parliament of continuity of office
for our side, It might be worthwhile asking ourselves why.
Well, of course, from our point of view we have based ourselves
on the encouragement of private initiative and enterprise.
We have put into operation the most novel and effective series
of social service provisions that this country has ever had since
the old-age pension was first invented at the beginning of the
century and, of course we have set out, above all things and
particularly of late io help to create an educated democracy.
Now these have been Zhe driving elements in what we have been
doing. But Labor, what has Labor been doing? What is the cause
of this failure by Labor? And I say Labor because Labor is the
one thing all Over Australia. I know the Labor Government here ./ 3
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is occasionally casting itself for the role of a Right Wing Party
while its principal Federal representative from this State publicly
announces his'steady translation to a position near the Left Wing
if not actually on its tip, so there is a little bit of jiggerypokery
going on here, But we know, don't we, that the Labor
Party is the same all over Australia. It has to be because when
it s outside rulers meet, they lay down rules of policy and of
actlon which are just as binding on the New South Wales Labor
Goverr~ ment as they are on any private member of the Labor Party
in the Federal Parliament. This is under their establishment.
And the result is that one is entitled to treat the Labor Party as
being the one thing all over Australia in Federal, in State, in
whatever it may be.
Now, Sir, everybody knows that the Labor Party has fallen
increasingly into the clutches of the extremists. You don't need
to know very much about the inside of politics to know how true
that is. Union after union has been infiltrated by communists
and communists have been coming into office promoting discord and
trouble. The Left Wing a term to which I see somebody objectsbut
the Left Wing at Canberra develops more and more its position
as the spokesman of Labor on foreign affairs. We hear them time
after time after time and we hear what they have to say about the
United States of America and American policy, because the Left
Wing of the Labor Party hates America and hates everything that
the Amtericans do, When I came in here this morning, there were
a lot of earnest workers holding up placards. This, of course,
is very largely an attack on the United States. I know it is
supposed to be an attack on my Government, but everything the
United States does on behalf of the free world is condemned by
the Left Wing of the Labor Party and you are much better informed
than I am if you know or can guarantee that the Left Wing of the
Labor Party won't be in complete charge of it inside the next
few years. The second thing about Labor is that it has lost the
capacity for evolving new ideas because, of course, it has to
rely on others to produce them and to tell them what they are to
do. Mr. Askin made a remark about-this which struck me as
profoundly true. They are not producing new ideas. When did they
last produce? Ever since they set themselves up as the Socialist
Party, the socialisation of the means of production, distribution
and exchange etc., have they ever produced anything new? The
truth is that they are the reactionaries in politics in this
country. They are living on the past, they are living on a little
stock of ideas that was established thirty years agro and which
they have been turning over ever since until it has got
frightfully shop-soiled.
We have been the party that has produced the new ideas,
You consider what has been going on in the field of export
development in the field of rural industry, in the field of
education, In the field of national development, in the field of
international relationships, and international movements of
money and balances of payments. We have been the initiators.
I can't recall a solitary initiation on the part of my opponents
for many years.
Now, a party that has lost the capacity for evolving new
ideas ought really to have a look at itself. We did fifteen
years ago. We came to the conclusion that we would have to run
through our stock of ideas and add to them and produce a platform
and a policy that would look forward and would have appeal to the
people of Austral a and in particular that would have appeal to
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the younger people of Australia to whom the future belongs.
( Applause) I was involving the Labour Party in a severe criticism
and saying that they were reactionary and out of date, and of
course they are, as out of date as socialism and that is about
as reactionary and out of date as any doctrine you have ever
heard of, but they still believe in it, they still hang on to it,
they still thinkc that this has some appeal to young Australian
men and women whom they underestimate shockingly. They seem to
treat the young people in Australia as if all they wanted to do
was to manage to live long enough to be paid something by the
government ( Laughter) ( Applause) and they are not like that, I
assure you. All the young Australian men and women whom I know are
keen, intelligent anxious to stand on their own feet and anxious
to carve out a future and you have a few million people in a
country like ours anxious to carve out a future, anxious to get
on with the job, anxious to engage in some adventure and I will
guarantee the development of the country without a moment's
hesitation. It is individuals, millions of them, encouraged
to develop their talents, encouraged to engage in enterprise for
risk and for reward have enough of them and you will have a
country that is growing and growing until I am able to say with
complete truth that it is the most exciting country in the world.
You know " Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive
But to be young was very heaven" ( Applause)
Those are fine words and worth recalling.
There is another aspect of this. I don't propose to
go through all the details, of course, because that would take
much too long, but I do want to say something to you about our
revolutionary approach to the problem of education. People very
soon forget the Commonwealth didn't have any direct responsibilities
in relation, for example, to university education. It was
my own Government that made the first little tentative grant to
the universities. It was my own Government that established the
Murray Committee whose report was the beginning of a revolution
in the university world and we adopted every last recommendation
in that report, and then we established a Universities Commission.
We established a body to report on tertiary education. We had
a.. special committee on teaching hospitals.
We have covered an enormous amount of ground in the
tertiary field and the result is that whereas fifteen years ago
the Budget item would be about œ 114, in the triennium that is
beginning now it will be more like œ 30M, and you, of course,
pay it, but ii has been under our policies that these things
have occurred. Go around the universities, go and see the
buildings going up, see the rapidly increasing number of prospective
undergraduates who can get in and get a university training
and give themselves a new chance in life. Have a look at these
universities, old and new, and you will find them seething with
activity, growing almost daily under your eyes. ( Applause)
And why? I venture to say with complete confidence
because of the revolutionary approach mal. e to these
matters by my own Government, a Liberal administration, Liberal
thought. This has been the beginning of a new era in tertiary
education in Australia, and it was initiated by us. Now remember
that and remember, as I do myself, with some pride, a go ~ 0
Well then, our last initiation on this matter was in
respect of secondary schools and technical schools. it is
already rapidly being forgotten that as a result of the policy I
put before the people at the last election of which they warmly
approved, the money that we spoke of, a year for technical
schools, has already been taken up and will continue to be provided
for years into the future. This has put the States into a po * sition
ofI I think a very proper advantage in that they are able to do
more in building and equipment in technical schools to meet the
growing demand for technical training and knowledge in Australia.
Then we made our famous, and I believe contentious,
provision providing for science blocks and science equipment in
secondary schools ( Applause) meaning by that secondary schools of
all types, State, independent, most of the independent being church
schools. ( InterJector " Shamel") Shame? It would have been a
shame to refuse them. What sort of a shame would it have been if
the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia, having decided to
help with science training in secondary schools, said, " Only State
secondary schools are to get this money. Those of you who have
had the enterprise or the particular desires to have your children
in other types of secondary school, you get nothing, although we
are the trustees for all the taxpayers in Australia." That would
have been a shame. ( Applause)
This is an item it is not a big item intrinsically
but has opened many doors and I am delighted with it because
think that it is helping io open up a new frontier in Australia,
You know, we can go along in the orthodox fashion and treat
education as following what I will call the orthodox routine lines,
the kind of thing that many of us have been through but what is
needed today in this age, in this young country, wizh so much
resource to be developed, so many challenging things to be coped
wh, what is needed is a higher degree, among other things, of
technical, scientific, technological training than we have ever
had before. This is elementary.
This is a technical age. The development in the
twentieth century has been, of course, ph~ enomenal, and here we are
in Australia, made up of a people of high average intelligence and
capacity for acquiring knowledge, with a very advanced standard of
living, with great advantages, and we have around us in the world
countries which are for various historical reasons and others,
backward countries who need help, whose population is pressing all
the time on their resources who are confronted every now and then
by the literal problem of siarvation, and they must be enabled,
they must be helped to develop along scientific lines their own
capacity to produce things for themselves. It is quite wrong to
4suppose they ought to be put in a position of living on somebody
else's kindness forever, They have to be encouraged to produce
things of their own in the problems of agriculture in the
problems of depasturing stock in the problems of factories, and
therefore we, as a donor country, under the Colombo Plan, have
ourselves an obligation to develop to the utmost our own capacity
for producing scientific and technological skill. ( Applause)
I went out, Sir, to Bathurst the other day to open a
science block at a sxhool, a school which had had a science master
many many years ago who was a pioneer in applied science, He
must have been a very very remarkable man. Sent the first wireless
messages across land from the school, did a great deal of
scientific work in X-Ray, with the most primitive appliances,
and today there is a magnificent science block thanks to this
policy, this revolutionary policy, with fine equipment so that
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on the basis of a wonderful tradition which these boys have
inherited, they will be able to equip themselves to be pioneers
of a new growth of knowledge. Very appropriate to say that in
Bathurst? 2 because Bathurst after all was the new frontier itself,
geographically that was opened up by Blaxland and Wentworth and
the great explorers. This opened up a new physical conception
of Australia. It converted Australia almost in a stroke from
being just a limited penal settlement perched on the coast to
being the country that it has now become. And I said to these
boys, just as these great men had sought out new frontiers and
had discovered them, so they, themselves, would be the pioneers.
This is so much the kind of thing that we Liberals
ought to belieie in most passionately, that pioneering is not
dead that pioneering has to be encouraged, that all pioneers
don't need to be looking around with big beards on and wearing
bowyangs. This is an antiquated idea. We can all be pioneers
and the more talented we are, the more we can pioneer great
movements, great things, great bodies of knowledge, a capacity
to accept growing responsibility and therefore I point out to
you that this being our spirit, this being our approach the
Labor Party is beginning to discover, I think rather Mae that
their chronic talk about a depression or about referring to the
people as the proletariat I haven't yet met a chap down the
street who liked being called one of the proletariat but dont
let on to the Labor Party, I hope they will still continue to
use this rather fabulous expression.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, as time marches on, I just
want to turn quite hastily to the great problem of defence and
foreign policy because Mr. Askin had some sersi. ble things to say
about it. True, we the Commonwealth, have the primary responsibility
in a sense you might say the total responsibility for
conducting affairs relating to defence and foreign policy, but
whether we do it well or badly will determine the future security
and well-being of all voters in all elections for all Houses of
Parliament. This is one of those problems on which an unhealthy
attitude in a State Government could easily bring about difficulties
in the carrying out of a Federal policy.
If there is one thing on whicha we all ought to be
able to stand clear and together, it is the defence and security
of the country which in turn involves the foreign policy of the
country, how we deal with other nations. Now on this, of course,
as you know, Labor is hopelessly divided. Half the speeches made
on the other side of the House are busy explaining how wickedly
wrong the Americans are. The other half adopt the view which
is much more like our own and that is that if we are to view
our security in the broad, we might as well not on~ ly pay attention
to what we evolve inside our own country but to our relationships
with those countries upon whose help, mark you, in a great crisis
we would have to depend. ( Applause)
Now, let us apply that to the present state of affairs.
We have just, not long ago, initiated an expanded defence
programme which far exceeds anything that anybody would have
thought about a couple of years ago. It is going to involve
great national and individual burdens. I think it has the warm
support of the people of Australia but I am not so sure that the
support will be unbroken when we finally begin to pick up the
bill and see how we are going to pay for it. I don't know how
yet, we haven't got to that stage. e~** e9*/ 7
7
But this is a colossal task, and it is a task which
involves to a ansiderable extent purchasing equipment in other
countries and it therefore involves to that extent drawing upon
our overseas reserves and therefore it has a direct relationship
to our balance of payments problem which we have from year to
year. And, ladies and gentlemen, when I hear my opponents
at Canberra throwing cold water on capital coming into Australia
I wonder whether they have the faintest idea as to, where we woull
be if we didn't have capital coming into Australia.
Does anybody suppose thateleven million people,
admittedly the best in the world I'm prepared to concede that
point ( cheers, applause) but does anybody suppose that eleven
million people with a continent the size of the United States of
America and with resources, many of which as yet are quite
untouched, can develop all the capital it wants for itself out
of its own individual savings? Really, nobody in his five wits
would pretend that for one moment, and therefore we can either
slow down our progress, slow down our increasing population by
cutting down on immigration or we can welcome overseas capital
to enable all our resources to be put to work and our development
' to continue. I don't know where the Labor Party supposes we ought
to get the capital we need. ( Interjector " What about Mr,
McEwen, he doesn't agree with Mr. McEwen agrees entirely
with what I am saying. I stated the policy of my Government on
this matter in my last policy speech and it represented the
unanimous views of Mr. McEwen, Mr. Holt and myself. My view is
that the Labor Party's policy would do more to damage national
growth and development in Australia than any other thing that I
can think of, ( Interjector :" What about the aborigines?") Isn't
it wonderful? Do you know why I take such pride in the educational
programme? Because I am hoping that after a generation or two
it will produce people who won't have such a passion for changing
the subject when they are losing an argument. ( Applause)
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I mentioned something
about defence, I ncw want to say a few words about foreign
policy. I want to know to what extent Laibor really challenges,
effectively challenges, our foreign policy, I don~ t quite
understand it because the other day the Leader of the Opposition
in Canberra said there was no hope of a bi-partisan policy
because nobody could agree with the Government's policy and
therefore, ladies and gentlemen, I am at a loss to know what
Labor's policy is.
All I know is that it isn't ours according to Mr.
Calwell and then of course, somebody comes up and says ( to
interjector) thai we didn't have one. In one of the long winter
evenings, one of you young fellows must come along and have a
word with me and explain the policy of the Labor Party on foreign
affairs because it would have all the charms of novelty.
( Laughter) Our policy is well known. We have a strong view
which I think most people in Australia share that the security
of South East Asia against communist attack Is of enormous
importance not only to the countries affected directly but to
ourselves In this part of the world. ( Applause) And therefore
we bave engaged ourselves in a variety of directions.
In the first place, we entered into my own
Government entered into the ANZUS pact with the United States
and with New Zealand and under that we have a great cloak of
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protection under certain circumstances cast over us by the
United States of America. We entered into the South East
Asian Treaty, a treaty in which we are partners with Pakistan,
with Thailand, with the Philippines, with Great Britain, with
the United Statesl with France, with New Zealand. Under this
treaty, we have al undertaken to do what we can to protect
certain protocol countries, as they have been called, against
communist attack and one of them is South Vietnam, so there
we are4 South Vietnam one of the countries in effect assured
of our support under this treaty, provided she was willing or
prepared to ask us to come in because that was a condition
right through. Well she asked the United States of America, she
asked us, We are there, in a very small way, because we have
major commitments at this moment in and around Malaysia but
we are -there, we are contributing. The United States Is there
in a very substantial way with large forces of all arms and with
supplies and all the equipment that is needed to resist the
communist aggression. Now ladies and gentlemen, we are told
that the United States ought not to be there. In other words,
we are told that South Vietnam ought to be abandoned that the
communists from the north, the Vietminh, should be allowed to
come down and join up with these Vietcong pockets of communists
in the south and establish South Vietnam as a communist country,
a communist country ultimately dominated by the most aggressive
form of communism which is Chinese comirunism today*
Now, ladies and gentlemen what would happen then?
See, America is out. America has listened to the words of'the
boys outside and they go home. ( Interjector " Were they
communists?") I daresay, I thought their labels looked like
it, didn't you? ( Applause) But I wouldn't know , Ididn't
recognise any of them personally. ( Laughter) But, ladies anid
gentlemen, let us assume this " America Go Home. America Keep
Out. America Don't Have Any More To Do With This Business."
So Vietnam falls, What happens to Thailand? You have only to
look at the map when you go home. What happens to Thailand with
that long exposed communist frontier that would develop? What
happens to Malaya? What happens to Malaysia caught between two
fires? From a point of view of ordinary commonsense and of'
instinct of self-preservation, I can't understand how anybody
could say that the Americans ought to go out.
Let me put it in another way to you. Why are the
Americans there? ( Interjector " For profit") " For profit"
says some goat. ( Laughter) They are making a tremendous profit
out of being in South Vietnam; it is costing them thousands of
millions of dollars and they get nothing back. If that is profit
well you have introduced a new word to the dictionary, that jis all
I can say. ( Applause) It is easily summarised, ladies and gentlemen. They
are not there for money. They are spending money, vast sums.
They are not there in order to avoid exposing their own people
to risk because they have thousands of their own troops at risk
every day. They are not there because they have enormous business
interests in South Vietnam. Anybody who knows anything about
the economics of that country would know how absurd this is.
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Well why are they there? If they are not there
serving any selfish American interest, and that is quite
demonstrable then they must be there and I believe they
are there because this is, in the finest sense of the word,
an altruistic effort on behalf of free people wherever they
live. ( Applause) Sir, I am delighted to know that when my friend,
Mr. Askin, becomes Premier ( Applause) and his colleagues become
Ministers we will enjoy the support of people who on these
great matters have no ambiguities in their mind and no hesitations
in their souls. So my last word to you, because my time is up,
my last word to you, ladies and gentlemen is Go on in
strength, go on with confidence, go on with enthusiasm and you
will, beyond all question, win on May 1st.