TELEVISION INTERVIEW GIVEN BY THE
PRIME MINISTER, MR JOHN GORTON
FOR CHANNEL 7 NETWORK 24 SEPTEMBER 1970
Interviewer Peter Martin
Q. Prime Minister, why have you taken exception to Mr Whitlam's
remarks and advice to conscientious objectors?
PM Because Mr Whitlam as the Leader of the Opposition and the alternative
Prime Minister is actively urging a breach of the law, is actively urging
the destruction of the defence forces. He is quite unequivocally saying that
persons who enter the defence forces, who are called up for service, should
reidse to obey a legal and military order. I think on the occasion of the call
for mutiny in Vietnam by the Labor Conference in Victoria, I had this to say
" It is a really grave development in Australian politics for
any political party in Opposition to urge not that the law
should be changed, because that is all right, it is not bad for
them to put forward arguments as to why it should be altered
but to urge that it should be broken is a new and grave thing
in Australian political life"
and to have the Leader of the Opposition urging this is something that I think
could I don't believe it has happened anywhere in any reasonably
democratic country before.
Q. Can you see any disastrous effects arising from Mr Whitlam's statement,
really?
PM Yes, I can. Here is Mr Whitlam saying " I advise young men to accept
the registration for call-up, to go into the Army, but once in the Army to make
up their own minds as to where they will go and where they will not go" you
can't confine this to Vietnam. If they are urged to refuse to go to Vietnam,
and that is right, then it is all right for them to refuse to go to any place to
which the Army wishes to send them. And that would be quite destructive of the
Army generally. This is not the real matter. The real matter is here is
somebody who hopes to form an alternative government preaching a complete
breaking of the law. That is the philosophical matter. It is also stupid
because he is advising a young man to put himself into a position where he could
be seriously punished, whereas if he had any sense and somebody approached
him for advice and said, " I don't like Vietnam", he would say, I would think,
" Well, in that case join the CMF and you will have no risk whatever of being
called up and being sent to Vietnam and of being punished. That is the stupidity
of the advice. The really significant and important thing is that here is
somebody who hopes to be Prime Minister urging people to break the existing
laws. *' 2
Q. Would that be your advice, then, to a young man who asked you in
similar circumstances?
PM If a young man came to me and said, " I am subject to be called up. I
haven't yet been called up, but I am liable to be called up, and I have grave
worries about going to Malaya or Vietnam or anywhere, and they really are
conscientious worries and I don't want to do it," my statement to him would
be " There is no-one in Australia in your situation who is liable to be forced
to go to Vietnam provided they will take the channels which the Government
has provided for them to join the CMF, in which case they are not called
up for regular service. Or alternatively, if they have got real conscientious
objections to war, and to fighting, then there is an opportunity for them to go
' efore a court and prove those. But this is ignoring that. This is saying
each individual who enters the armed service should have a right to say whether
he will go to a place or whether he won't go to a place, and he makes up his
own mind about that and refuses to obey a legal and proper order.