PM Transcripts

66/ 078
FOR PRESS: P. M. No. 46/ 1966
MR. CAL1, TELL'S TEIEVISIOU" DEBATE
Comment by the Prime M4inister, Harold Holt
This is the latest bright idea in Mr. Caiwell's
series of qdite frantic attempts to stem Labor's ebbing tide.
Not surpriSingly, he seems rattled to find that, at this stage
of his leadership, support f or the ALP, as revealed in the two
latest public opinion polis, has fallen to what must ' be about the
lowest point in his Party's history.
There is no novelty in a Leader of the Opposition
trying to provide himself with an enlarged audience by luring
a Prime Minister into public debate from the same platform.
He receives from me the same answer that Prime Ministers from
his own Party have given when similarly challenged.
The need is not so much for debate as clarification
of the alternative policies Labor would offer.
The Government's policies on Viet Nam and national
service were fully debated in the recently concluded session of
Parliament. There were almost daily exchanges on the issues
between the Leader of the Opposition and myself. W~ e have both
expressed ourselves at length, since then, at public meetings,
including some held in the current Queensland election campaign.
There is no ambiguity about the ' Government's
policies which have been supported by all members of the
Government Parties in both Houses of the Parliament. The
obscurities are to be found in the conflicting versions of
policy from Mr. Calwell himself and his understandably bewildered
oaucus,
CANBERRA, 27th May, 1966