SPEECH BY THE PhIME MINISTER, THE RT. HON.
R. G. HENZIES AT THE OPENING OF THE McCAUGHEY
INSTITUTE, C6REE, on SATURDAY, 19TH NOVEMBER,
Sir, and ladies and gentlemen:
This platform has been placed with the most
diabolical cunning. ( Laughter) The speaker can talk to you,
and not one of you can look him in the eye" And this gives us,
I think, a most unfair advantage.
But, at the same time, I am very grateful to my old
friend, Sir Hen-Manning, for what he said about my wife and
myself, and I don't propose to make you look me in the eye for
any longer than I need to, because Sir Henry Manning has
really " done me" in the eye today,
Last night at Coonong I said to him, with that boyish
innocence that characterises me ( Laughter) " Harry, what" I
call him " Harry"; I've known him for about a hundred years
( Laughter) " Harry, tell me about this business. Jhat really
should I be saying tomorrow?". And he told me all that last
night. ( Laughter) Then, unblushingly, he gets up and tells it
all to you; and leaves me without a feather to fly with.
( Laughter) So, I can perhaps summarise what I want to say to
explain the genuine pleasure that I have in being here, on
what I regard as a most historic occasion. I don't regard this
as some local event, though 1-cal events are very important.
This is a national event occurring this afternoon.
Because this tremendous enterprise is not only, and
we all remember it with respect, a memorial to two brave men,
it goes further than that as the years go by. It is a
memorial to the generous and intelligent interest of a famous
family; it is a memorial to all the people who have worked to
create it, because most of it has been created over a period of
years; it is a memorial to the profound instinct that we have
in Australia, an instinct not easily dislodged, the instinct to
realise that our strength is still in the soil, and our
national woalth is still to be found in its products.
This place sooms to me to be strategically, as one
might say, magnificently placed, because wiork is going to be
done in management, in fodder conservation, in breeding, in
irrigation, in dry farming. 1.11 these various aspects of
rural production will have concentrated upon them in this place
not only the work of the theorists, but the practical
application of the people who take up the works evolved in
terms of theory. And it is strategically placed because, I
venture to say, that within shooting distance of it, it will
encounter practically all those types of farming, and all
those types of problems.
Younger men who are here today, of course, are
familiar with the growing interest in research for the
improvement of the products of the land. I'm old enough to
remember at a place not so far from here, as the crow flies,
up in the north-west of Victoria, up on the fringes of the
Malleo when I was a si'all boy about the age of one of these
handsome creatures down here I remember the agricultural
expert coming up, it was a wheat farming area, and having a
meeting out on a farm, of a number of the local farmers, and
talking to them about using superJ
It seems hard to believe that now. But there it was,
when I was ten, or something like that, I heard this man talking
about Supgrhposphates. I had to enquire afterwards, what on
earth that mtanta
K 2.
He mot a very sceptical audience. " Oh, this is a
new fangled thing." " I've never done this before". " The old
man didn't do it before". And they had to be persuaded. The
better farmers in the district decided that they wiould make a
compromise: they wouldn't put a hundredweight on that seemed
grossly extravagant but they would try half a hundredweight.
And they found, when the next season came in, that they wore
two or three bushels up on the average of their particular
area. So, it grew by practice and experience.
That seems very elementary to us now. But the truth
is that it is only in the lifetime of people like myself that
wo have wakened up to the significance of genuinely
scientific research. That, of course, is one of the great
things that is going to ensure the future of Australia.
If we were stagnant in production, if we were
stagnant in quality, this country just couldn't receive
additional population, as it does today. It wouldn't know what
to do with them. It couldn't sustain great secondary
industries as it does today; it couldn't maintain its volume
of exports, and therefore look after our balance of payments
if it were not for this constant drive for increased production
and improved quality.
This was seen with clear vision by those who created
this Institute in their generosity of heart and in their
generosity of mind, which is not less important. They saw
these things. And the result is what we see about us today,
and what we can, with the eye of imagination, I think, see in
the future. I seem to be becoming a little research-minded myself,
because yesterday morning I was opening a metallurgical
engineering building at Lucas Heights, which is the nuclear
power research station, conducted by the Commnonwealth, with a
very distinguished band of scientific people.
I ventured to say to them I thought it was a risky
thing to say, but I get a bit of pleasure out of saying risky
things that I wasn't too sold myself on space research. I
don't mind other people doing it, I think that is all right, I
don't mind the Russians firing up Sputniks and following them
by other things with other names, and going " beep beep" in the
midnight air I've no intrinsic objection to that. And I'm
assured by competent people that much good may come of it,
some day. But we, as a country of ten million people, have
limited resources, and I believe that we must concentrate our
resources, so far as they are available for research on the
most useful, practical ends for developing this country and
the lives of the people who live in it. Other great and rich
countries can afford these other rather luxurious adventures.
But we, in Australia, ought to be spending more, and more, and
more money on research. It increases, I'm happy to say, year
by year. But I want to see it, myself, primarily directed to
satisfying human needs because it seemed to me a poor thing if
we were to subtract a great deal of the national revenue in
order to be able to say, " i4ell we've put up a satellite" 5 when
in point of fact we have so many unsolved problems in
Australia. If we are -oing to solve these problems we won't
solve them just by money because although money is an essential
commodity, money itself doesn't do the work. eJmo ust attract
more and more people into the scientific service of th-,
country, not all, with great respect, nuclear physicists
chemists, bio-chemists, biologists. All the people who can
achieve so much in the future as indeed they have achieved so
much in the past.
I hope nobody here will ever forget that although my
distinguished friend, Mr. Khrushchev, may claim that his
country sent up the first satellite, and was the first to
administer a rude blow to the moon, it is the countries of the
western world who have been responsible for the bio-chemical
improvements, for the anti-biotic drugs, for the prolongation
of life, for actively combating disease, for doing all these
things that have meant so much to men and women and children all
over the world. ( Applause)
As I said once, there are millions of people in the
world who looked out and saw Sputnik going across the sky, who
wouldn't have been alive to see Sputnik if it hadn't been for
the superb scientific work of JWestern scientists. ( Applause)
So let us remember that; let us understand as you
do, so well, without being told by me in a hot sun let us
remember all the time that we are not here looking at
something that is hi-falutin' or theoretical or irrelevant.
This research institute will take its place in Australia as one
of the great constructive efforts to solve our national
problems. ( Applauso) Every man connected with it, every
woman connected with it, is entitled to our respect. They
certainly have mine, They arc entitled to our gratitude. They
certainly have mine.
So, far from thinking that I confer a favour on
anybody by coming down here today, Irogard it as a very great
privilege to have been asked to come down here, becauseo as I
end now by saying, what I said at the beginning, this is an
event of first class national importance.
Therefore, Sir, I suppose retrospectively, because it
seems to have boon going for a little while, I declare the
Institute open, and I will now unveil a plaque which I haven't
seen; I don't know how to unveil it, but I'll. do my best,
( Applause)