LIBERAL WOMEN'S RALLY
BRISBANE, Qld. JULY 1969
Speech by the Prime Minister, Mr. John Gorton
I never have looked up the number of women on the rolls
throughout the Commonwealth of Australia In the way your President has,
but I did just happen to discover that on the Queensland rolls, as distinct
from the Commonwealth rolls, there are 15, 000 more women than men.
So our minds must have been working in the same direction, Madam
President. We were both looking to the strength. And indeed we were
looking to the strength, at least as far as a political organisation is
concerned. It is the strength that comes from the behind-the-scenes
work of the Women's Section, from the running of the branches, from the
posting out of literature, the contribution of ideas and from all the tasks
that have to be done in a party or . n a campaign.
Now, it will not be long some months, not long before
we all find ou. rselves in an electoral campaign to discover whether the
people of Australia wish us to continue to give the kind of government that
has tran~ sformed Australia over the last two decades. And it has
transformed Australia. It is a different nation from that of twenty years
ago. You will remember sometimes we tend to forget but you will
remem-ber all the people from so many races in the world who have come
to Australia in that time, been assimilated and brought to us their own
cultures, their own ways of thinking, and infused into the bloodstream of
Australia, giving us a new vigour and a new interest. They have certainly
improved the variety of what we eat and drink twenty years ago steak
and eggs was about the culinary end as far as Australians were concerned:
The population has been built up, the development of the
country has grown in a way it has never done before and, at the same
time, there has been removed from the minds of people generally that
fear of unemployment which was always present two decades, or three
decades ago. They find themselves living now in a country which has, I
think, the lowest rate of unemployment of any nation in the world
though from time to time particular parts may be stricken by particular
pr& blems. And even in the last year or eighteen months, I think we
have given an indication to Australia that we are not merely going to go
ahead without seeking changes and new pastures. While providing that
background of progress, we will seek out new areas to help, new avenues
along which we can advance to the future. / 2
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And begause these things tend sometimes to be overlooked
in the rush of events, let me remind you of some of those new approaches
which in the last year or eighteen months have taken place.
We have, for example, in the field of education, taken
steps to see that every school in Australia is provided through
Commonwealth Government funds without matching requirements from
the States with libraries. So those secondary schools of which I speak
may have not only science teaching facilities but facilities for teaching
the humanities which alone can develop minds able to use science to the
proper ends. We have developed an entirely new approach to the problem
of communications through roads in Australia. And for the first time,
by cost-benefit analysis of various proposals, and by the abandonment of
the requirement that a particular amount of a given sum should be spent
in some particular area by abandoning that, by taking cost-plus
processes, by adding a half billion dollars to the sums of money for the
next five-year period, by setting aside specific amounts of that to try
and overcome the congestion which the urbanisation of Australia is
imposing on its city dwellers, by setting sums aside for new freeways,
for new communications in the city, we have, I think, taken a giant step
in that particular field, and a new step.
We have entered the area of overseas shipping so that
Australia will have a ship operating between Australia and Japan, between
Australia and the United Kingdom and between Australia and the United
States. This is not only to save the invisible costs which the operation of
foreign ships imposes on us, but so that we can have proof that the products
af the land for they are what will mostly fiW the ships are carried at
costs which we know to be fair costs and that our producers are not mulcted.
And this again, I believe, is something a nation, an island nation like
Australia should have done, something which I believe will grow,
something which within this short space of time has been a new initiative.
We have taken decisions which were not easy in the
international climate to our north, where the situation has changed so
significantly. We have taken the decision that we will not be the sheriff
in that region to which we belong, as England was the sheriff or was
claimed to be the sheriff. We cannot fill the role of sheriff nor do we
want to, but we are prepared to play our part in the defence of the region
in which we stand as members of the sheriff's posse and as fairly strong,
relatively strong members of the sheriff's po~ sse. We have decided that
we will have Australian troops visible in the area to our north as evidence
of this approach. These were not easy decisions to take in the light of the
enormously changed circumstances through Brti's withdrawal from our
north, but we have taken them.
-3.
These are some indications of new approaches over the
last eighteen months. And yet now we stand on the threshold of opportunities
such as Australia has not known before and which will give us chances to
take more and more new initiatives. We are on the threshold of the exciting
seventies, those years when the overseas earnings of Australia will grow
and grow as our farm produce grows, as our minerals finally come into
their own and are exported and as I hope, will be fabricated and exported;
on the threshold of years when, if things are properly run, there will be
modernisation of the equipment in our manufacturing industries and more
automation. One man will be able to do the work done now by two, yet
there will be so much work to do, there will not be unemployment, but
rahter a chance of the greater production which is possible if one man does
the work of two and of the greater reward which is possible for each such
man; These are the opportunities that lie before us.
You would expect us, I believe, in these circumstances, to
go in to these exciting seventies with the twin beliefs that we have work to
do at home, development to do at home and we have also a part to play in
the defence of the region in which we live; and that we must do both, or
else there is a possibility we might fail to achieve either. And so you
would, I think, expect us to devote to the development of our own capacity
for defence not a greater percentage of gross national product but certainly
greater rums of money as our gross national product grows. You would
expect us, I think, to look to our alliances, and in particular our alliance
with the United States for defensive purposes. And looking to those
alliances, you would expect us to be prepared to contribute towards a joint
defence and not merely to seek to take and give nothing back.
And you would expect us to see that we kept the rate of
employment as high as it is, that we continued to bring in the record number
of migrants which we are now attracting and that we developed all parts of
this nation as quickly as the manpower resources and the capital resources
would permit. I say " would permit" for there are many things throughout
Australia which today can be pointed to and people can say " This should
be done. It should be done now. It will be economical. It will return
money for the investment that is put into it. It will add to growth". All
these things are true of all t tese projects. And yet with the work force
fully employed, a great accretion of new projects is not immediately
possible. Yet you would expect us to see these things happen, subject to
the limitations of an expanding work force and expanding capital.
I think, and I have been criticised for thinking this, but I
still think it and still propose to express it, that we will need for the
development of this country and the speed at which it should be developed,
great amounts of overseas capital. We cannot generate from within our
own savings enough to do all that lies before us. Yet I also believe that
we can and should require an offer of participation to Australians in these
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new developments at the beginning and the key word is " offer"'. There
should be a chance to participate. There should be a chance for Australians
to see their investments grow as their country grows, to be part owners.
This we will make clear I think we have made it clear to the world,
and to those who have money to invest. And I do not believe for one
moment that it will prevent the flow of that overseas capital which we must
have. For Australian participation is not a condition, but the offer to
Australians to participate is a goal which I think we will attain.
I am sure, too, that you would wish us to use some of the
material benefits which will flow from the economic circumstances I see
before us, to ensure that in a way that has not happened before, those
who are at the end of life's race, those who are widowed or ill or handicapped'
in some other way, are helped by the community. And you would want us,
I think, to see that those who help themselves during their life are not
thereby entirely c~ ut off from any additional assistance from the State.
I hope nobody will imagine when I say that that I am talking
about the possibility of abolishing the means test. I am not and it should
not be abolished. There is no reason in the world as far as I see it
why $ 450 million should eventually be spent to provide a pension, for
example, to my wife who will have one anyway, or to other wealthy citizens
of Australia. That money can far better be used in relieving real need.
But there is a need to see that those who have in some way or other given
some provision to themselves are not entirely cut out at the lower levels
from some assistance from the State as well.
These are the things, I think, you would want a government
to do. I would add one other thing. There is a need, I think, to improve
not only the material circumstances of life so that one has two cars, bigger
houses, more refrigerators or better machinery or whatever it might be.
There is also a need to improve the quality of life, a need that will grow
as the leisure time for the population of Australia grows, an opportunity
to do a number of things. An opportunity first to choose the course in life
which most appeals to an individual; to choose and be properly trained,
and to be excited by the chance of being properly trained; to be whatever
an actor, a film producer, a television producer, a plumber, a carpenter,
a scientist, a technologist. And what I would say improved the quality of life would be
if people, young and not so young, were given the opportunity to advance
their minds and exercise their minds. There must be many of you here
today who found, as my own wife found, that you had been married, there
had been a family, the family had grown up and got married, and all those
years that you had put in to raising that family had gone and the family
had gone. And if the quality of life is to be improved, there should be
opportunities for courses of various kinds for those who wish to take them
so that that great reservoir of intelligence, ability and capacity which I
believe lies in the female population should be given a chance for Australia's
sake to be used,_ sbld.' jegven &-chance for the individual's sake to be
used. I could go on for some time but there is not time speaking
of the improvements in the quality of life that are possible and will be
increasingly possible as the material benefits of our work and development
continue to flow in to us. I hope and I believe that as we step across the
threshold of tLese exciting seventies, the people of Australia will say they
would like to see a continuation of the kind of government that has transformed
Australia. For it is not old, it is not tired; it is young and vital and
seeking new approaches and, in the next twenty years, it will seize
opportunities to make that transformation greater still.
I think and believe that this will happen. If it does, then
on behalf of the team I lead in Canberra, I can pledge to you that we will
seek to our utmost to do that which I have tried to outline to you this
afternoon, and we will go into the fight to do it, fortified by two things
fortified by the knowledge that in all things that matter, we are a united
team and a united party. There are no ideological cleavages anywhere,
though there are and there should be discussions and arguments as to how
a particular goal should be achieved. And that is different from the
bitterly divided Opposition. We stand for achievement whereas people
riven with ideological factions, riven with hatreds, cannot achieve its
pledges. The second thing fortifying us is gatherings such as this which
I have had the honour to attend in so many places in Australia. They show
that there are behind us sharing our aspirations, great masses of intelligent
Australians, willing to give of their own time and effort to build the
Australia we believe in.