ADDRLES BY THE ACTING . PRIME-MINISTER,
MINISTER FOR TRADE AND INDUSTRY,
AND LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN COUNTRY PARTY,
MR.. JOHN McEWEN,
AT' THE FIRST ANNUAL MEETING OF THE
CANBERRA-QUEANBEYAN BRANCH OF THE. COUNTRY PARTY,
CANBERRA, 6TH JULY, 1966
The Country Party took shap. as a political entity
separately in all the States at about the time of the First War.
It had different names in the different States. It was. sAme little
time. before the State organisations composed a Federation.
Organisationally the Party is still a federation of State
entities. Federal policy is..-composed by a Federal Council with a
membership from all the State : organisations and the Federal
Parliamentary Party.
In due course a common name was adopted: " Tho Australian
Country Party"; and the branch formed. here to-night will be a unit
of the N. S. W. Branch of the Australian Country Party.
Unduubtedly the Party in its formative years was composed
primarily cf farmers concerned with policies cnn. erning the interests
of farmers and their export industries,
If anyone said that the Country Party was founded on a
narrow sectinnal basis 50 years ago, I would not dispute that, but
wauld quickly point out that the economic health of this country
then, as nnw, is inseparable from the existence of healthy expanding
export industries tr earn the foreign , xchange to scrvice our national
growth. It was founded as a Specialist party. It has grown to
broad national stature without losing its 6apacity for specialist
attention to the wll--being nf the rural industries..
All that was 50 years ago.
Australia itself is not recognisablo as a nation to-day
Qomparcd with the Dominion of Australia of 50 years. ago. And as
Australia has grown and broadened, so the Country Party has grown
and broadened over the same perind.
I believe that many who are attracted to the Country Party
here to-night, and widely around Australia, are attracted because
the policies of the Party are so singularly for the growth and
strength of the Australian . economy, and peoplo.
Fifty years ago the terms " farm-products'' t-and -" export
industries" were synonymous.
We have grown with a consciousness that the self-interest
of the person engaged in the export industry coincided completely
with the self-interest of the nation, always avid to earn the maximum
foreign exchange. Constantly increasing prodiution of new wealth is
tho most essential foundation from which to apply other political
policies. The dlearly growing coales6ence between the farm Gxport
industries and non-farm export industries has been a most natural
development. The basic political philosophy of the Country Party has
always been attached to the concept of free 4nterprise and against
Socialist doctrines. This is the Gommon ground which places the
Country Party so constantly in alliance with the Liberal Party.
On the other hand, the Country Party has always wanted
the fruits of productive labour to go to the maximum extent to the
producer, and this explains the almost identity of interest between
the Country Party and the great Co-operative Groups which now handle
so much of production.
The concept of retaining strength in the hand of the
beller by combination is expressed in many different forms, but the
objective is constant: dairyfarmers or fruitgrowers combined to
establish a dairy factory or a fruit cannery to handle their own
produce a purely private arrangement. The sugar growers and the
wheatgrowers found it necessary for Governments and Legislation to
aid in their co-operative activities. The motive of retaining the
maximum value of production to the producer is the same.
This leads through to the whole complex of statutory
marketing boards or regulatory boards.
That is a glimpse of the Country Party's historic part in
attending to the well-being of primary producers. The Country Party
still slaims the specialist knowledge in this field. But, standing
further back from the picture, one discovers the extent to which
the Country Party has broadened its objertives as Australia has grown
and as our circumstances have (, hanged.
We have always been strong for adequate defence provisions;
f) r close co-operation with Britain, and natural allies. Our growth,
the diminution of British strength, the shift from Europe. alone as
the possible source nf war to include Asia in this threat, the
emergence of Communist. strength on the one hand and American might
cn the other hand have all Gontributed -to progressive broadening
of Coutntry Party policies.
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To-day, the Country Party abandons nothing of its
specialist field in relation to the rural sector, but plays an
increasingly broad and leading part in propounding policies for
the growth and strength of the Australian nation.
We support policies of alliances for military strength;
of better educatign and health services; better . ommunity services
generally; of full emplbyment and adequate so6ial services. But,
being fundamentalists at heart, we are firm in the belief that all
these poli& ies are only attainable in strength if two ossential
ingredients exist: first, a growing population, and secondly, a
smfficient foreign exchange earning to servic-e our requirements and
our ambitions. I place it as broadly as that: growing population,
migration, are mere words without job creation. Job creati-n is
synonymous with developing industrialisation, which leads in turn
to growing tertiary activity.
No ambitions in this direction can live without sufficient
foreign exehange earning, and here the farm industries are still the
backbone. Primary industry still earns more than 80% ) f our total
foreign exchange and is key to a healthy growing national economy.
Name any single aspect of policy and the Country Party
will relate it to its position in respect of strong industrial growth,
strong capacity to earn foreign exchange.
I have pointed out again and again that superficially there
could appear to be a contradiction between fast industrial growth,
which undoubtedly impscs a pressure on costs, and strong growth for
export, which, to be competitive, requires costs to be kept within
bounds. This is a problem, not a contradiction.
No one can contemplate an Australia prodominantly composed
of farmers, even if operating from a low-cost base, nor & an anyono
contemplate an Australia highly industrialised with the foreign
exchange-earning farmers squeezed out of existence. We have to
reconcile this problem.
We have to grow without stultifying the farm community,
and the Country Party believes that supporting fast economic growth
as it does it is entitled in equity to policies which will
compensate for the cost pressures imposed on the export industries.
And, quite apart from the argument of equity, I point out that there
is no future for the country if it fails to earn sufficient foreign
exchange. In 1919 we might have resisted, and probably did, industrial
development which would impese cost pressurps. To-day the Country
Party sees clearly that industrial development must go on, and
prc'poses constructive policies designed to compens-ate the export
industries for the added costs and to enable them to survive and
expand. The greatest single point of Country Party policy here is
that of support for the scientist and technologist and extension
worker; to help the wheatgrower, or dairyfarmer, or wool producer,
to bear heavier cash costs and yet experience lower unit costs by
doubling the number of sheep carried on an acre or the amount of beef
produced; doubling the amount of sugar produced per acre; getting
the wheat yield up, and the fruit yield up, and so on. Success in
this direction is the predominant explanation of rural industries'
ability to survive in a phase of growing cash costs: a 60% increase
in total agricultural production during the period of this Government
with a diminution of the rural workforce of 10% in the same period.
This efficiency has been the major offset to cash cost increasos.
There is, of course, a total complex of other policy itemshome
prices, a lower bank overdraft rate for the export industries;
a greater access to credit; a preferred access to credit; a number
of taxation concessions; a fertilizer subsidy; concessions in
freight rates; a search for markets overseas, trade treaties, trade
publicity; international commodity arrangements, special bulk sales.
Increasingly, policies of the same character are now being
devised to aid the export of manufactured products: payroll tax
rebate; the underwriting of overseas investment made in the course
of securing market opportunities; the highly specialised insurance
provision of the Export Payments Insurance Corporation. These steps
supporting manufacture at export are comparable in Country Party
thinking with the objectives in mind when a fertilizer bounty is
provided, or a trade promotional campaign mounted.
From the fast-growing economic strength of the country,
which has been supported by these policies, we are now able to
afford what w,, ould hitherto have appeared prodigious expenditures
rn defence, enormous allocations for social services, and for
education, and to help the State Governments; and for special
activities for Northern Development, such as funds provided for
the Ord, for brigalow clearing, beef roads, and very substantial
expenditure in Papua-New Guinea of taxation raised in Australia.
I am quite sure that the Australian Country Party is
broadly respected for the breadth of its policies; respected not
only here in Australia, but respected internationally, where, on
many occasions, ideas that have had their origin in this kind of
thinking are now part of Iinternattlonal -di-scussions and planning.
But, with all the strength that we can muster in our day,
we still need strrnng friends. Our close bonds with the British
people and Commonwealth countries need no documentation. The ANZJS
Treaty with the United States and New Zealand establishes a mutual
alliance between Australia and the world's most powerful military
country to-day.
We expect others to accept it that this enviable oountry
is entitled to be free from aggression, and this must result in us
lending our support to preserving the freedom of other nations against
aggression. This principle and our unbreakable bond with the United
States have combined to lead us to join with the United States in
resisting Communist aggression in South Vietnam. In human and in
international political terms, we are right in joining to protect
this free country fr 2m, Communist aggression. In practical termn, we
are right to keep the frontiers of expansive Communism as far fr'MM
our shores as possible.
In terms of our owm long-term security, the recent
deolaration by Mr. Dean Rusk that any attack upon Australia would
produce a massive American retaliation is the greatest guarantete
mf our safety in a dangerous anorld.
In the.-D policies we and our Liberal coalition partners
hold idcontinal views.
I am confident that the policies cf the Australian Gmntr* y
Party are good both in the specialist sense and, moreAimp~ r-antly,
fomr the over-all well-being f-Autralia.