FIRST CONVENTION OF THiE YOUNG AUSTRALIAN
FOUNDATION
WILSON HALL, UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE,
MELBOURNE. 11TH MARCHi-1966.
Speech by the Prime Minister, Mr. Harold Holt
Good Evening to you all, and that includes our dissident group
outside. This actually makes me feel very much at home because
the first campaign I ever took part in was in the electorate of
Yarra against the then Labor Prime Minister, or former Prime
Minister, Mr. Scullin, and I remember that night, which was in
the middle of the depression, coming to the hall and finding
that nobody there was prepared to hear what I had to say.
And thinking about tonight as I came along here, I marvelled at
the contrast in circumstances which this generation faces
compared with the generation of which I was a part in my own
university days at this institution. Now I don't know whether
our friends outside arc--students of the university. I hope
not because thoy have not yet learnt that noise is no effective
answer to argument not logical argument, in any event. And
I would hope that as time goes on because my stamina for these
matters, assisted by these mechanical devices is very much
greater than theirs they will learn a few things which will
be of interest to them.
Now ladies and gentlemen, I suggest that you ignore
the people outside and just concentrate on what I have to put
to you because you can hear me and, thanks to this instrument,
I can get over to you, and I came here tonight to speak to you,
or those who are willing to hear what I might have to say.
And I thought quite hard about accepting this invitation because
it came in the first week of the Parliament. It was a particularly
heavy week and normally I'd have been disposed to say,
" Sorry, there's rather too much to do this week. Perhaps we
could try another time". Then I remembered back to my own days,
of which you are the corresponding generation, and I recall how
hard it was to get young people interested in the comm~ unity and
political affairs of their country. The only reason, I thir~ k,
why I came into politics when I did was that this country was
in such a state of economic disaster, a condition which nobody
of this generation, I think, could even visualise. There has
been only one month in the last sixteen years when the registrants
for employment exceeded 3 per cent., and that was in the normal
low seasonal demand month of January some years ago 3 per cent.
In the year of which I speak, the registrations were 30 per cent.
Thirty out of every 100 trade unionists registered with the
various unions were unable to get any regular paid employment
at that time. And every generation has to face up to its own
set of problems and challengus and we in my day had to face up
to the problem of economic organisation. We had just come out
of a war, and the dislocation of war was still upon us and the
clouds of the next world war were gathering ominously above us,
but we learn through our expceriences how to master, very
considerably, the economic problems.
It's true we have fluctuations. People get concerned
about recessions as they see them appearing or disappearing in
the economic field, but here we have had a remarkable experience
going on now for the best part of twenty years in which Australia
has known this full employment situation, this condition of what
is termed in modern times, the affluent society. That doesn't
mean that your generation doesn't have the same set of tough
problems which you have to face. And it is a heartening thing
to somebody who has given more than half his own life in the
service of the National Parliament to find that a new generation
of young Australians is prepared to come together as you are in
this organisation and face up to the possibilities of service
which lie open to you, face up to the task of analysing as calmly
and sensibly as you can, the national problems, those affecting
you directly, those in which you can play some part in helping
your country along. And because I believe that is the essence
of the objectives that you have outlined for this organisation,
I felt that here was something to be encouraged and here was an
organisation which could at least feel from its foundation that
it enjoyed the warm approval and commendation of the government
of its own country. And so I am here to demonstrate that.
I am also here to tell you something which I found of
interest to myself and that is that there are so many of you.
I don't know whether you realise it but more than 50 per cent.
of the Australian population is 30 years of age or under, and
so the young Australian represents the majority of Australians,
and it is about time, I thought, you saw another Prime Minister.
Most of you have only seen one in your lifetime. I suppose I
am now the second. I can assure you that you will have an
opportunity to see a third. I have no intention of establishing
any endurance records despite the encouragement of Herb Elliott's
presence with us here tonight. In fact, I had looked rather
enviously at Herb because he combines in himself, speed, stamina
and lightness on his feet. Now what better combination could
a politician hope for than that set of qualities, but while Ican't
guarantee that I shall remain for any length of time
corresponding to that of Sir Robert, nor would you probably be
wishing that, I find it difficult to predict at the moment whom
my successor will be.
Here we are concerned with the great problem of which
we have had an echo from the attendance of our friends outside.
I have no desire to convert this gathering into a political
occasion but I think that you are entitled, having regard to the
obligations that the Government imposes upon you, to hear an
explanation at first hand as to why these things have been
believed to be necessary, and so while there are a few other
matters I would like to mention to you tonight, perhaps it
would be useful if before we get the whole issue clouded with
emotion anC political propaganda, I could just give a few facts
about this issue first of Australia's participation in the
campaign in South Viet Nam, and secondly to tell you the reasons
why we found it necessary to adopt a particular method of service
in relation to the army and the incidence of this, how it works
out. I say I believe this to be necessary because I have little
doubt in my own mind that given the facts, the Australian community
is quite capable of coming to a sound and sensible decision,
but if people refuse to study the facts, then who can foretell
the kind of decision that they in their public judgments will
find themselves coming to.
I don't think that anybody who has made a study of
contemporary history could really be in much doubt or remain
there for a long time about the issue in South Viet Nam. I
know that there are some people who profess that this is a civil
war and that the rest of us should keep out of it and let the
citizens decide this issue for themselves. But anybody who
speaks in those terms has either q~ jpletely ignored or forgotten
contemporary history in relation/ Malaya, Korea, Taiwan and
various other parts of Asia which even at this moment are currently
feeling the pressures and probes of the Communist expansion.
Even India, peace-loving India, is finding itself at this moment
confronted on its boundaries with thrusting Communist pressures.
Even in Thailand, which offers no threat to China or any interest
of China's, I learned from the mouth of the Prime Minister of
that country only a week or so ago that they are at the present
time under pressure in their north, in their east, and in their
west from Chinese communist expansion. And when one knows
these things and has all the evidence of what occurred in Korea,
the fact that but for the strength of American resistance, Taiwan
woulO have been overrun by the Chinese communists also. And
now here in this critical area of South East Asia, a great
struggle, a struggle involving your freedom and my freedom and
the freedom of free peoples everywhere throughout the world is
occurring. Now, I would have thought that this was plain enough;
whatever one might decide as to what ought to be done about it,
the broad fac* t-s surely are plain enough and the evidence surely
has accumulated sufficiently to convince the most doubting that
whether you like it or not or approve of it or not, the thrust
is the thrust of the communist movement inspired and directed
from Peking and carrying through its campaigning the ideological
challenge of Peking, the challenge of its philosophy of world
domination for a world that is given to communism.
Now we can understand people differing from our own
ideas. We happen to believe in the virtues of a free society
and of people having the maximum freedom available to them under
laws of their own making. You and I enjoy that kind of democracy.
Our friends outside here enjoy that kind of democracy. otherwise
they wouldn't be here tonight. And a robust democracy doesn't
discard or repress its minorities. It gives them the opportunity
for expression and so I, ladies and gentlemen, believe that as
the facts unfold, the Australian people will realise as I am sure
they do now, the essential character of the struggle that is
going on in South Viet Nam. Have we all forgotten quite as
quickly as would seem to be the case with some that this country
and the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries had to
maintain a campaign for, I think it was, 15 years in Malaya in
order to suppress Communist guerrilla activity in that country.
If you go to Malaya, or Malaysia as it is called at the present
time, you will find a well-ordered community, a people functioning
under a Parliamentary democracy, steadily improving their own
economic and social standards. Now this country was saved, as
South Korea was saved, as Taiwan has been saved from communist
domination because there were people who were prepared to join
with those who were under threat, who were facing aggression,
people who were prepared to join with them in resisting that
aggression.
And you~ know, there are people even in this country
who have plenty of cause to be grateful to the United States
for the defence given to freedom throughout the world but who
either refuse to see that it was the critical United States aid
in Korea when the United States stood alone which saved Korea;
but for the United States' willingness to resist agression, if
it came to Taiwan, there would be no Taiwan, or Formosa as we
used to name it, and there would be, had America not stood firm
in its resolution, no South Viet Nam.
Australia has a proud tradition of service beyond its
own shores in the cause of freedom. In two world wars, this
country sustained nearly half a million casualties, fighting
for the issue of freedom in those great contests. We lost more
men in casualties, killed from war action, in the First World
War, than did the whole of the United States. So we don't
take an isolationist view of life. Where the threat exists,
there the threat must be resisted and we have joined freely and
willingly those of like mind to ourselves in resisting that kind
of threat. And this is why we are in South Viet Nam. We
believe that if South Viet Nam were to fall, it would only be a
matter of time before the whole of South-East Asia fell and
Australia came directly under physical threat itself. These
are not fanciful beliefs but they are the views of the most
experienced men in the public life of your country, acting on
the most expert advice that they can secure from their
diplomatic sources, from their military sources and from the
senior administrative personalities who conduct the government
of this country through the Departments of State of this country.
And I ask you to bear that in mind as you gather in some
newspaper editorial and are asked to accept the judgment of
that particular paper. The judgment we ask you to accept is
the judgment of yoar freely-elected representatives, many of
them with many years of experience of government, acting, I
repeat, on the best advice they can secure and the best
information they can obtain, and they being in a better position
than anybody else in this country to secure that advice and to
obtain that information.
Now we in Australia have remained secure. Secure far
more so than most other countries of the world because of the
alliances to which we are a party. We entered, some years ago,
into an alliance we and New Zealand with the United States
of America. It is a mutual pact against aggression on any one
of us, and so long as that pact endures, Australia enjoys the
guarantee of its security against attack by the forces and
strength of the mightiest power in the history of mankind.
And when we know this, and we know that the issue
which the Americans are facing in South Viet Nam is an issuie
which involves Australia even more immediately and directly than
the United States of America itself which isn't under the same
physical threat that we would be, then I wonder what our critics
have in mind as an alternative policy for this country. I have
yet to hear it. I have yet to hear a clear, coherent alternative
put to the policy being pursued by the government of this
country. And who do our noisy friends outside expect to do
the fighting for Australia? Do they want to fight to the last
Crop of American blood or do they expect Australia to carry its
own share of obligation in resisting these challenges which
involve us as they involve our Allies in this great cause.
And I wouldI have very much mistaken the generation of young
Australians to which you belong if I concludeOd that this
generation had no wish to play its own part in the defence of
its own country andL for the common cause of freedom throughout
the world. But it was so unlike the generations of earlier
Australians who gave their service in meeting these challenges
that it wasn't prepared to face up to the obligations which
came to it in its own day and age. Well, I don't believe
that for a moment. I believe that this generation of young
Australians and I don't say this because I am at such a
gathering tonight; I have said it publicly on more than one
occasion I say that this generation, I believe, is the finest
generation this country has produced. You are a better
educated lot, you are a better trained lot, and in many respects,
despite current evidence to the contrary, I think you are a
better mannered lot than my own generation at the university.
But now, having just said something in outline of the
issue there, let me take up this matter for a few minutes, of
the National Service obligation. This country has fortunately
not found it necessary in the past to call on people conscripted
into service in time of war except, of course, for the limited
operation in the Second World War to a defined area around
Australia, and in both the other Services, in the Air Force and
the Navy, we have secured all the volunteers necessary. This
is rather contradictory to those who say that there can't be
very much interest in the issue facing the Government at this
time. Both these services are up to their complement, working
on a voluntary basis of enlistment.
Now with the Army, although the conditions of service
in the Army and the pay are by no means unattractive indeed
in the lower paid ranks of the Army I believe I am correct in
saying that the rates are the highest of any army in the world,
not excluding the United States of America and it is of interest
to know, and I report this to you, that our Army personnel have
been displaying a very high rate of re-engagement. They enlist
for six years and they have an option of re-engagement at the end
of that time, and 70 per cent. of those who have come to the end
of their period of service have offered to remain on on a reengagement.
So there is not a picture there of a people
dissatisfied with their lot or finding conditions outside so much
more attractive that they hasten to leave the Service. On the
contrary. But the Army I think very properly has insisted
on a very high standard of physical condition and mental capacity
on the part of those offering to join the Army, and you will have
heard of the very high rate of rejection, so that I think only
about one in five of those volunteering has actually been
enlisted and trained in the Army.
Now in order to maintain the strength in what is not an
expeditionary force in time of war in the sense we knew it in
World War I and II when people enlisted for the duration and had
no idea of how long they would be away for, and in the result were
away for four or five years at a time, many of them, the
obligation of National Service is clear and precise and its
termination is clearly known by the National Service trainee when
he is taken into the Army. on the expert advice of our Chief
of Staf f of the Army, we were told at the time that this was
the oniy effective way in which we could get the numbers of men
of the right quality for our own regular army service. And the
Government took its decision very responsibly. We made its
implications quite clear.
When Mr. Calwell says now he wants a referendum on
this issue, he overlooks the fact that at the time the bill was
introduced into the Parliament, the conditions of service were
made amply clear, and so he said at the S-,-nate election which
followed, " We'll make that the issue of the election" 3 and the
election was largely fought around that particular issue. So
the Australian public has been well aware of what is involved
in this. But propaganda can create a quite misleading picture.
I heard over the news tonight for example that some 81,000
registrants were involved this year in the scheme. Nobody went
on to say that the total to be taken in to the Army from this
80,000-odd would be just over 8,000. In other words, one in
ten approximately of those of that particular age group, would
be finally taken into the ranks of the Army. Nobody went on
to say that so far as the obligation to serve in South Viet Nain
is involved, the total force to be sent is under 4,500. The
National Service component would be of the order of 30 per cent.
In other words, out of more than 80,000 young men of twenty at
this time, not more than about 1,350 would be in service in
South Viet Nain at any one time, and the period of service being
in total two years and the period of training occupying from six
to nine months, the tour of duty in South Viet Namn being limited
to one year, the National Servicemen there at any one time would
be of the order that I have mentioned, just about 1/ 60th or
1/ 70th part of the total of young men of that age group and a
period of service limited in the result to one year in that
particular theatre.
Now, nobody likes a policy of this kind, of course,
but having regard to the issues for one's own country, can it
be said that an Australian Government is placing an unduly heavy
burden for the security of the nation upon any particular
section of its citizens. However, that is our view of the
fairness of it and of the limitations of numbers and of period
of service imposed under the scheme and I hope that these facts
will remain clear in the minds at least of people like yourselves
when the propaganda and the emotion which will be such a feature
of the coming months has served to obscure in the minds of most
people just what is involved.
Now I really feel I should apologise to you for spending
so much time on these particular matters but they are of great
concern to your own generation and they are of tremendous public
interest to Australians as a whole, but that wasn't what I
expected I would be talking about to you when I first accepted
your invitation because I felt that here was an opportunity to
explore together for a few minutes the other directions in which
a young generation of Australians can these days make an
effective contribution to the national welfare and to the national
security because while we have been talking about the grimmer
side, the military side of facing the threats we see around us,
there is a positive side to the opportunities which lie ahead
in which an Australian nation can serve the area of which we are
a part, an area in which Australia is finding itself increasingly
of growingT prestige and stature and of growing interest to the
countries around us. And this interest proceeds partly from
the fact that we have had to face up to a tough job of
development and most of the countries to our north are
themselves going through periods of development of their own
resources and struggling with the fundamentals of economic
organisation. Now they see here a country of less than 12
million people who have built up one of the highest standards
of living in the world, a country in which less than 12 million
people are developing a continent the size of the United States,
and they are turning to us for guidance in various ways. We
get a request for technicians and professional people in all
manner of fields. At one time we were asked to supply, for
example, the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Malaysia. We get
medical teams in the field, technicians going up to help with
agricultural ( next portion lost while tapes were being changed)
increasingly services by intelligent young Australian men
and women who are going into the public service of Papua and New
Guinea, helping to build the country up with standards of
education, help that will enable the people to lead civilised
lives in a modern well-organised community.
And so there are these fields of service open for the
young Australian. We are, as I have stressed, and is so evident
to you from your own studies, increasingly involved these days
in the affairs of Asia and we have to learn to live sensibly in
a friendly and helpful way with people who have different habits
of life from ourselves, different attitudes, different religious
faiths, people who in some ways are very unlike us but in other
ways share with us the great objectives in terms of human
principle that we have established here in our own country, and
so here in our own day anO generation, we face our own particular
challenge. In my day, we looked to the United Kingdom and the
strength of the British Navy. People thought in terms of the
British Isles as home. Here, while our affection remains from
the lands of our kith and our kin for most of us that has been
the situation we have now realised that Australia has a
national independent entity of its own and that Australia faces
problems and has obligations which are quite unlike anything
the earlier generations of Australians had to meet. And so
we can't offer you a tremendous amount by way of guidance because
a precedent hasn't been able to serve us for the kind of
situations we now face. But what we and I speak now for the
older generation of Australians do offer to you is a comradeship
together as we face the difficulties and at the same time the
fantastic possibilities that we see ahead of a growing nation.
Over the next ten years, there will be vast mineral
projects opened up on this continent that will focus the
attention of the world on what is going on in Australia. We
have a vast treasure store of basic minerals in quantity excelling
that certainly of most other countries and in some instances
ranking among the highest sources of supply in the world our
bauxite, our iron ore, which up to a few years ago were not even
known to us for their existence. And as these things open up,
as our own great resources expand, we in Australia will be
sharing in the growth of a nation assuming an increasingly
important part in the affairs of the world. Even today we
have an influence out of all relationship to our numbers and
our material strength. We can take pride in that. It is an
inheritance that the service of Australians i'ho have gone
before us have built for our enjoyment and for our strength and
you in turn must accept the obligations as you accept the
opportunities of this wonderful country in which we live.
I would hope from time to time to be able to follow
the development of the work of this organisation but at least
your objectives commend themselves so highly to us that you have
the warmest good wishes of the members of my own Government for
your future success, and we hope from this Foundation there will
be a growing body of responsible Australian men and women able
to play an increasing part in the various fields of national
leadership, in the politics of the nation, in the professions,
in the public service and in the economic and community life
of Australia. It is to the people that you represent here
tonight that we look to carry on the tasks and the opportunities
which open up such a great and promising vista for all of us to
enjoy together the privilege of Australian nationhood.