FEDERAL RURAL CONVENTION
" THE MAXIMUM USE OF AUSTRALIA' S RURAL RESOURCES"' LlIAy.
Sponsored by the Federal Rural Committee of the
Liberal ary of Australia
AT WAGIA 9AGGA. N. S. W. 23RD JUNE, 1966
Speech by the Prime Minister. Mr. Harold Holt
Mr. Chairman Senator Sim, Your Worship the Mayor Parliamentary
and Ministerial Colleagues and Distinguished Guestcs and Visit', rs
Ladi---s and Gentlemen: First, Mr. Chairman, may I, through you, thank very
warmly the Mayor of this historic city of Ylagga for his very
pleasant welcome to us all. We wanted to come to Wagga for reasons,
I think, which can be readily established-, but it is nice to know
that the people of Wagga also wanted us to be with them, and you,
Mr. Mayor, have conveyed in the spirit of hospitality which is one
of the happy features of Australian life, that welcome to us. A
warm welcome on a crisp Wagga morning makes conditions entirely
comfortable for us; at least we feel well disposed to you and to
each other. I will have a good deal to say to you on the substance
of the Conference. It's not usual for me to speak on rural matters
and I am rather enjoying the novelty of it when I come to it. But
before I do so, I hope you will feel it appropriate for me to make
some reference to the dreadful occurrence in which the Leader of the
Opposition was so painfully involved.. I do so, conscious of the
limitations which are imposed on one at a time when proceedings,
court proceedings, are pending against a charged person, but I feel
bound in my responsibility as head of the National u'overnment to
make some comment and indicate some views to you.
First, I am sure I spoke for all right-thinking
Australians when I condemned the episode and expressed our
sympathy for Mr.. Calwell personally, when I pointed to the fact
that we in Australia had a democratic tradition singularly free
from episodes of violence. But the episode has at least served
the purpose of concentrating our minds not only on this particular
incident but on those matters which associate themselves with it
in our minds, and I am going to speak very briefly, for I have no
wish to intrude unduly into the work of the conference, but we do
in Australia zealously guard the democratic tradition of coming e ./ 2
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% together,. exchanging our views sometimes dissenting, sometimes
criticising, sometimes applauding, but feeling free to do so in an
atmosphere, however turbulent it may become in the exchange of words,
has in the past been happily free of this aspect of violenoce so
strilingly demonstrated to us in this last couple of days. And I
suppose in any community, whatever precautions are taken, whatever
public attitudes exist, one can't eliminate or a community can't
eliminate entirely the danger that people perhaps emotionally
disturbed or in some other way having lost control temporarily of
their normal restraints, involve themselves in episodes of this sort.
But what the Parliament must do, I believe, is examine carefully the
question whether there has been significant changes in the Australian
situation which should call for some review by us, and I believe that
there have been, that they are identifiable. We must face the fact
that we have a more diversified community than at earlier points of our
history, that there will be people in our community who come from
countries where political violence is not as uncommon a matter as
happily it has been here, that these days we do have a much more
active interest in public affairs on the part of young people who are
in employment and who have resources of their own and who have rights
and liberties of their own. to safeguard. They in turn may b~ e
influenced by methods which in countries neighbouring to us have been
employed by young people to demonstrate vigorously, and at times
violently, against government policies. And I think we shall find,
if we make some reyiew of these matters, that the answer is not to
be found in putting in another policeman or two to a public hall
or having some sort of security protection imposed on prominent
public personages, but it is to be found in community C-ttitudes, the
judgments which individuals in the community form of the conduct of
those around them, and I don't elaborate because that is not the
purpose of our gathering here. I merely say by way of illustration
I think we have as a community to decide when, for example, a public
demonstration passes beyond the border of legitimate protest into a
process of harassment and intimidation, and other examples, of course,
could be quoted from contemporary experience.
I would hope that I shall be able to consult, not only
with my own senior colleagues, but with them, in turn, with the
Leader of the Opposition and some of his senior colleagues because
the implications of an episode such as this rise above the normal
party division which exists in this country and relates to the welfare
of the nation as a whole. In the meantime, a speedy recovery to the
Leader of the Opposition and may he sustain no abiding injury as a
result of this unhappy episode.
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Well, now, ladies and gentlemen, I turn to the business
of ffhe conference and my own participation in it, and I say how
timely I think this conference is, You, Mr. Chairman, were good
enough to say that I put myself to some inconvenience to be here
at this time, I am here because my own judgment is that the subject
matters that you are dealing with rank amongst the most important
that concern public men and women in this country.
The whole welfare, prosperity, security of Australia
rests squarely upon the health and vitality and prosperity of the
primary industries of Australia. This is fundamental to our Tery
existence. No good us talking about the manufacturinLg industries
if we haven't got the means of importing the requirements of
manufacturing industries. No good us talking about improved social
standards and the services that one man can provide for another
in order to make life more agreeable -andmore than 50 per cent. of
our work force are employed in services of one kind or another to
the rest of the community if we haven't got the means which an
export income produces for us to carry these things into fulfilme-nt.
The manufacturing industries have a rather more glamorous
atmosphere and public presentation about them, certainly in the
years since the Second W~ orld WHar, and we have all welcomed the
quite spectecular increase which has occurred in Australian
manufacturing industry over that period. Rather interesting and
surprising to discover that proportionately to our population we
have as many people engaged in manufacturing industries as are to
be found in the United States of America, and they number as a
proportion of the work force some 27 per cent, or three times the
current percentage of the work force to be found in our primary
production. Understandably, therefore, the manufacturing
industries have occupied a good deal of the public stage and of
the press. The incentives given to increase exports of manufactured
products, the urgings upon the manufacturers and others to increase
their exports so that they can supplement the earnings of primary
industry, these things, too, have occupied prominence in the public
mind. But we must never forget that for as far ahead as we can
see, Australia's principal reliance for the export income which
enables us to buy the raw materials and the equipment to keep
secondary industries going and the wherewithal to maintain an
Australian community in a state of prosperity and with a high
standard of living, this aepends on the success we achieve in the
conduct of the great primary industries of this country. That is,
I repeat a fundamental consideration for any Australian Parliament
and f or a gathering such as this.
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Having stated that, it doesn't produce any sense of timeliness
or urgency about a matter which has always been with us. But there
are particular aspects which do point up this timeliness.
The effect on employment I have mentionedand the effect on
the manufacturer because of our imports into this country..... it is
calculated that just on 80 per cent. or four-fifths of what we bri ng
in are imports necessary for the conduct of our manufacturing
industries, either in the foi-m of raw materials, semi-processed
matter, equipment or some other gradient of those classificnations.
And therefore if we are to increase our manufacturing capacity, and
we certainly wish to do that, it can only be done so on the basis of
an increasing export income.
It has a bearing directly on our capacity to carry through
the immigration programme because modern trends have provided
fewer employment opportunities. 0n the land, as you knowincreased
mechanisation has resulted in the percentage of the work force
dropping from 12 per cent, a few years ago to 9 per cent, today,
and that trend looks like persisting.
It is in the manufacturing industries whiich employ three
' bimes that percentage that work opportunities are likely to be founJ
more largely for the new labour coming on to the market, whether
from our own natural increase or from the migrants who come to this
country. Here again, unless we can go ahead with an increase in
our primary production, we are going to run into trouble there.
Itis timely because there are uncertainties at the present
time about the volume of capital inflow we can expect into Australia.
There are restraints indicated in the United States and in the United
Kingdom, and while it is not yet clear how substantially they will
affect the Australian position, we would be foolish to go along on
any casual assumption that there will be indefinitely for us a flow
of capital into this country sufficiently large to bridge the gap
which has shown up in recent years between our export receipts and
our export payments.
The other factor which I think makes it timely is that for
the first time in perhaps twenty years, certainly a considerable
period of years, a substantial area of Australia has been subjected,
and remains subjected to the ravages of drought, and this has caused
more hard thinking about what can be done either to avoid drought
consequences in areas where the water can be conserved, or to mitigate
the effects of drought by appropriate policies of silage or fodder
conservation and other matters of that sort. a a a
Therefore, the incidence of drought and its effects bring
a conference of this kind appropriately to being.
Now, here again, we have seen what the primary industries
mean to the prosperity of the nation as a whole. The drop in farm
earnings from the effects of drought has radiated its influence
through other sections of the economy. If there is a quietness in
certain areas of the Australian economy today beyond that we would
wish to see, then you can trace influences flowing from the diought
very considerably to the effect which has emerged there.
Finally, there is a timeliness, if not the same degree of
urgency in giving some concentrated consideration to what Australia
should be doing, what we should be planning for the enormous
increase in demand for our primary production that we can reasonably
anticipate between now and the end of this century. We are
strategically placed in an area of the world where one-third of the
human population is within ready service of goods that can be
despatched from this country Fifteen hundred million people
of Asia, quite apart from the markets we have established in other
parts of the world, and the demographers predict that by the end of
the century on present population trends, wie could see a doubling
of the population there.
Already Australia is feeling some of the consequences of
this growth in population, associated at the same time as it is
with some improvement in the capacity to import in these countries,
As for example, Japan builds up its industrial strength, so you
find that it is looking for larger volumes of foodstuffs, of raw
materials; the Westernising influences on Japanese life are
influencing people to eat different types of food vvhich we are
capable bf supplying. This has lead to a quite dramatic increase
in the figures of trade between our owin country and Japan.
I think they might usefully be put to you.
As recently as 1958/ 59, Japan purcnhased goods to a value
of $ 204M. from this rountry. In 1964/ 65, that t2O4M. had grown
to S442M. If we take the movement of major export items to Asia
generally, we find that in 1964/ 65, we sold S284M. worth of wool,
$ 180M. worth of wheat and $ 44M. value of metals, S38M. value of
sugar. Now these are markets which even in comparatively recent
times we would have regarded as comparatively small receivers of
Australian exports, and we are, I believe, merely on the threshold
of our potentialities there.
Now, I have indicated a number of reasons why a conference
.' of this sort is timely. I have, I hope, established that the
primary industries are of fundamental importance to the progress 9 0 O/ IC
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of the Australian economy and the welfare of our people.
How are the primary industries themselves measuring up
to the requirements imposed upon them? Here again a few figures
may be illuminating. I just take two of our principal items bout they could be
said to be generally illustrative. In 1948/ 49, we produced
1,050 million pounds weight of wool. By% 1964/ 65, that had grown
to 1,794 million pounds.-Wheat 1948/ 49 191 million bushels;
1964/ 65 369 million bushels. These are impressive figures.
Without that increase in production, Australia could not have
sustained a migration programme, could not have maintained the
standards which we currently enjoy today. And this is not by any
means an end point quite obviously because the requirements of
the future make the accomplishments of today look like only a pale
beginning of what lies ahead.
I don't know how accurate the projections can be said to
be but I know that the view is taken inside the Commonwealth
Departments that we shall need by a comparatively short time ahead
of us to reach an export income of just on $ 5,010M., and this
is assuming Alistralian population grow. th projected on a reasonable
basis related to current movements, and an increase in the requirements
of Australian manufacturing production as it, in turn,
proceeds to develop.
Now the UJovernment has not been, of course, unaware of
these deyelopments and requirements, and I hope ' you will agree that
in a great variety of ways, we have sought to encourage the favourable
output from the primary industries which has been reflected in the
figuxres that I have quoted to you. We have in more recent times
a& opted new policy measures provision of long-term rural
finance, long a goal sought by the primary industries; we have
adopted towards the relief of drought a more liberal, approach than
I believe any government previously in the history of Australia.
Our approach this time was not on any mere basis of sort of
temporary rei~ ief to those unfortunately afflicted. Our approach
was on the basis of an economic measure designed to sustain demand,
to sustain activity in areas which had experienced the ravages of
drought, and this innovation of attitude and policy was certainly
welcomed by the Premiers of New South Wales and Queensland, and
I believe has been welcomed by those who speak for the primary
producers of this country. It has certainly been welcomed by the
farmers and graziers directly affected by the adverse consequences
of drought. But when you look down the list and I am not going to
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occupy your time today in too much g. etail on it, you see the
wealth of measures adopted over recent years and in the past to
encourage the growth of healthy, efficient, competitive Australian
industry: The work of the OSIRO, the work of the Development
Bank, the various schemes of industry research, the preferential
arrangements made under the taxation structure, giving accelerated
write-off s in respect of farm improvements in these and a
variety of other ways, the Government has sought to encourage
production and to keep the growth of primary industry consistent
with the needs of an expanding nation.
This is the vital task, certainly a task which we could
only ignore at the danger to our national stability, and, indeed,
reaching through to our capacity to provide the resources for
adequate national defenoe.
And so, ladies and gentlemen, the substance of wxhat you
are discussing here today is basic to the welfare of the Australian
community. You will have those expert in a variety of different
directions to talk to you on particular aspects, and at tho
conclusion of the discussion, my olleague, Senator Gorton, who
assists me in the work of the Prime Minister's Department on
education matters as well as the handling of his own portfolio,
will be giving his contribution by way of summation.
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You may have felt perhaps that/ talking in these rather
general terms, and a little coldly in respect of the statistics
that have been quoted that T, personally, have little far'. iliarity
with what goes on on a typical Australian farm. Wiell, I am glad
to be able to say that I can plead rather more knowledge than that.
Most~ f my boyhood holidays, right up to the time of young manhood
was spent on my grandfather's farm not very far up from where we
are, a little place called Nubba, which is ten miles from Harden
and Murrumburrah, which towns are probably well kn~ own to many
of the people of this area, and it was a Tery valuable apprenticeship
because it vas a mixed farm. It had everything on it but
not much of anything. There were some sheep, a few cattle, there
were pigs, there was an orchard, there were fowls, and the whole
gamut of a small mixed farm production. I used to ride in each
morning for the mail a couple of miles, and then round up the cows
in the evening, and occasionally take a hand at extracting the
milk from the cows in the evening. But quite apart from recalling
these days as amongst the happiest of a lifetime and recalling
that with all its heartaches, anxieties and difficulties, the life
on the land is, I believe, the most richly rewarding of almost any
that could be found in our community. I, at the same time, do
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recall the periods of difficulty when we knew drought and when we
could see before us the physical effects, the ravages of diought.
I remember developing some early knowledge of matters anatomical
when there was the weekly slaughtering of the sheep which had to
serve. us as food for the rest of the week. It was lamb's fry the
next morning, chops the day after and salted mutton by the end of
the week for the last two or three days. And so, ladies and
gentlemen, I assure you that when those who speak for primary
industry come to me and put their case, this does not fall on
unreceptive ears nor is there any lack of sympathy or, I hope,
understanding of the problems which those who engage in our
primary industries have to face.
Now here, in the Rural Committee of the Liberal Party, you
have a good illustration of the way our democratic system works
inside our own party structure. There is no dictation to a
parliamentarian from any outside body as to the policy lines he
is to adopt. There is sensible, well-informed discussion, and
arising from that discussion, there are recommendations which come
to us in a Coalition Cabinet. And I believe that the healthy
state of Australian primary industry, as reflected in the figures
that I have mentioned, owes much to the public-spirited work of the
men and women who comprise the Committee inside our own party
orgLanisgation and, of course, who interest themselves in these
matters in the party of our coalition. But our own Rural
Committee has been a strong body virtually throughout the life of
the Liberal Party. It came into existence, I think, Mr. Chairman
in about 1948 or 1949, and the Government has been greatly
influenced over the subsequent years by the thought, the painstaking
thought, the experience and judgment of members of the Rural
Committee which has gone into the recommendations which they have
submitted to us. with
I believe that from this conference,/ tne wealth of talent
that you will be able to drawn on as your discussions proceed,
there will be further valuable recommendations, and I can assure
you that there can be few ' bodies in Australia whose views would
rank more influentially and highly with the Cabinet of this
country than those of the Rural Committee of the Liberal Party.
And so I wish you well in your efforts together, and I
assure you that the product of your thinking will receive the
most earnest consideration of the members of my Government.
I think I have a formal duty before me in declaring the
conference open, so anything that has been said up to this point
of time can be ignored. From now on, officiallythe conference
is open, and I have pleasure in so declaring.