MELBOURNE PORTS ELECTORATE I SEP 19,
LIBERAL PARTY DINNER HELD AT
ST. KILDA TOWN HALL, VIC. _ L
AUGUST 1969
Speech by the Prime Minister, Mr. John Gorton
I would like to assure you, Sir, and everybody here that
this particular function is one that appeals to me very much indeed,
because I am here primarily not entirely but primarily to do what I
can to get you to do what you can to help Kevin Randall win the seat of
Melbourne Ports. And this is an entirely possible thing, based on the
redistribution. On the figures for the 1966 election, if they are maintained,
Kevin could win by 1, 500. They may not be maintained because 1966
was an all-time record. But even if they aren't, I think that those of you
who have seen the calibre of his campaign and who have planned the future
campaign with him, would agree with me that even if the 1966 figures are
not maintained, it is perfectly possible that he will win by 2, 500. I think
and hope he will. And this depends not only upon what he does, or I do or you
do, but on the message getting through to the electorate. We must make
known the record of what has been done by the Party he seeks to support
and the attitudes now adopted by the Party which he seeks to support. And
we must provide a look into the future as envisaged by the Party which,
when elected, he will support.
Even at the risk of boring you, may I, because it is so
important, recapitulate some of those things which in a relatively brief
space of time have been done. When I say " in a relatively brief space of
time" I mean the time during which I have been entrusted by my colleagues
with the leadership of the Liberal Party. You are familiar with the two
decades of transformation under Liberal Governments and of the climate
created by these Governments since 1949. It is this climate that has
given us unprecedented prosperity, unprecedented employment and new
horizons. I do not dwell on that that is of the record. But in the last
seventeen, eighteen, nineteen months, there have been a niumber of highly
significant actions taken by the Government which Kevin Randall is going
to support, actions which are going to react on the future of Australia for
generations to come. / 2
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There was the significant decision to which I will refer
again later when I mention the Democratic Labor Party the significant
decision regarding retention of Australian forces in South East Asia. This
was not an easy decision in the circumstances in which Great Britain
announced an accelerated withdrawal from the countries to our North and
the circumstances in which the United States indicated that she would
maintain an interest in those countries but showed some hesitation in
committing troops to that particular area. So, I repeat, it wasn't an easy
decision for Australia to make in all those new circumstances to leave
some troops in that area as a visible indication that we regarded ourselves
as of the region in which we lived. Not as a nation that would move in to
take Britain's place but as a natioa which would seek to contribute by
economic means, by technological means, by opening up the avenues of
trade and by assisting in the event of external attack. That decision was
taken and so we will have the air force, navy and army there to work in
with the region which must help itself as an earnest of Australia's
participation in the region.
There was a decision which in my belief will in a decade be
shown to be one of the most significant Australia has made in the field of
trade. That was the decision to enter overseas shipping with Australian
ships and Australian crews; ships flying the Australian flag, plying between
this nation and Japan, this nation and the United Kingdom, this nation and
the United States. Only three ships so far, but setting an example which I
hope will be followed by private enterprise and which, if it is not, will, I
hope, be expanded by government. For we are an island continent, we do
depend on trade and we do depend on exports. Our riches abroad are
amassed because of what we grow at home, and we should not dissipate
those riches by paying to others the freight for transferring what we grow
to the markets where they are sold. And we should know, and know without
question, what is a proper price to pay for those who freight cargoes from
Australia abroad. There is no other nation yet which has grown great
without having its own ships, and we have taken the first steps along these
lines. We have made an approach in some ways pedestrian not
I suppose emotionally exciting, but nevertheless of great importance in that
we have had a look at the whole road construction programme in Australia.
For the first time we have tried to get a cost-benefit analysis of what
returns will come from the building of what roads in which particular area.
As a result, we have abandoned previous formulae and have set aside for
the next five years $ 600 million to be spent in urban areas to try and
overcome one of the problems which so besets us. That is to get a free
traffic flow, to enable freeways to be built, to allow people and freight to
come in and out of urban centres without being held up and without
frustrations and economic loss.
We have tried, and I think with some success in the time
that we have had to advance along the road of providing for the ill and the
old and the invalid and the needy. We said we would do this in the
Governor-General's Speech from the Throne. And in the first Budget
brought down we did take some steps in this direction. We did remove
from those who had long-continued illnesses in hospital the fear that they
would not be able to be looked after for the duration, though there are still
things to be done in this matter in nursing homes.
We did pay attention to the needs of families without
breadwinners. We did a number of other things with which I will not
weary you. And in this last Budget again we raised the payments to those
who were most needy, we paid particular attention to the needs of widows
with children and we looked after those who had been most seriously hurt
in war in the defence of this country. We did these in an unprecedented
way in that never in the space of little over a year had such rises been
made in basic pensions and in, pensions for totally and permanently
incapacitated servicemen. But we did more than that for basic to the Liberal belief
is an assertion that we do not want to have a welfare state conception
which believes that people should be looked after from the cradle to the
grave without being required to make some effort themselves, without
being required to put into the nation rather than just take out. And we do
believe, as a part of Liberal philosophy, that those who have in their
lifetimes practised thrift and self-help should not thereby be penalised
when they come towards the end of the race of life. So we have made a
breakthrough there in this Budget of great significance not yet I think fully
realised in the community, in which a single man or a single woman can
still receive some benefit from the state until his or her income reaches
$ 44. A married couple can still receive some increase, some benefit
from the state until their income reaches $ 80 per week. There is incentive
now to earn more, even if you are on a pension, to contribute to
superannuation, to save in other ways and this in itself is good and right
and proper from a Liberal point of view. But it also, I think, has the
practical advantage that in time to come there will be less and less call
upon social service payments because there is this incentive to thrift and
to self-help. In other fields, too, we have not been idle. In the areas of
defence and foreign policy I have already spoken of the great decision
to involve ourselves in joint defence of the countries to our North. And at
this point, Sir, may I express some slight surprise at what the Party
known as the Democratic Labor Party has, I gather, been saying about us
in the last few days. Indeed, wherever I have gone today, it seems to me
some reporter has sprung out from behind some pillar or from behind some
door and poked something into my face and said, " What is your reaction to
what the DLP or Senator Gair or Jack Little or somebody is saying?". And
I haven't bothered to answer them because I was saving it for tonight.
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I think in short comfpass that my reaction is this and ought
to be this: That the Democratic Labor Party is a properly constituted
party in Australia, that it had its genesis in a real fear of the infiltration
into the Labor Party of communist ideas through the unions which the
communists controlled and which were represented at the Labor Party
organisation and through the unwillingness of the Labor machine and the
Labor Political Party to attack communism in the unions or in public or
indeed at all. And the men who formed that party were men of principle
and they laid their seats in Parliament upon the line because they were
men of principle. Many of them must have known that they would lose
those seats when they took this action fifteen years ago. But they acted
because they believed what they were doing was right, because they
believed the ALP as it stood and I interpolate " as it stands" was bad
for Australia, was infiltrated, had no interest in the defence of Australia
and had a wrong foreign policy. It was becaus~ e they believed all these
things they stood on principle and formed a new party.
Since that time they have supported Liberal principles and
Liberal approaches because these were more in line with their beliefs than
were the approaches of the Labor Party. And now it is up to them as a
political party operating in freedom to decide which approaches they wish
to support at this coming election.
There are two things, however, of which I am sure and in
which I believe most of you would support me I think perhaps all of you
would support me. One of them is that no great political party such as
we are should tailor its policy or change its policy from what it thinks to
be right merely in order to attract some support which ought to come to
it anyway. Nor should it submit to what could be described although I
do not so describe it as political blackmail.
And the other points I want to make are these. You will
remember that I said just now that those who formed this Party were men
of principle who believed that what they were doing was good and right for
Australia. What is their choice in this election now coming up? They are
interested in the defence of this country. They are interested in the
foreign policy of this country. Can they support candidates from the Labor
Party who would immediately sign a Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty
without waiting to see whether Australia's interests were adversely affected
by doing it; and could they reject a Liberal Party candidate who would
want, of course, an effective and efficient treaty of this kind but would not
wish to sign it until he was sure it was effective and efficient and that our
interests were not jeopardised by it. Could they support a candidate from
the Opposition Party who would quibble and haggle and argue with the
United States of America over whether a defence base of joint interest to
our two countries could be established in Australia? Would they do this in
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preference to a Liberal Party candidate who would say the ANZUS Treaty
is the strongest guarantee Australia has got for its future survival, and
if we are to have that treaty and make it work properly then we are
required, not by a Treaty's written terms, but in decency required to
help to provide a joint defence defence bases which being of interest arnd
importance to the United States are therefore of interest and importance
to ourselves. Could they support the Opposition's attitude on that as
opposed to a Liberal Party attitude?
Gould they support an Opposition attitude which says that
National Service training would be abolished at once should they be elected
as against the Liberal Party attitude which says that we will in the future
need to keep, post-Vietnamt forces of such a size that National Service
training must be retained? It will need to be retained for the purposes of
defence itself and this is secondary for the immense benefit it brings
to those young men who go into National Service training and come out so
much better citizens than when they went in.
Could they support an Opposition candidate who would at
once support in his Party the withdrawal from Malaya and Singapore of all
our forces ground, air and naval who would immediately scuttle from
the area and once and for all indicate that we were not concerned with what
happened? Could they support that as against a Liberal Party candidate
who would, while not being prepared to inherit the burden that a great
power, Britain, previously took on, while not being prepared to enter into
mini-Vietnams, nevertheless was prepared to keep a force in being there
to help against any extraneous invasion which might come?
Sir, if this Party, the DLP, with its basic principles,
professing the beliefs it still professes, could back Opposition candidates
supporting the policies I have put before you in preference to Liberal
candidates supporting the policies I have put before you, then the principles
on which it was formed will have been repudiated and the reason for which
it came into being will no lorger exist.
And so, it is up to this Party to see, this Democratic Labor
Party to see whether the choices being what they are, they can support
people who stand in defiance of all they have said they believe, as against
people who stand not for all they believe but much more so than do our
opponents of the Labor Party.
There has been in the last week or ten days much discussion
about what the newspapers have defined as some great cha,-nge in policy by
this Government towards the Soviet Union. I am always interested to read
and know the difference between what some man says in Parliament in
this case the Minister for Foreign Affairs and what the newspapers say
he almost said in Parliament and make it the news. What in fact was said
by the Minister for External Affairs was this. / 6
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He pointed out in his speech that the Soviet Union stands
condemned for its invasion of Czechoslovakia, the anniversary of which is
now with us. Hie used the words that the Soviet Union adhered to the
pernicious doctrine of only limited sovereignty being allowed to those
communist states who were around the periphery of the Soviet Union itself.
He pointed out the need to be on guard against the Soviet Union, not to be
lulled, to be careful all the time in all dealings with that country. But he
did go so far, and I think that this is sensible, as to say that we in Australia
had things we wished to see happen in the smaller Asian countries to our
North. We wished to see them retain their independence. We wished to see
them grow economically. We wished to see the benefits of that economic
growth passed down to the peasants and the workers from the higher strata.
We wished to see the avenues of trade opened to them so that they could
help themselves. We wished to see them left in peace against extraneous
attack. And he then said that we had so far not heard what the Soviet
Union proposed about these countries, but they had spoken of some ideal
of collective security that they hadn't spelt out. If their idea of collective
security should turn out to be on all fours with what we in Australia want,
if the Soviet Union should cancel some of the debts which are owing to it
from these countries, should help them economically, should help them
technologically, should help them to retain their independence, then we
would because these are the same objectives as we have be prepared
to examine such proposals with interest. That cannot surely in any man of
commonsense be said to be a change in policy but rather an expression of
hope, hedged with careful doubt but an expression of hope that perhaps
the objectives we have for the safety of the countries to our North and
therefore for our own, might possibly be brought about. At any rate, I
see no great change in emphasis there, no great change in policy but
merely an acceptance and an understanding that there are changes happening
to our North and we will need to examine from all sources whatever may
be put before us to help our own objectives and no-one else's.
Well, that is my reaction to the approach of the DLP.
What now remains to be done in this country? I have sketched
quite briefly some of the things we have done. I've set out our attitudes
and the facts of foreign policy. I've made an excursion into how those
approaches in defence and foreign policy may affect another Party, but
what remains to be done when we get re-elected, as we will
First, ( I do not put these in any order of priority) but first,
there is undoubtedly a need to build up our own defences in this country
on land, on sea and in the air. But we will not go to the point of diverting
to that build-up all of the increased prosperity of Australia. I do not
believe we will need to put more of our GNP into it. We will need to put
more money into it. We will need to increase it. Perhaps as time goes
by we will need to increase it even faster but for the moment we are
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ourselves under no imminent threat of attack. We must assume that attack
can come in the future. But for the moment, having said that that must
happen, there are other things to do. There are more steps to be taken
along the road of helping those who are in need, particularly I would
suggest large families on low incomes. And there are a number of other
highly significant steps which ought to be taken and which I don't propose
to tell you about until we make the policy speech in October. These will
be spelt-out steps I will then put before you.
They will in themselves be important but what will also be
important are the objectives which they seek to attain. And these will be
the continuing objectives of the Liberal Party only changed as " the times
they are a-changing"; the continuing objectives of creating a climate for
material growth and to see that to the greatest extent possible the savings
of Australians are allowed to be put into the development of Australia.
There will also be the objective of creating a climate, apart from the
purely material kind, which provides individuals with the opportunity to
develop themselves and their internal capacity to be an actor, if that is
what they want, or a scientist or a horticulturist or whatever it may be.
To enable them to express their own personality in whatever it is
even if it happens, as in the case of Kevin and myself, that they should
want to be politicians and persuade other people to put us where we want
to be. Sir, I don't think there is any other party in Australia, I
don't think there is any other group in Australia, I don't think there are
other men in Australia who can achieve what we can if you give us the
opportunity to do it. This decade ahead promises to be the most exciting
in the whole of Australia's history, promises to give us the greatest growth
in manpower and material benefits and in industrial muscles in Australia's
history. It is a decade in which we will come of age, but con-e of age in a
Liberal way if the people choose as believe they will.
We have candidates I ask you to support. We have Kevin
Randall who I believe will be elected with your support. And if he is
elected, then he will help Australia and he will help the Government and
in that way, in the long term, perhaps contribute to the creation of a
nation that will be the admiration and the inspiration of the world and of
great assistance to all mankind.