" AUSTRALIA 19
AUSTRALIAN FINANCE CONFERENCE SEMINAR
Wentworth Hotel, Sydney, N. S. W. MARCH 1969
k-J i APR 1969
SPEECH BY THlE PRIME MINISTER, MR JOHN GORTON
Mr Chairman and Gentlemen:
I have really come here tonight because I believe that
the objectives of this Seminar and the calibre of the people who are
attending it are in both cases so great they should be recognised on a
national basis. There are a number of things which I think should be
said even though they may be already in your minds, and probably they
are or you would not have come together to discuss what our nation will
be like in 1980. This morning the Treasurer spoke to you of the progress
we have made over the last decade. Now let us think of the progress
possible for us between now and 1980. What sort of a nation could we
then be? What sort of a place in the world would we then fill? What
sort of a potential still remaining before us could we have achieved in
the decade from now onwards?
These are most significant questions, and ones to which
you, academics, public servants, businessmen and ordinary Australians
in every walk of life must direct their minds. This is a duty because..
how long ago 25 years or more ago great numbers of Australians and
men from Britain and the United States gave up their lives in order to
ensure that we and other nations who are like-minded would have a
foundation on which to build the fut ure, the foundation being the interplay
of freedom in a community and the use of freedom in a community.
And they secured that foundat ion, but a foundation is not a building.
Without a sure foundation, you cannot have an enduring
structure. But the foundation having been achieved, it is now necessary
and essential that the enduring structure should be built on it, for those
who gained the foundation and for those who will come after us. This,
I think, is the problem to which you are directing your minds. You cannot,
of course, provide a building without great effort and thought and
planning. And I presume that the effort and the thought and the planning,
and the directions they should take, are what were in your minds when
you decided you would have this seminar.
Well, what could Australia be like in 1980? Let us
look at the material possibilities. There has been, in the years just
recently past, an explosion in Australia. We have an opportunity which,
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I think, no other nation in the world has within its grasp.
Not so many years ago we were thought to be poor in
natural resources, to be growers of wool, or growers of cattle or producers
of cricketers or tennis players, and not a nation with the immense
potential as such countries as the United States. Yet, in those few vealrs
we have and let me here quote what may be wearisome but nevcrtbele~ s
true s tatistics we have discovered oil fields which, by 1980 and before,
will be producing some two-thirds of the oil requirements of this nationl.
Yet we must discover more because will not be able indefinitely, from
the oil fields so far discovered, to produce all the requirements we need
in the future. Indeed, perhaps 11, 12 or 14 years will see the present
discoveries needing to be augmented.
We have discovered natural gas in almost unlimited
quantities, which will be fed in not onl y to the domestic hearths of this
country but into the industrial complexes, to provide a cheap and reliable
source of industrial energy. We have discovered iron ore in mountains,
and the amount of iron ore in them seems to be illimitable while the
quality appears to be unmatched from any other iron ore sources in the
world. And from these mineral sources alone, long before the period
to which you are looking, something like one billion dollars a year of
export income will be coming into this nation.
We have more than one-third of the world's kcnown
deposits of bauxite to make alumina and aluminium and I mean to make
alumina and eventually aluminium. Our bauxite output will rise from
about one million tons, which is our present output, to ten million tons
in 1972. Production of coal for export will double. Nickel discoveries
will add to the future that lies so close within our grasp, and we are
likely to be one of the great exporters of nickel in the world. And
phosphate, copper and other minerals which have been discovered will
follow. This is no credit to us. These things were there.
But they have been discovered adI vhb* Is been daae to expl oit their discovery
has been of some credit to us, th~ ough you, better than anyone else, will
know how much more can be done to make it of yet more credit and of
yet more benefit to the nation in which we live.
In addition to these natural resources, primary products
have added to our glimpses of thc future, so too has our industrial
secondary development. But therc. is very much more to be done.
What in 1980 will our numbers be? They will be
million, a 25 per cent increase on the numbers now living in Australia.
And what will an increase of 25 per cent in our population enable
Australia in 1980 to do?
It is up to you, and to us all, to see that the best possible
uses of these material opportunities are made. And then what would we
want our nation to do?
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Well, I believe that you would want, and the Australians
of 1980 would want, to see that we took our place in the region in which
we live as the technological leader of that region, as the manufacturing
leader of that region. We would want to be a nation which provided
to the greatest extent possible commensurate with our own requirements,
technological assistance, aid of all kinds to the economies of the cou ntries
in our region and, if necessary, military assistance, to provide that
security without which economic progress is probably impossible. That
is why we have as one decision we have had to make indicated that
we were in and of the region in which we live, economically, politically
and militarily, and have provided an earnest and a visible instance that
Australia is there and is going to be there to the utmost of its capacity
now, and I believe in 1980, if we are wanted.
Further, we would want to see that such material
progress as comes to us from the great opportunities that are within our
grasp are spread more evenly amongst our population. I don't mean by
that, any more than the Treasurer meant this morning, that those who
contribute most because of their brain power or organising power or
luck or whatever it may be, should not be rewarded most. But I do say
that if there is great material prosperity to come to us, as I believe
there is, then it is wrong, it is unsupportable that there should be people
who are bankrupted by illress or who are unable in their old age, having
borne the heat and burden of the day, not to have a comfort able life, and
a life without worrying whether there is enough money to buy enough to
eat. This is one of the things that I believe we must be working for in
1980, indeed before that if possible.
But if this nation is to be what you men of vision, and
Australians of vision want it to be and believe they can make it, then
material prosperity is there, and the spreading of that material prosperity
is possible and the taking of our place in the world is possible. All these
things depend on the thought and the effort and the devotion and the
leadership of all of us in this room and of Australians outside who, as
I believe, have themselves perhaps an unformulated but certainly a
sincere vision of what they want the future of their country to be.
What is going to happen though if we do develop as
quickdy as we can, what is going to happen about the ownership of
Australia in 1980, and of the various enterprises in Australia in 1980?
There are two things which are in a sense conflicting,
which we must have in our minds when we think of this problem.
Firstly, it is utterly impossible for us as a nation to develop as quickly
as we must, to bring in as many immigrants as we must, to provide
the industrial muscles we must, unless there is a strong inflow of
overseas capital. From our own resources we cannot generate enough
to do all that we need to do in the time available.
And yet, that having been said, and that being
essential, it is also necessary to seek to see that by 1980, the inflow
of this capital which I reiterate still must come has not come in 4
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such a way that there has not been an opportunity for Australians fully to
participate in the growth which this capital makes possible. There are
a number of facets of this problem, of this difficulty of steering between
Scylla and Charybdis. One of them, of course, concerns the question of
takeovers by overseas companies of Australian companies. As far as I
am concerned, if there is an inefficient Australian company which would
benefit from an infusion of capital, from an infusion of technological
know-how, from an infusion of management, then the provision of
per cent, or even 60 per cent of overseas capital to see that that
company became efficient would not in any be repugnant to me. But if
there were an efficient Australian company, if there were a company
which was operating with good management, good technological application,
and there sought to be a raid on that company by people with a long spoon
who could afford to buy it out at high prices and wait for growth to repay
in five, ten or twelve years' time without dividends in the meantime, then
I would not think it was in Australia's interests that, in such cases, that
should happen. There are questions of development capital required
which are quite different from what I have been speaking about so far.
We have made it clear, as a government, that we would like to see, that
we wish to see, that when development capital comes to Australia to
exploit some hitherto unused resource, to open up some area of the country,
that it would provide an opportunity for some Australian participation
on the ground floor. This is not a matter for legislation. This is not a
matter for something rigidly written in a bill. These are ad hoc decisions
in almost every case. But I think that if a government makes it clear that
it would like this to hap pen, then this does have an effect on responsible
overseas companies who are thinking about coming to this nation and
developing some area of it.
It does have and has had an effect on really responsible
overseas comp~ anies in their decisions as to the amount of equity they
would be prepared to offer and I use the word " offer" and I will later
say why I use the word " offer to Australians, I have no doubt that this
is already happening. Then there is the question of an overseas company which
having, to our benefit and don't let us ever forget this to our benefit
as well as to their own, having carried on some development which needs to
employ new funds for further development, and which seeks to raise a
proportion of those new funds inside this country ( and funds raised inside
this country are not overseas capital and I am speaking of funds raised on
fixed interest) Surely, again without legislation to bring down rigid rules
for this, surely it is not unreasonable to suggest that if such a company
wishes to raise fixed interest money inside Australia, whatever proportion
it may be of the total new funds proposed to be used, that the attitude of a
government towards an approach to raise such fixed interest capital
inside Australia
would be influenced by the amount of equity such a company was prepared
to offer to Australian shareholders. This indeed is what we have been
saying. It may well be and I would not deny it that so much
capital is requized for the development of Australia and for new funds to
continue the development of Australia that the money markets of Australia
and the savings of Australians could not meet the requirements of x per
cent of equity. I think it likely that they could not. That is why I use
the word " Ioffer", because what is important to me is that in such cases
people are prepared to allow Australians to enter with equity such
companies if Australians are prepared to take up the offer. But if they
are not prepared to take it up, as for good reason they were not
prepared to take it up in Gove, or if because of existing economic
circumstances in any particular year it is thought that a float could not
be filled if it were offered, then at least the offer has been made.
If Australians cannot accept it, then that is no reason why the development
should not go on. But if we are thinking of Australia in 1980, it is as
well to have in mind not the legislative compulsions which people talk
about because there are so many different circumstances in any
particular application. But it is as well, I think, for those who come
to us from overseas to know that they won't be disadvantaged, but to
know what it is that Australians would like them to do and, one hopes, to
be prepared to enter into some kind of partnership with Australian s so
that ly 1980, we will be able to be in greater or lesser degree partners,
and not merely the subject of investment.
Of course we are partners in some degree already as
all of you will know, because we get 45 per cent of any profits that any
overseas company makes:' But nevertheless, that having been said, it
is still not unpleas ant to think that there would be a partnership, there
would be an opportunity for Australian participation, depending on the
circumstances and the amount and the economic climate at any particular
time. Well, we'll see by 1980 how it has worked out.
Then we want, I think, in the nation that we all
envisage, more than just these-material advantages. There must be
some conception of the philosophy that the nation wants to live by. I
would hope that by 1980 we would have been able to develop a system of
education which would provide us with the scientific graduates and the
technological people from the Colleges of Advanced Education and from
the universities who will be able to give industry what it wants. They
would be people who would be able, as technologists, to adi ance the
boundaries of knowledge in technology in industry, and be able as
technicians to understand those advances and to service the requirements
of the latest machines and techniques. / 6
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We would want to see that each individual in this
nation would have an opportunity to choose the type of work which fulfils
him, whatever it may be, whether it is producing television shows or
whether it is out on the new frontiers driving bulldozers. Whatever it
may be, in whatever field whether it is as a teacher, actor, politician
or businessman people should be able to choose the type of occupat ion
which will give them some belief that what they are doing is not only
being done for themselves but is also contributing to the nation of which
they are a part. To give this opportunity is part of what I mean by the
philosophy a nation lives by. And I would hope by then, and I believe by
then, there would be no individual in Australia whose first loyalty, whose
first thoughts, whose first devotion was not to the nation in which he lives,
rather than to the part of the nation in which he lives.
But much sooner than that, we will have what we have
only had before perhaps in wartime, and that is a sense of unity of purpose,
a sense of delight in victory, whether that victory occurs in the West or
in Bass Strait or at Weipa or in Gladstone or in Groote Eylandt. Each
individual will have a feeling of satisfaction at the efforts he or she is
contributing to the growth of a great nation. This is the nation of which
you have a vision, and which, God willing, could by 1980 be an example
to the rest of the nations of the world and which, after 1980, will continue
to unfold the story of Australia Unlimited.