PRESS CONFERENCE GIVEN BY THE PRIME MINISTER,
MR JOHN GORTON AT SHERATON MOTOR HOTEL;
MELBOURNE. 24 OCTOBER 1969
PM: P'am always happy when Gallup Polls are runiiing for rather
than against. I can only repeat what I said previously that the real
poll we are interested in is the poll on Saturday the
Q. Would you care to forecast the election outcome, Mr Gorton?
' PM: I wouldn't like to forecast by how many seats we will win it,
but I don't think there is any doubt but that we will win it. The only
reason I wouldn't like to forecast by how maany seats is because I
leave that to the political experts and pundits. I wouldn't like to be as
wrong as I think some of them might be.
Q. You don't feel you might have been better having more
public meetings. than you -have held in this campaign?
PM: No, I don't think so, or if so, perhaps one or at the most
two more-. I have had public meetings in Perth and Adelaide and
Hobart if you count the sort of thing to which the press came in
Evans; it was not really a public mee ting, but I think those sort of
things do in Melbourne and Sydney and Brisbane and Townsville
and Rockhampton. I might have had one more if I had replanned because
it was planned to have the majority of them towards the end of the
campaign.
Q. Would you -have had them in a capital, Sir?
PM: Well, I don't think we would need to have another meeting
in a capital city/ After all, we had a fairly good one at Moonee Ponds
and a good one in Sydney the night before. I don't want to go around to
the suburbs and have a couple of hundred listless people like Whitlam
does.
Q. There have been a lot of people ringing up in Melbourne
and saying what a scurrilous campaign it is. Do you think it has
been rougher.... ./ 2
K'"
2.
PM: i think there has been for a long time a sort of fairly
organised smear campaign going
Q. Aimed at you personally or other candidates?
PM: No, think mainly at me. t don't know about the other
candidates.
Q. Would ; you like to say who might be behind it?
PM: No.
Q. Do you think it has b een effective?
PM: t would hope not. I don't think there is room for this sort
of thing in Australia.
Q. How do you stop it, then?
PM: I don't think there is any way to stop it except to believe
that Australian people are not affected by it.
Q. Does it distress you?
PM: I think it is rather revolting that that sort of thing should
happen. IL reminds you of little white frog-bellied things scurrying
around in a sewer. But I don't think it has got a proper place and
t wouldn~ t say that it unduly distressed m . e personally.
Q. What are the symptoms of such a campaign?
PM: I don't know what you mean by symptoms.
Q. Where do you see it reflected?
PM: Oh, in the sort of literature that is put out, photographs
put ouit and that sort of thing.
Q. This is separate, you feel, to any allegations that St. john made?
Or do you think it is part of the same thing.
PM: PM: t hink it is all part of the same picture.
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Q. Do you think St. John himself.
PM: I wouldn't want to comment on Mr St John.
Q. You me n t ioned earlier in the week, it was in the
Sun-Pic. I think last Saturday that there were two people
running a campaign against you. It left us with a guessing gameand
you mentioned in Brisbane that they weren't politicians.
Are these people in public life and are these the sort of people
you think are running this campaign against you or ' Eese just
individuals who are oppos ed to you or they journalists
PM: Oh, I think we can leave this as a guessing game.
Your guess would be as good as mine. I am fairly sure it would be.
Q. Have you learnt any lessons from this campaign is
there anything you would have done differently....?
PM: No. I don't think I would have given the Policy Speech
in any different way because a Policy Speech as such ought to be
one that can be put before people in a composed and coherent way
without being broken up. There are meetings I like better than
doing that sort of thing, but I still think it is probably the best
way to do it if a Policy Speech is to. be regarded as putting programmes
before the people for the next three years. We can't have the
staged faithful at a public meeting the way our principal opponent
can. So I think we will continue to do it that way.
Q. Why not Sir?
PM': Well in the first place, we don't go along and attempt
to bust up
Q. We are talking about having it on stage. Why couldn't
this be done in the same way?
PM: I suppose you could if you filled the hail by tickets
only admission tickets only but that is about the only way you could
do it, because if it was a meeting where tickets were issued to the
faithful only it could scarcely be called a real public meeting.
[ f it is a real public meeting and the likelihood of interjections
and noise and so on which I like the likelihood of At a meeting
we hold is much greater than at a Imeeting they hold, and I think this
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would interfere with the proper presentation of the Policy Speech.
But after that, I would sooner be out speaking publicly. I think the
meetings I liked the strect meetings we had in Queensland, at
Tow nsville and Rockhampton. t would not be sure and this
is just thinking; it is not to be attributed to me you are asking
me the approaches and these are not decisions... I might possibly
have a couple more meetings earlier on, but I am not sure in my own
mind whether it is better to have a few and then concentrate them in
the last five or six campaigning days.
Q: On the question of campaigning, Sir, has this campaign
brought home to you the absurdity of the Broadcasting and Television
Act in respect of the broadcasting and televising of political material?
What are your inclinations towards the amendment of that Act?
PM: tI think the absurdity was first brought home when there
was to be a by-election for some State seat, and the question arose
wie
Q. Curtin, wan't it?
PM: lIt was a State by-election somewhere... in theory that
was supposed to have prevented in some way the covering of the
0 . Curtin one. I can't imagine why these restrictions were brought in.
tI can't see any practical reasons for them.
I don't think it is terribly important. It is very nice for the
S newspapers. It is strange to hear a newspaper complaining'
Q. Are you going to change it?
PM: We will have a look at it.
Q. Senator Greenwood seemed to think this week that what
the na tion needed most rather than a five cent cigar is a censor to
watch the way we write about politics....
PM: H-e has denied that, you know.
Q. Did he deny it publicly?
PM: Yes.
Q. He denied that the report was accurate, did he?
PM: Yes. I haven't gone into it in any depth but he has
denied that the report as it came out was accurate and said what he
PM: PM:
Q.
PM: was trying to say. I am repeating what a newspaper reported what
he had to say so I won't vouch for the truth of it'. It was reported
that what he had to say was he didn't say that at all because he thought
there should be some way of seeing that policies put forward were not
distorted or were reported or something of that kind.
1 ' 11 , Argue it out with him later.
I would be a bit surprised if he said there should be any
censorship because I am quite sure we wouldn't. I am sure I don't.
Are you happy with the reporting of your campaign?
Not particularly ' Unhappy with it. Not particularly unhappy
with the reporting of the campaign. But I query some of the comments
of some of the reporters. I am not disturbed about this but you asked
me and it is in my mind. I think I had. a good meeting, for example,
at Forrest Place. We had interjectors and that was rather fun. Somebody.
went over with Mr Whitlamn and said Fare st Place was a much better
meeting because he had more people and he didn't have any interjectors,
and he had won the battle hands down. Fair enough. But if that is to
happen, then when I go to Townsville and have 1, 000 people on the same
street corner that he had 85 that might rate a mention too. That's
what I meant. But I don't feel deeply about it. It's a small thing.
This -limitation of candidate's expenses has come up again.
I think it is $ 500 isn't it?
Quite frankly, I wouldn't like to tell you with complete
surety what it is because I know when I was standing for the Senate,
for example I always used to as ~ itxxisx everybody else on
both sides did sent in their returns and said they hadn't spent
anything or just spent their hotel bills, which in fact was true. We
hadn't. Somebody had. They had put advertisements in and put things
on. Whether, legally, somebody doing that means that you have done it,
I don't know. It can't I don't think. I suppose the basis of it of
putting a limitation on spending out of one's own pocket is to try and
give everyone a fair go, to try and stop a chap with a whole lot of
money from overwhelming somebody who hasn't. That I am sure must
have been the genesis of it. But whether you can extend that to say
that nobody can help a candidate is rather a trickier sort of
a question.
Q. As it is the law is being thrown rather into contempt
by the fact of some candidates, for example, refusing to sign
a declaration that they have spent particular amoits. There
has neveK been any suggestion that anything should be done about
them. Doesn't it seem a bad law
PM: Whether the law only applies to spending out of one's
own pocket is something. fairly significant, and I haven't had a
legal interpretation of just whether it does. I would think there
would be very few candidates who would spend out of their own
pocket more than was allowed, but I would think that every candidate
would have people collecting funds for him or donations being given
to him which he would use in his'campaign. Whether that is a
breach of the law or not, I doubt, but I am not giving a legal
opinion on it.
Q. Will 18-yiear-olds have a vote at the next Federal
election?
PM: t believe they will. There is the question as you know
of getting uniform with the States,, so that we can have a uniform
electoral~ roll and ther-is, so the conference of Attorneys -General
tell me, other problems which come up and which they are
discussing well, all right, if somebody is deemed to be a major
and not a minor, what about inheritance of property and all those
other kinds of things. But I have little doubt at all but that that
will be ironed out.
Q. . By the time this three years is up?
PM: Yes. I would have little doubt that that would be so.
Q. You think they will be voting next time round
PM: I think so.
Q. Are you happy with that prospect from your party's
point of view?
PM: Who knows what the situation will be in three years'
time. We certainly wouldn't lose by 18-year-olds voting, but
I don't think that ought to be the deciding factor