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LIBERAL PARTY DINNER
ROBERTSON ELECTORATE
TERRIGAL, N. S. W. 18 OCTOBER 1968
Speech by the Prime Minister, Mr. John Gorton
Mr. President,. Mr. Bridges-Maxwell, other Members of Parliament
and Members of this Federal Conference:-
it has been very pleasant for me today to come to this
electorate. I was able to meet too few of the people because time was
so short, but, nevertheless, it has been, insofar as I have been able
to meet some people, quite delightful. It has been doubly delightful,
in a way, because I am with a member of the Federal Parliament who
I think perhaps more than most members, more than almost all members,
0 is really concerned with social welfare questions in Australia.
He has given a great deal of time to this, a great deal
of thought to this. He bombards me with memoranda about this, and
much of what he has to say not all but a great deal of what he has
to say has been extremely significant, and some of it has found its
way into something that we are going to carry out. This is important
to us, I think, as a country, as I will develop later.
What I really want to say to you all here tonight is that
you are, some of you initially, some of you as spiritual successors,
the same sort of people who, over two decades ago, decided that Australia
was going in the wrong direction. Those people who came together
in 1945, nearly twenty-five years ago, decided the type of government
they had, the philosophy which that government was following, was one
0 which would neither make our nation great nor give to the individuals
in that nation the full chance to develop their own capacity. They
therefore formed a new political party, and subsequently changed the
government. This has been significant, I believe, because if that
change had not been brought about by those who belonged to conferences
such as this throughout all Australia then we would not now be withincooee
of the kind of nation that we are. It was because you and your
predecessors did this that we were able to get away from a conception
that the individual existed only to serve the state, and rather to accept
the unalterable truth that a state ought to exist, and the only proper basis
for a state to exist, is for that state to serve the interests of the individuals
who make it up. So you got away from all the controls, you got away from
all the dogma, you got away from all the old-fashioned thinking which, had
it continued, would have prevented us from being what we are now.
And I believe that what you did then has already -paid enormous
dividends to the nation in which we live. At that time people were saying,
if you have five or six per cent of unemployment, that is reasonable, that
is the sort of thing that we can expect. At that time, people were saying,
we ought to have profit control. It doesn't matter if somebody invents
something new a new patent, a new way of doing things, a better way
let me use this example in this electorate a better way of growing oranges
so that we get more cases per tree, more trees per acre that doesn't matter.
/ 2
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And we moved away from that, and during the period
between then and now, we have advanced because of the assistance
you then gave and are still giving.
But there has been a change now. We are facing a
period of change almost comparable with that period we faced two
and a half decades ago, because there are new problems facing our
nation, there are new courses we have to chart, there are new decisions
we have to take. Some two and a half decades ago, there was no question
about who would defend Australia. Great Britain would defend it. When
the time came that she was in danger, we would go to her assistance
and we went to her assistance in 19 14-18, in 1939-45 ( even before that
in the Boer War), and th flower of our manhood. died in those two
conflagrations. But in between times, we had no worry about defending
ourselves because we were defended by the British Empire, as it then
was, and the British Navy which ruled the seas and secured our
independence. All that has changed.
Now Britain has withdrawn, or is withdrawing from this
part of the world. Now those countries to our north, which for so long
were ruled either by Britain or by Holland, or by France, or by some'
other European power, have become independent nations in their own
right. Now there lies behind those indpcpendent nations the threat of I
won't say communism but the threat of expansion on the Marxist-Leninist
dogma that communism must be imposed by force over the whole world.
We find ourselves contiguous to new nations and we find ourselves with
this new threat, and we find ourselves without the shield on which, as
long as we have been a nation, we have depended.
This is one of the great changes we must admit has
happened. There are two things that flow from it.
First we must cement our relations with the United States
under the ANZUS pact, for our own protection. Second, we must see
what we can do to maintain the stability of those nations to our north,
and thirdly we must contribute to our own capacity for our own defence
more of our resources than we have ever had to contribute before.
So we find ourselves requiring not $ 400 million for our
own defence, but in this year 250 million, and we will find, as the
years go by that the amount of money required for this will increase,
though the amount ' of GNP for this, as far as I am concerned ( the
percentage of Gross National Product) will not. I do not li be this. I
doubt if you like this, because this kind of expenditure, thwje kind of
resources could go into schools, roads and developments, and that area
in which my opponent seems to be so engrossed sewerage and many
other fields which are important and significant, but no so important and
significant as this. This is one great change which recently has come about
and which we must face, and are facing.
Then I believe I do not necessarily put these in order of
priority, but they are all important that we must adopt, as a nation in
the situation in which we find ourselves today, a new concept for looking
after those who are old or ill or handicapped or in some other way the
subject of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. / 3
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. Up until very recently, the Party which I lead and which
you support accepted the philosophy that what we had to do in the field
of social welfare was to make a contribution, that we gave something,
but that we didn't expect that something which we gave to be enough to
meet all the needs of the human individual who was in need. We expected
that the family, as it used to do, should be able to look after, to some
extent, people who were in need.. We thought the charities from outside
should contribute too. I don't think, in the nation in which we find
ourselves today, we can any longer accept this. For myself, and for
the Party which I lead, and I hope and believe for you, I am of the opinion
that we must accept the philosophy that we need to be sure that the
contribution the community makes to people in this position is enough
to enable them to live in frugal comfort without any assistance from
outside though if that assistance from family or charity omes, well
that is so much the better. But there should be nobody who, in need,
in illness, perhaps without a family, perhaps without access to a
charity, does not have einoug h to eat, does not have enough to heat their
home, does not have suff icient blan'kets to keep them warm at night. This
we must stop, anid this will stop because that is another new approach
that we must make. It is not easy to make it because the requirements of
people of this kind vary so enormously. Some who live in aged persons'
homes can save on what the community gives them. Others who live
by themselves in small back streets and pay high rents cannot, but
these are problems we are now examining. These are problems the
Welfare Committee of the Government is trying to work out, and I
believe will work out. These are problems to which your member in
particular is turning his attention. These are problems which present
again a change in the attitude which we must take as a nation to those
who have served the nation well in their time, and who deserve, in my
view, at least a decent, respectable self-respecting chance to live in
their old age or in their invalidism.
Then we have, here now in'-this nation, a sort of
excitement, an opportunity for development which has never been
known in it before. For a long time we grew gradually. Yes, there
were gold rushes. People suddenly came here. They built ghost
towns. They mined the gold. They went away, and the population
increased as they came and decreased as they left. Apart from that,
there was just a gradual development of industry, a gradual development
of agriculture, a gradual lzcrease in the size of towns arnd c2> s.
All of a sudden, we are finding all throughout Australia new
things iron ore, which will bring us in enormous overseas income oil
in Bass Strait maybe oil in this electorate, who knows? We hope so.
AMuasytbrea loiail. ofIfr sohno roer ef rfoomr Athuiss trealleicat. o raNteic. kelI t fdoor eAsnu'st trmaliaat. t erN.. e.. w tooiwl nfsol~ r" ips
being built, new ports being dredged, new railways being constructed,: the
whole face of the north of Austradlia being changed. Along with it, we . have
the great development in our own industrial capacity inside Australia, the
great requirement for people with new technological skills, the desire for
people who will work and who have knowledge. This requires billions
not millions but billions of dollars of private investment and millions,
perhaps hundreds of millions of Government investment.. But the point
is that instead of the gradual progress which for so long continued, we
are now progressing geometrically. The sky is the limit now, as long
as we can get the capital from outside, or from inaide, and the manpower
from outside, and the technological skills from inside to take advantage
of all the opportunities which suddenly have opened up to us. / 4
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This is a thing that has only happened in the last few
years and this is a thing we must reach out and grasp because in
grasping it and in using the opportunity so grasped properly lies the
decision of what we will. be in two or three or four decades ahead as
a nation. We will be by the turn of the century, twenty-eight million
people not the twelve we are nowo and the turn of the century is only
some thirty years ahead which, in the life of a nation, is but the blinking
of an eye. Yet what we do now to seize that opportunity will decide
whether, at that times we have achieved all that it is possible for us to0
do or whether th,= e living then will -say " Thirty years ago people didn't
have vision. They didn't see what was possible. They didn't t-r-ke the
measures that were necessaryi They fell short, and we would have
been a greater nation had they not fallen short.
There are some other things that are changing too. I
did see, Sir, on my way here, as you pointed out, the great roadworks
which were taking place in order to enable people from here to get to
Sydney quickly, and people from Sydney to get here quickly. These 1:
have seen in quite a number of places in New South Wales and indeed
in other States, and it made me think about whether in fact it was quite
so impossible for a State Government to run its requirements, as has
sometimes been suggested to me.' But I put that aside and what I say
quite seriously to you all is that you are all Liberals, you are all people
who, in the long run, will make a considered opinion felt not accepted
by direction but felt, considered, and if reasonable, accepted. When
this party was formed two and a half decades ago, there were certain
dogmas accepted concerning the relations between an Australian
Government and the State Governments which made up the divisions
of this nation. They may have been right I think they were then; they
may have been wrong, but surely you cannot ossify, surely something
which has been accepted two and a half decades ago, it is reasonable
to say ought to be taken out and looked at and examined again to see
what a nation twenty-five years later now needs if it is properly to be
a nation. I do not tonight wish to argue philosophical cases, merely
to ask you to think about them. But I don't believe that in a nation of the
size we are and in a nation with the destiny we have, it is possible for
any other government than an Australian Government to have the overall
control of the economy, to say whether a deficit should be large or small,
to let credit run free if that is necessary or to constrict credit if that
is necessary, to control taxation, to see indeed that the economic management
of all our nation is run in one way.
I think there is growing in our population as I think there
ought to be growing in our population, a requirement that the educati onal
facilities available to a child should be of roughly comparable standard,
whether that child is born in Western Australia or New South Wales or
Queensland or wherever it may be. I think that there is growing in our
population a requirement that if somebody becomes ill and is in need of
care, then they should be able to get roughly comparable care, no matter
in what division of this nation they may become ill. If I am wrong in this,
then I am wrong, but these are things you should think about because they
are things that I am thinking about, because they are things the Liberal
Party will have to think about if it is to move with the times.
I
I give only those examples there are many others but
in giving them, I do not want to be accused, as I have been accused, of
being a centralist. I am not. I think the administration of all these matters
should remain in governments closer to the people than any government
in Canberra can be, But think about whether the goals that I have suggested,
the provision of finances that I have suggested for special purposes in
education or in roads or in transport or in health ought not really to be
something in which an Australian Government has a leading part and in
which a state government has the administration and the disbursement
of the funds. This is heresy if it is to be compared to the 1945 Constitution
of the Liberal Party. What I am asking you to do is to put your minds on it
and see whether you think it is a reasonai-. e sort of heresy or not. I think
it is. But in the long run, it is conferences here and in all the other
electorates in Australia who will have a great voice in deciding just what
ought to be done. Certainly I am sure of this. The whole matter needs
examination and discussion because this is another of the great changes
facing us as a nation today.
The rest what is it that a political party such as ours
should seek to hold out to the people of Australia? Full employment?
Yes, we have done that. A chance for material benefit? Yes, we have
done that. The opportunity to take a risk and lose if the risk was not
wisely chosen, an opportunity to take a risk and win and keep one'ss
winnings if the risk was wisely chosen, an opportunity for material
benefit, for harder work and greater rewards for that harder work? Of
course these things we need to hold out, and I believe these things are
now available. We need to give to people more than that because this is
not enough. This material benefit, this material advantage, these
material advances are not for individuals. People want something more.
They want a chance not only to get but to give, not only to accumulate but
to contribu te, a feeling that in what they are doing they are not only,
improving the farm on which they live, expanding the factory which they
manage, getting a better business, but a feeling that in doing that and in
the other community work in which they may be involved, they are enabling
their children to inherit a country which is a better one than the one they
inherited themselves. They want a country with better opportunities for
those who are willing to take them, with a requirement, and indeed a demand
for sacrifice and contribution as well as material benefit from what they
may do in their daily lives.
I think that people want this. I am sure they ought to want
it. I believe it is at the basis of Liberal philosophy. I think this kind of
feeling in one way or another, with whatever nuances there may be about
it is what has drawn you to support the kind of political philosophy which
we apply and which has brought you to this dinner tonight. And if I am
right in this, then I think that at the turn of the century we will 1.5 not
only twenty-eight million people but that we will be twenty-eight million
people who are materially great, who are becoming a power in the world,
who are able to defend themselves, who see the horizons towards which
they are going and who are in themselves fulfilled individuals. */ 6
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If this is the end result of what we are trying for, then
it is an end result which I think has not yet been attained by any other
nation I can think of in the world. So it is not only these material matters.
It is the chance * to provide along with material advancement self -satisfaction
that is the wrong word self-fulfilment and at that time a horizon which
is quite unlimited. If you and others like you believe in this and help us
in this and see that we have a chance to do this, then while you will not
see the results any more than I will, you can, I think, have faith that
those results will be great in the annals of the world.
I believe that you are contributing to some thing which
will be greater than anything we have seen before. You know, it was
said, " A man' s reach must exceed his grasp or what's a Heaven for."
I'd translate that as saying, " A nation's reach must exceed its grasp
or what's a future for?", and a great deal depends on you to see whether
our nation's reach does exceed its grasp and the future that is possible
is attained. I will do my best; those with me will do their best, but
we depend in the ultimate on you, and I hope you will give us your support.