SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER THE RT. HON. R. G.
MENZIES AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE CUNNINGHAM
LABORATORIES RISBANE,-MONDAY., 30TH NOVEMBER, 1291.
Dr. White and Ladies and Gentlemen, I think I ought to
follow my normal practice by naming them the Cunningham Laboratories
and declaring them open before I get taken up with my own
remarks and forget to do what I came here to do.
I never think of the C. SQI. R. O. without thinking of
two things quite detached, one from the other, though they may
be. First of all I think of money, because under Dr. White's
very distinguished predecessor, Sir Ian Clunies-Ross, one of the
great men in the history of this country and, I regret to say, no
less under him, every time I see somebody from the C. S. I. R. O.
around, money crops up. W1ell, the subject of money crops up,
and sometimes the money crops up too! Every time my colleague,
Mr. Casey, comes in to see me with a particularly thoughtful air
I don't fall into the error of thinking that he's worrying very
much, that day, about Laos or Cambodia or one of these other
trouble centres in the world; it is bound to end up by him saying
to me: " You know, we're getting a very poor deal in C. S. I.
And so millions are produced from time to time and we go
through all the motions of pretending to be annoyed, but in
reality I don't mind telling you we're very proud of the work of
C. S. I. R. O. ( Applause)
I don't know of any institution, if I may call it by
that horrible name, which has done continuously such magnificent
work, so much of it, perhaps, little recognised. It isn't only
a Government enterprise this; it has, particularly in recent
years, been able to attract from the great primary industries a
considerable amount of support, as these great industries have
more and more realised that research in their industry is the
whole condition of future success, and both Dr. White and I have
an ambition in common, and that is, that as years go by more and
more will the great secondary industries of Australia realise
the tremendous importance of this work, and themselves come to
contribute more and more to its achievement.
When Dr. W~ hite was speaking about Cunningham, the
lawyer gone wrong the Botanist gone right, I thought to myself:
' Well, there are two things, to people of my generation, that
stick out very clearly in the memory'. The first is that when
I was a student, Botany was regarded as a rather feminine
attainment ( laughter). People who studied Botany were supposed
to be those useful people who could walk around a suburban
garden with you and dazzle you with science. Just as I was
thinking to myself -my wife's good at this, I'm not -now: ' Is
that a carnation or -what's the other thing I like -a
geranium?' the hostess, or hier friend who was a student of Botany,
would be attributing in a somewhat ill-pronounced Latin the most
remarkable names to all these vegetables that one happened to be
looking at. Botany I think I'm right Dr. W4hite in saying
that 30 or 40 years ago this was regarded as a rather amiable
sort of occupation, and in that period of time it has come to be
one of the dominating things in the development of Australia.
The second thing that one always recalls is that, 4o
years ago, I'm going back I'll make it 50 years ago back to
my own time, when I was a boy it was well understood that
Australia had a fertile coastal belt and that inside that there
was country that ranged from " Marginal" that horrible word
to " Desert", the great dead heart of Australia, and there were
vast tracts of land now completely fertile and productive
which were regarded as unworthy of the attention of sensible
human beings. There were vast areas of Queensland covered with
prickly pear and not available for productive employment in the
production and growth of stock.
e a 2.
And then the scientists got to work and the great
leader among the scientists has been, Sir, your wonderful Organisation.
And they got to work and they said: " You know this
can't be right" and thae result is, that today, by a variety of
means running from the work of the metallurgists to the work of
the entomologists and the botanists, there are millions of acres
of land in Australia, fertile, productive, which were at that
time regarded as, more or less, hopeless and useless. The last
development, and we are associating ourselves with it today, has
been to devote proper study to the improvement of pastures, the
introduction of new g-rasses the discovery of leg-umes in the
sub-tropical areas of Australia, because everybody who thinks
about these problems except in terms of current œ Cs Ss and pence
knows perfectly well, that much production in sub-tropical areas
has been grievously handicapped in the past by an undue dependence
on native grasses, by our relative failure so far, to
discover the right kind of grasses, and above all, the right
kind of legumnes if we are going to improve our production of
cattle; not only of dairy herds, but of cattle in the vast and
growing meat industry of Australia. And I like to look forward
6n these matters. I like to feel, and I'm sure you do, Sir,
that on top of all this work on the sub-tropical areas of Aus-*
tralia will come concentrated work on the tropical areas of
Australia. How much remains to be done in the north of Queensland,
for example. If we could only encourage our scientific
people in their patient work, because it is patient work, to
discover these remarkable instruments for growth and development,
I said then, Sir, tit's patient work'. I'm afraid,
speaking on behalf of rmy own craft, the politicians, we are
sometimes tempted to bel~ ieve that if we find a few million pounds
today we will have thirty million pounds worth of results in 12
months time. And it doesn't just happen in that way. It may be
that in these very Labs, there will be work done under simulated
conditions which will last, by trial and error and careful expe: 1>.-
rnent, for 10 or 15 yeas, and nobody may be able to say that any
one of those years, to the political people ulho produce so much
of the funds: " Yes we have a result, 9 and this is going to be
worth so-and-so". Science just doesn't operate in that way. As
citizens of this country it is our duty to find just as much as
we can for the scientists to enable them to do their work, take
every possible pains to see that-Je have earnest and skilful
people engag': ed in the -work and then leave it to them, because
the best re sults they will obtain will not be as a result of some
happy fluke, as so many people choose to think, but the best
results will come as a result of patient examination, patient
testing, patient elimination of things that have proved not to
be useful. Ofcourse, there will be happy flukes. 11ho am I to
deny the existence in the world of happy flukes? I'm one myself
But all scientific work doesn't involve the happy fluke. It
involves enormous scholarship, and skill, and patien and support.
I believe, you know, that out of the work that will be
done here weO may very wroll hope some dqr to find the production
let us take one case the production of cattle in these subtropical
areas, multipled four or five times. And think of what
that can mean to a State like Queensland, so rich in resources,
so many of her resources so difficult to tap. And after all,
what's -ood for Queensland is good for Australia, and what's
good for Australia is good for the living standards of men and
women all over the world.
So, Sir, I'm most honoured and delighted to be here tht,
aftornoon. I can see, sitting, around here today, people who have
been closely associated with this remarkable work. I wish it
well: it's a great honour to be asked even to speak for a few
minutes on such an occasion, and feeling that way, I express my
gratitude. I offer you and your colleagues the gratitude of the
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