ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF ASSOCIATED Q. 2APR1968
CH. AMVBERS OF COMMERCE f
HOBART, TASMANIA L/ RA
MARCH 1968
Speech by the Prime Minister, Mr. John Gorton
Your Excellency, Mr. Macklin, Ladies and Gentlemen:
it is quite important to me to see gathered here
in this theatre people from the four corners of this nation
and from other countries who are concerning themselves with
seeing that the needs of people in the nation are met, that
the wheels of commerce go round, who are carrying on, really,
the kind of trade on which civilisations were origiftally built.
It may perhaps seem a little far-fetched to you if
I say this, but it is not really as far-fetched as it may
sound, because going way back into the past of history, nations
were brought together because some region or some country
produced whatever it might be let us say silk which other
regions and other countries did not produce but which they
wished to have, and those other countries produced, let us
say, some kind of beaten steel which the first countries did
not have, and so the traders formed their caravans and they
went to fetch from places where it was available, the goods
which other countries wanted. They brought from those other
countries the goods the first countries wanted, and in that
way by enriching themselves it is true but by serving the
needs of people in both places it is also true, they also
managed to bring closer together gradually, through understanding,
those two nations through whom, either in small ships across
the sea, or in caravans across the desert, they carried on the
lifeblood of trade.
Now, of course, things have changed since those
far-off, romantic days, but it is still as necessary as ever
it was that there should be those spending their lives engaged
in disseminating that which is manufactured amongst the people,
engaged, I would hope, more and more in trying to see that
just as we are interdependent inside this country one on the
other, just as you are dependent on good seasons for primary
producers, on full employment, on good purchasing power, on
other matters, so you would see that we were interdependent
internationally, particularly with the countries in our region
and would, as I know you are doing, turn your minds to that
trade going back to what the caravanners used to do.
Together, governments and people build a country;
neither the one or the other can do it alone. A government,
of course, can help or hinder the building of a country and
the improvement of the living standards of those living in
it, but that is all it can do help or hinder, create a
climate or prevent a climate being created, and then it is
up to individuals to take advantage or to fight against a
bad climate, and in that context build together that which
is sought. This of course does pose some difficulties, because,
I suppose, in an ideal world government would be so light and
the requirements would be so small that the individual would
be left almost completely without burdens placed upon him,
able to retain that which his own industry and initiative was
able to achieve. But it is not an ideal world, and indeed not
only does the individual engaged in farming, or in commerce or
in manufacturing or working in a factory or teaching or whatever
it may be, wish to retain as much as his industry and initiative
will allow, but he also wishes many other things, and therefore
requires that burdens should be placed upon him to provide those
other things. In the case of this country, I can enumerate some of
them and at once you will agree with me, I know. It is required
now, in a greater degree than it has ever been required before
in our history, that burdens should be laid upon us so that we
can provide towards our own defence. I think I hardly need to
remind you that for something like 200 years, we have existed
as a nation secure behind the shield of the British Navy and
the British people and that that shield has been removed and
that that changes the situation and the world in which we have
grown up and that that requires that we should be able, as we
have not in the past been able before, to provide sufficient
defence forces to repel any initial shock upon our own shores
should it ever come and to be a credible ally to those countries
to whom we look should we ever require help. This in turn
requires expenditures and burdens which even in the last few
years I speak of " few years" in the context of a nation's
history have risen from some general average of $ 400 million
to $ 1200 millior. and will rise more. The people of a community
want, and you want I know, that we should, if we are to hold up
our head as a civilised nation, pay full attention to the
requirements and the needs of the ill and the aged and the
unfortunate amongst us, and this too requires that burdens
should be laid upon and borne by the people and the nation.
You want, and I know that you want, that we should,
particularly in the world as it is developing today, devote
more and more of your resources to improving the facilities
for education of our youth, and particularly perhaps to improving
the facilities for advanced technological education of our youth,
because in the years to come, the results of that education and
that technological education will decide whether we are able in
this nation, with the other nations of the world, with those in
the forefront of the other nations of the w~ orld, to manufacture
those new things which are being invented and which will be
invented, and through that process of manufacture, see that
commerce does not stagnate, but has new tools with which to
work, has new things to trade. These too require that burdens
should be laid upon a nation.
And you want indeed I have seen your agenda and I
know you want that we should continue to build up our nation
by immigration at least as quickly as we have been doing it,
and quite possibly, if possible, more quickly. But no longer
can this be done or should this be done in the way in which,
for example, the United States built up its population by
immigration in the last century; no more can or should people
just be brought to Australia from overseas and told " Here you
are. You' re on your own. Make your own way". Rather, it is
necessary that they must be not just brought, but provided with
the employment which you help to supply, provided with the
facilities they expect to receive here as they have received
them from the nations from which they came, provided with those
other matters of which I spoke an education for their children,
health benefits and matters of that kind. This requires
expenditure of capital to maintain each migrant. Though we
get it back in years to come, yet at the time it does require
a burden. / 3
All of these things, I believe the people of Australia
want, and you as members of the Chambers of Commerce want, yet
all of these things do mean that there is more interference by
government with, in some cases, the way in which matters are
done, with in all cases the right of the individual to retain
completely that which he has earned by -his initiative, or
sometimes by his luck. This I know you accept.
Yet there is a point where governments and peoples
must reach a balance in this, There is a point where, while
seeing what needs to be provided for you at your wishes by a
government, while seeing the goals to which we want to attain,
a judgment must be made as to whether should we seek to do too
much in the fields of which I have spoken to you, we would
impose such burdens o-n the individual that we would perhaps
damage or destroy the incentive to work, the requirement to
devote oneself to the business in which one is engaged. That,
of course, is self-destructive because in the long run all
those things I have spoken to you about that you require and
governments provide are only provided if there is incentive to
grow in the individual, if there is requirement to devotion to
one's business in the individual, because that is the basis.
So there is a balance required between those things a nation
wants and between the necessity not to take so much from an
individual's earnings that insufficient is left to him.
There is another balance that is required because it
is not only from things that are taken from money or resources
that are taken from you that a government provides those things
of which I have spoken, a government also, at any rate a central
government, also has the capacity in fact, as you know, to print
its own money, to provide through bank credit, or however it may
be, for some resaurces, and yet there, too, there is though
theoretically no limit, actually and practically a very real
limit because if that path should be followed too far,-then
we destr-oy that other requirement that you have and that a
nation has and that wage-earners have, that pensioners have,
and that is, that there should be relative stability in the
cost-price structures of a nation, relative stability in. : the
cost of living. I don't mean the stagnation, I don't mean the
lack of any general slight inflation but that there should be
sufficient stability to ena) le plans to be made by commerce
and to enable individual pensioners and wage-earners not to be
destroyed by inflation. So there too i~ s another mark which
can't be overstepped. And it is in the selection of priorities, and it is
in the judgment of what should be laid upon a people that the
people will judge a government. A government will, if it is
wise, if it takes the right decisions, provide to a people
those opportunities which., if seized, will make that people
great, and these are the tasks as I see them, on the one hand
for a government, on the other for an Australian people.
I want, before I declare the conference open, to
mention perhaps one more thing, and that is this. I suggest
to you that over the last two decades, if we look back on
them, we can take pride because we have seen this country grow
from a relatively small, relatively insignificant nation to
one which is still not great and which still cannot throw its
weight around in the councils of the world, but one which is
much greater than it was, one which is I think respected in the
world for its attitudes and its approaches, and one which has
within it the seeds of greatness which, if they are nurtured,
will lead, and if the paths followed in the last two decades
are followed, will lead to what I think you would have in your
minds as a picture of the nation you would like Australia to be.
9-s/ 14
4.
If we follow those paths, we must follow them not
just within this country. I know again that I am echoing what
is in the minds of many of you and of those who are officials
of your organisation when I say let us particularly, let
commerce particularly pay attention, forge links, make trade
with those countries in our region closest to us, with as much
devotion as you can. We believe that it is necessary to try
by all means to build up the edonomies of those closest to us,
and by building up those economies to try to see that the
living standards of the peoples in-those communities rise.
This is humanitarian, but it is more than that. It is, if it
becomes successful, of self-interest to us and to you and to
them. As an example of what I mean, let me draw your minds
to what has happened in our trade, in our nation's trade with
the country of Japan. Only a mere decade ago, about 1955/ 56,
we exported $ 173 million worth of goods from Australia to Japan,
and now that scant time later, we export $ 591 million worth of
goods from Australia to Japan. Ten years ago, we imported some
million from Japan, and now we import close to 6' 300 million.
This is an example of how trade can expand if there is a country
such as Japan with rising living standards, with rising
requirements, with the capacity to buy and the capacity to sell.
As one more example in that country which has become
a country to us of the most significance in trading terms, there
has been a revolution caused in the everyday living of the
Japanese in that as the standard of living has risen, .0o the
requirements which were always there but were not able to be
satisfied have bean able to be met, and the wool which is sold
in such large quantities to Japan has become a fabric that the
Japanese wear, whereas previously they could not afford it and
they could not wear it.
Well, that is Japan, but there is closer to us Thailand
and Indonesia and Malaysia and the Philippines. In all those
areas, as the standard of living rises, so will the opportunity
for them to sell to us and for us to sell to them increase. As
that increases, so will people be coming from there to sell to
us or perhaps forming joint ventures with us in one way and
another and so will we, I hope, be going there to sell to them,
so will you and the manufacturers be going there, I hope, to sell
to them, because as the markets arise there, there will be no
substitute for the old-fashioned kind of salesmanship which we
used to know in Australia door-knocking, visiting, talking
to the buyer. There will be no substitute for this. And if
this happens and you go there, then inevitably, just as in the
past nations were drawn together and learnt about each other
and had mutual benefit because of those who drove the caravans
across the desert or the small ships across the sea, so will
nations the better understand each other, the better know each
other's problems, the better be able to provide technological
assistance, whatever may come back in return for it, and there
will be not only dividends in terms of firms' balance sheets,
but there will be dividends in human relations which will be
more enduring for the future and which because I think you can
and will help in this, is one reason why I camne to declare this
conference open this morning and why I now do so.