LIBERAL__ PARTY RALLY Y
KING'SSCHOOL, PARRAMATTA, N. S. W. 24 MAY 1969
Speech by the Prime Minister, Mr. John Gorton
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Bowen, Parliamentary Colleagues, Your Grace the
Archbishop, and Distinguished Guests:-
The main object which I have in mind today is to have the
opportunity later for my wife and I to meet as many of you as it is possible
for us to do. But before we can arrive at what I hope will be the mrost
enjoyable part of the afternoon, and what I know will be for us the most
enjoyable part of the afternoon, I should take some time, I think, to
discuss with you my beliefs as to what politics is all about. Because
after all, you are all here as members and supporters of the Liberal
Party, and as members and supporters of one of our best members of
the Liberal Party in Nigel Bowen.
But why is it that you are prepared, as I know so many of
you are, to go out at election times and to man polling booths when it is
120 degrees in the shade or raining cats and dogs and on every election
I can remember it has either been one or the other. Why is it that you
are prepared to do that, to give of your time and of your effort to address
envelopes, to attend branch meetings, to go out from your own fireside
and divorce yourselves from your own desires to play golf or to do
whatever it is that is of greatest interest to you? What is the motivation
behind it? It is not, I am sure, just to get Mr. Smith or Mr. Brown
or Mr. Jones in some particular position. It must be more than that and
I know it is more than that.
It is, I think, because you have a vision of what this country
can do under proper leadership, of what this country can become for
yourselves and for your children if the proper measures are taken. And
because you have this vision, I believe that what it is that motivates you
is the desire to participate in achieving the end that your vision says is
possible of achievement. And that is what politics, basically, is all about.
I suppose that the most important thing in politics, though
it is not a pressing burden on us now, but still the most important thing,
is to see that within a country there is retained that freedom of expression,
that capacity to express dissent, provided it is not expressed by violence;
that ability to disagree with governments without fear of retaliation; / 2
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that chance to cast a secret ballot, knowing it will be secret and that no
retaliation can result from it; that ability to choose and change
governments, that freedom and democracy which we take for granted
but which is, when we look at the world, the prerogative of only a small
part of it. And basically that is the first requirement to be kept.
I am bound to say that I think that the side of politics which
you support is more likely to retain those basic freedoms than are any
other kinds of politics in this country. For after all, it is not the Liberals,
if they disagree with something, who seek to resort to violence because
they cannot win majority opinion. It is not the Liberals who attack
physically those who disagree with them. It is not the Liberals who pelt
missiles at distinguished citizens of Australia because they don't like
what those distinguished citizens are doing. It is rather people supporting
the other side. But after that, what is politics about? I think it is to keep
the security of this country against attack from abroad so that these basic
freedoms can be retained, not only within against attack but against
attack from without. And I believe that that side of politics which you
support is more concerned in times of peace with preparing against attack
from without, with preparing for the security of this country, than is the
other side of politics. We have, as you know, and not without some agony of spirit
and some time spent examining all the possibilities, decided to accept the
challenge to our north posed by the withdrawal of British forces. We have
decided to involve ourselves in the region to which we are contiguous and
to help it economically, to help it financially, to help it technically and
to provide a visible token of our willingness to assist it to defend itself.
And this in a new era was a great and momentous decision.
We did not adopt that course proposed by our opponents of
sending some Australian forces in and out in a kind of a jack-in-the-box
approach of " Now you see them now you don't", which is as psychologically
inept as it is logically and logistically absurd. Rather we have decided
that our security is helped by helping the security of the nations to our
north, have adopted that principle and I believe in that way have greatly
helped our future security and that is another and most important thing
that politics is all about.
just as it is of the utmost importance for us, a small
country in a dangerous world, to be sure as sure as one can be in the
world that in times of stress and danger should they come, we will be
able to call upon the assistance of a great power, knowing that we deserve
it because we will know that we have lived up to the spirit of the treaty
we formed with it, and are not seeking only to take but are willing to take
and to give for our own security and, as I believe, that of the free world
generally. / 3
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Having achieved the proper processes of democracy inside
a country and guarded them, having guarded the country itself these,
important as they are, are only the foundation for what we do with what
we have gained by those measures. It is essential that we should provide
for the people of this country an opportunity for work if they are prepared
to work and this has been and will be done; that we should bring into
this country new manpower without which the development of this country
would languish; that we should marshal for the development and growth
materially of this country capital resources and technological know-how,
not only from within ourselves but from abroad. Because if there was
ever a country that needed quickly to grow materially, that needed quickly
to grow in manpower, then that country is Australia at this moment in the
world's history. And these are things, I believe, that we can do with our
team better than any of our opponents can do. And you must believe that
too and that must be another reason why you are prepared to give of your
time and effort and thought to help us continue a path, and continue an
upward path which for the last two decades has been unparalleled in
Australia's past history.
Now these are material things of which I spoke, but you
must wish too, I am sure, that in a country defended, insofar as its
strength will enable it to be defended, growing insofar as its resources
will al'low it to grow, there should also be more than a mere material
approach. You must, and I know you do, want to see that within such a
community there is a real attempt, a real effort made to look after the
ill, the unfortunate, the aged and the handicapped amongst us. And you
must and I am sure you do want to see provided for the people and the
young people of Australia not merely an opportunity for a job, not merely
an opportunity for material advancement, but an opportunity to choose the
kind of job, the kind of work which an individual feels he is most fitted to
perform, to try and train an individual, whether they wish to be an artist
or an artisan, a captain of industry or a captain in the merchant navy,
whatever field of endeavour an individual feels he should be drawn towards.
A country which is great will help such an individual to develop in the way
in which his own internal urges seek to make him develop, and in that way,
as I believe, will give him a feeling of participation, a feeling of wishing
to give rather than demanding to be given to. Because no great country
can continue to be great if the citizens who make it up clamour only to be
given to and do not have a wish, an urge and an opportunity to give in
return. And this, though perhaps it is one of the hardest tasks, is still
a matter of what politics is all about.
So I believe at this juncture in our history is the fostering
of a spirit of pride in being Australian, a fostering of an Australian
nationalism, no matter whether one lives in New South Wales, Victoria,
Parramatta, Malvern or wherever it may be; an elation at some advance
in this nation of ours, whether that advance be Cove, Bass Strait, Sydney,
Mt. Newman, wherever. A feeling that this, wherever it is situated, is
something which helps our nation as a whole, and that should attract our
first and greatest loyalty. / 4
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I do not mean that we should foster or seek to foster a
feeling of chauvinistic pride. I feel that we should seek to foster a feeling
of pride, an acknowledgment of the great challenges that face us and a
willingness to overcome them, and should join with that a feeling of
humility at the tasks in front of us, at the luck this country has had and
has exploited, at the requirement to help our neighbours because of the
luck which we have had and which, with hard work, we have exploited.
These approaches to the life of a nation are the very basic
fabric of which politics is made. If it were just a matter of who is in and
who is out, if it were not a matter bound up with philosophies, if it were
not a matter bound up with approaches, if it were not a matter which over
the centuries has led communities to, in many cases, physical fighting,
then it would not matter much. But in fact if what I have said is true
and I believe it is then it matters greatly, and so it matters greatly,
I believe, that you are prepared to work as you are, that you are prepared
to come here today as you have, because in so doing you are contributing
greatly to the achievement of that vision, to the advancement of that nation
to which you belong, and I belong, and which I think can only I will not
say " only" and which I think can best be advanced by the application of
the beliefs which you and we have in common.