PATERSON FEDERAL ELECTORATE CONFERENCE
ANNUAL DINNER AT MAITLAND TOWN HALL
MA rILAND, N. S. W. SEPTYEMBER 1968
Speech by the Prime Minister, Mr. John Gorton
Mr. Chairman, Allen, Sir Alister, Distinguished Guests and Ladies and
Gentlemen: When I first received a suggestion that I might come and
talk to you tonight, I saw with a certain amount of horror that it was
suggested that there should be no limit on my speech.
Before I come to talk to any gathering of this kind, my wife
keeps reminding me of a quatrain which I think it would be a good thing
for all politicians to remember all the time, and that quatrain is:-
" I love a finished speaker,
1 really, truly do,
I don't mean one who's polished,
I just mean one who's through.
And so it won't be without limitation of time before I am through.
I would like to say some few things to you. Cne is that
speaking for my wife and myself, we have felt, on this visit to Maitland,
both during the Civic Reception and during the time we have spent with
you and during the time we have talked with the too few of you with whom
we have been able to converse, that in a way we feel at home because we,
too, come from country areas, country areas not quite so blessed as this,
After all, we have where we come from, an eleven-inch
annual rainfall -when we get it, and we don't often get it -and you have an
annual rainfall which apparently varies very considerably, but which by and
large enables ( except when you are sailing dinghies in the Town Hall here
where I stand today) more production and more ease of production than occurs
in the rather hot dry area we come from.
But the feeling has been the same, the feeling of people who
are out, by and large, on the land, doing things on the land, coping with
natural disasters, coping with the difficulties of price, of production, of
season, and carrying on, as Australians have carri~ d on for a couple of
hundred years now. Carrying on against the flood and fire and famine which
are a part of what is, basically, a rather hard land, and people who perhaps
as a result of that, or perhaps because of some innate Australianism I
don't know say, " All right. Well, it's tough this year, but it will be better
next year. There is always going to be another season. Maybe the prices
will go up. Maybe there will be better production, and who through it all
have a kind of friendly relationship which extends throughout the areas of
the country of Australia. We have felt at home with you, and I can only hope
that during this brief visit you have begun to feel at home with us.
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You have got, if I may say so, one of the best Federal
representatives in Canberra of any electorate in Australia. Indeed, for
myself, who tends to fly off a little at angles, who tends to get swept
away with enthusiasm, it is of immense advantage to have somebody who
says, " Yes, that's wonderful, but just a moment, let's look at the
practicalities of this situation. Let's see whether it will work or not.
Let's see whether this in fact is going to turn out the way you want it to
turn out. It is of enormous advantage, and I am always prepared to
recognise that there can be two points of view mine, and onae that is
probably wrong: I am happy to say that on most occasions, mine and
Allen's tend to coincide, and those who as he explained to you happens
in a Cabinet those who have quite properly other questions to raise are,
for the most part, probably wroing. When they are not wrong, I think
both of us agree with the majority and we come out as he has said we do,
with a Government policy backed by all of us, whom you have elected, to
try and govern this country.
We both came in, Allen and I, and Sir Alister, in 1949, and
this is now some twenty years ago two decades. We only came in under
the leadership at that time because people who are in this room today, or
people who have taken the place and had the same ideals as people who
were in a room like this in ! 949, brought us in to off ice at that stage, and
we took over a nation which then was comparatively small. I don't know
the precise numbers maybe seven million, maybe seven million and a
half but we took over a nation which our opponents at the time said was
a nation which if it had seven per cent of unemployed, then had reached
the best ratio of employment the nation could hope to have; took over a
nation in which government interfered, greatly, in almost all aspects of
individual endeavour; took over a nation in which development had hardly
started. And because of what those who are now in this room did, and the
ideals they had, and the ideals their successors are still propagating, we
have in the course of two decades, we and you raised the nation from
seven and a half to twelve million, stopped interference in too great detail
with the individual initiative which alone can enable a country to progress.
Given a climate which enables those who are prepared to take risks, to
take risks, and to garner the fruits of the risks they take or accept the
losses of the risks they take personally, and which because individuals
are enabled to do this to garner the fruits or to talke the risks have
brought this nation to a point of international take-off which would have
been unthought of two decades ago.
I don't mean that in that period of time there have not been
some mistakes made by government. If there is anybody in this room today,
whether he be an industrialist, a manager, somebody on a farm, who can
look back for two decades and say at no stage did I make a mistake, then
that man is a miracle man because almost always, over a long period of
time when decisions have to be made, some of them will, in the light of
future circumstances, be wrong. But I believe that I can say on behalf of
the Government to which Allen and I and Sir Alister belong, that though
there have been on occasions some decisions which might not stand up to
examination afterwards, there have probably been fewer decisions of that
kind than have been taken by any government I know of in any country in the
world. And when I say this, this is no tribute to me, for I have just lately
taken up this position. This is a tribute to the people you have elected to
the national parliament and to the way they have worked together and to the
vision they have had of what Australia ought to be. And this is something
which in the future can only be continued and will be continued, I know, from
this gathering tonight, by the support given by those who say, " I think these
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people have the right idea. I think these people have an objective for our
nation which is the objective which I in my heart have got. I will work for
them. I will ( as somebody said to me tonight) come hail, come snow, come
rain, hand out how-to-vote cards for them. I will argue for them, because,
in the main and on the whole, we have the same objectives. This is one
of the great sustenances of a Prime Minister that there are, throughout
Australia, so many people of the kind who are here tonight who will do this
work, who will give this trust because they believe that what they want will
eventually be achieved. We, as is common with all nations at all times, have great
problems before us at the moment. It is probably true that in Australia
we have reached a watershed, a time of decision in many, many fields,
and that those tenets on which previously we built our policy are not any
longer to be accepted without question.
In the field in which your Member is particularly interested,
that of Defence, we find ourselves in Australia in a completely changed
world situation. For almost two hundred years we lived under the protection
of the British Navy and England, and we did little or nothing to help ourselves
in between the crises that occurred in the world. We left it to others to
protect us, except, of course, that when the Boer War'broke out, or the
First World War broke out, or the Second World War broke out, or the
Malayan emergency broke out, or the Korean war broke out, then we came
in as a people, wholeheartedly and completely. And though in between
times we did not pay much attention to it, I still think, looking back on that
history that " if blood be the price of admiralty, Lord God we have paid
in full". But that has changed. We do not have and will not have this
protection from abroad any more. We ourselves must protect ourselves,
and this calls for resources which I do not myself wish or like to give
resources that must be diverted to ships and soldiers and aircraft and
guns and ammunition resources I would prefer to devote to development
and to social progress. But these resources must be diverted, according
to the judgment of your Government if we are, in the changed situation of
the world, to be able to take the first brunt of any attack which in the
future may fall upon us and to help in maintaining stability in the area to
our north a situation which has never faced this nation before but which
now faces us in all stark reality.
And as that occurs, we have before us the challenge of
developing the nation itself, a challenge which holds before us a vision
that previously was never known to the people of this country. Gradually
we have grown since the first settlement was made at Port Phillip, gradually
the tempo of our growth has increased, but latterly the tempo of our growth
has almost got out of control. We are growing in geometric progression.
The things that we need to do and can do, and the opportunities before us
are flowering in a way they have never flowered before.
And so we find that in Bass Strait we strike oil which gives
us defence capacity, which gives us a saving of overseas exchange, which
gives us a control of our own capacity, which people once thought we would
never have. And so we have in Western Australia, in the Northern Territory,
in Queensland, great new mineral prospects opening up which will require
billions of dollars orf private capital to bring to fruition, which will require
not only the tearing from the earth of the ore and the resources which are
there but the fabrication of the ore and resources through the various / 4
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processes to the finished product. This will make us, God willing, one
of the great industrial nations of the world, but requiring billions of private
capital, hundreds of millions of governmental capital something which
two decades one decade previously was unthought of in this nation.
And we have, I think, a public conscience which has woken,
and which says, yes, in the years past we have said a government ought to
take note of those who are ill and those who are aged and those who are
handicapped; a government ought to contribute towards the maintenance
of these people, but it should only contribute, and it should take the stand
that families and charities should provide and a government should only
add the topping to what is provided; a public conscience which says this
is no longer good enough we ought to see if we are an affluent society,
that there is no-one in this land who does not have the capacity for a frugal
living when they are old or when they are ill or when they are in some other
way suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
For myself, I have left the concept of a contribution towards
the living costs of people of this kind and accepted on behalf of the
Government and of the Liberal Party that what is required is to see thal
nobody starves, that nobody has to have blankets bought for them, that
people of that kind can live in reasonable dignity and with frugality and
are provided with enough for that. And this is something which is different
from that which previously was accepted.
I have sketched in only a few of the challenges which face
us now. With these before us as a people, it is necessary to look again
at some of the dogmas which two decades ago were uncritically accepted,
because perhaps two decades ago, they were valid, they were reasonable,
and this is something which we as a party have got to do. I speak as a
party now, not so much as I have been in the past few minutes, as a people.
When we formed the Liberal Party in 1945, when we came
to Government in 1949, two decades ago, all of us accepted and all of us
believed that the sole task of an Australian Government was to act in a
sense as an honest broker, and that the governments of the various divisions
of Australia ought to take the full responsibility for the educational requirements
of a State, for the hospital requirements of a State, for the road
requirements, for all the other matters which were then, and still are, for
a large part, their responsibility.
But in that period of two decades, there has grown up in
the minds of the Australian people, as I believe I may be wrong, but
as I believe a requirement that an Australian Government should see
that no matter in what part of this nation a child may be born, it should
have the same facilities provided for its education as are provided i~ n any
other part of this nation. There has grown up as I believe a requirement
that if a person gets ill in any part of this nation, then an Australian
Government should see that the opportunities for treatment of that illness
are the same in any part of this nation. There has grown up a requirement
for an Australian Government to take a responsibility, a financial
responsibility to see that these things happen.
And what we need to question now are the dogmas of twenty
years ago and to see how, if a change is necessary and I think it is how
such a change can be worked out, to see that the facilities for education,
that the facilities for health, that t-he facilities for roads, that the facilities
in other directions are the same, while avoiding centralist administrative
coatrol from Canberra. This is going to be one of the siginif icant questions
to be decided in this nation of ours in the future. This
is one of the questions that those who support the Liberal Party should
consider and to which they should direct their minds, not with adherence
to dogma, but with questioning of everything, with questioning of what a
State Government puts forward or a Commonwealth Government puts
forward, but with an attempt to arrive at a solution which will in the end
be best for the nation as a whole.
For if there is one thing of which I am convinced, it is this,
that we have reached a stage in our national history when there is in the
hearts of Australians in Western Austrcalia, in Quee-nsland in Tasmania
or wherever it may be, a burgeoning belief in our nationalism, a burgeoning
faith in ourselves as Australians first. There is a knowledge that what
happens in great development in any part of this continent benefits all parts
of this continent, and a feeling I believe a justified feeling that we should,
as nationals of a country which has much to be proud of, hold up our heads,
be proud of what we have done in the past, look forward with faith and hope
to the future, not as New South Welshmen, not as Victorians, not as West
Australians, but as people who belong to the nation of Australia first.
If I can spread throughout the confines of this continent
that belief which I think is held in the hearts of the people who live in it,
if you can help me spread throughout the confines of this continent that
belief, then I think we will have made the greatest step forward since
this nation was first founded so short a time ago.
I remember and for light relief I tell you this story
something which was told to me when I was at Mt. Tom Price not long ago,
when Mr. Heath, the Leader of the Opposition in the United Kingdom, was
out here. He was being taken around Mt. Tom Price by Mr. Court, the
Minister for Industrial Development in Western Australia. Mr. Heath
particularly wanted to meet an Australian working at Mt. Tom Price.
Mr. Court took him to a group of men who were working there, and he
went to one and said " Are you an Australian?" and he said, " No, I come
from London. He went to another and said, " Are you an Australian?"
and he said, " No, I come from Poland. I only came out here a short time
ago. He went to another one and he said, " No, I'm not an Australian. I
come from Czechoslovakia. Finally, they came to somebody who clearly
was an Australian. I don't know how to describe it, but you know what an
Australian is he talked like an Australian, he looked like an Australian,
he rolled a cigarette like an Australian, he leant against things like an
Australian Finally Charles Court thought he had got Heath to meet an
Australian. He said, " Well, here you are. Surely you're an Australian.
The bloke said, " No, I'm a Victorian. So he gave up. But I haven't given
up. You haven't given up. Because the real future of this country, the
achievement of what is possible for us is if we all first say we are Australian,
and then we are New South Welshmen, and then we are people from Maitland
but first, we are the members of a nation destined to be great.
This is what, I think, the Liberal Party as such should seek
to achieve, and in achieving it because, perhaps, I have spoken in
generalities must keep in mind what was one of the first tenets of this
party when it was formed, and that was that it was dedicated to individual
freedom and the greatest possible amount of individual initiative, that
people could take risks and reap rewards, or that people could take risks
and if they made bad judgments, reap the consequences.
But what do people want? What do those Australians of whom
you are representative want? What should a-political party seek to give
them? Well we know some of the answers. We know the material answers.,
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We know they want more development. We know they wan,,-t better hospitals.
We know they want better education. We know they want better townplanning.
We know they wiant more sewerage or at least I am told so
by the Leader of the Cpposition well, it may turna out that we have
an argument as to whether we want an affluent or an effluent society. But
I think that over and above these things on which we can argue, and discuss
and argue properly, that people want more than that.
They want, I think, a feeling that in what they are doing in
their daily life they are not only seeking their own material advancement,
they are not only wanting to improve the farm on which they live or expand
the business in which they are employed though these are important both
for themselves and for the nation but they want a feeling, I think, that
the efforts that they put in are for an end which is above and beyond their
own particular material advancement. They want a feeling that what they
are doing is not only helping themselves but contributing to the community
in which they live, that they are helping the advancement of the community,
that they are bringing into existence, perhaps, a nation which can be great
materially, which can be great in terms of strength of defence, which cans
be great in compassion, which can be one step forward along the road
towards which nations throughout history have striven but so far have
striven in various degrees in vain but which I think we here have the
greatest opportunity of any nation in history, ultimately, to achieve.
This is what I think people want to be called on for sacrifice
as well as to be given the opportu-.-ity for individual betterment, and this
is what, w~ ith your support and the support of my colleagues, this Government
will seek to bring about and will seek to evoke in the hearts of the Australian
people. A long time ago somebody it may have been Banjo Paterson
think it was wrote these lines about Australia:-
" We see the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended
And at night, the wondrous glory of the everlasting stars."
We can and are gettinrg ito our hearts and minds the vision splendid of what
this nation can be, and if we do not reach the stars, at least we can aspire
towards them, and strive towards them, and according to the degree of our
competence, of our efforts, according to the degree to which we reach them,
so we will have contributed not only to this nation but to the evolution of
mankind towards the kind of world we all want to live in.
You have helped in this. You have helped me tonight by
coming here. I look to you to continue this help in the future.
Thank you.