V 1. 1
0 SPEECH BY THE PRIME M-* NISTE., THE RT. HON. R.
G. MENZIES AT THE OPENING OF ALTU'ijNIUM FOILS
( AUST.) PTY. LTD. AT GRANVILLE ON FhIDAYI
NOVEMBEa 1i96o.
I am constantly reminded by the highest authorities
that I don't know much about anything. But I could certainly
tell you all I knewi about aluminium quite briefly.
I know, for example, that vie call it " aluminium" and
that in the United States and in Canada, they call it
" aluminium". But ith that happy instinct for compromise which
characterises us, they go one step further back in the process
of manufacture, and they have all agreed that one is " alumina".
I also know that aluminium is a subject about w. hich
my colleague, Senator Spooner, constantly talks to me. If I
were to meet him at midnight on some remote airport, he would
say to me " I'd like a few words with you about aluminium".
( Laughter 3 So by a happy association of ideas, when I was
invited to come to open this factory I said, " Yes, I'll come;
I'll convert this from the iorld of theory into the w-iorld of
practice: I'll have a look at it".
Then I read, by kind courtesy of those who have
already spoken to you, a rough idea of what they were going to
say. I read that little bit about using this foil for
wrapping up the joint. Do you remember it? I mean the joint
you eat. ( Laughter) I've seen other joints wrapped up in it,
but they tell me that that was some '. nsulating purpose. But
any rate the good old roast beef can be urapped up in this
commodity, and we've been told that it will preserve the flavor,
and that it will keep the pan clean. I don't understand that.
I thought you had to put things on beef in the process of
cooking it. What I really uant to know, in pursuance of my quest
for knowledge, is this: Do you wrap it up tightly, and when the
meat is cooked, do you eat the aluminium with it? ( Laughter)
Because this would open up a new universe to me edible
aluminium. I wouldn't be surprised; they'll ome to that.
They will find that there is some strange medicinal
quality about aluminium taken orally. And no doubt some
ingenious fallow will invent ways and means of giving it a
flavour, ( Laughter) which, of course, wvould greatly add to the
results of unsatisfactory roast beef.
But all that is a mere by the -uay. The fact is that
this is really a splendid event and a splendid venture. I'm
a great believer I think we all are in the development in
Australia of industries, more and more industries, of greater
and greater quality in their production, because we know that
we have a destiny in the world which won't be determined by the
events of this year or next year, but which will steadily grow,
and expand over the course of the decades, and, indeed, I hope,
over the course of the centuries.
Many of you will recall some of our vicissitu(', s of
the past: the great depression of 1929, 1309 ' 31, ' 32 hit
Australia it wasn't peculiar to Australia although some
people thought it was. It happened in the United States of
America; it happened, indeed, all round the world. But in the
case of Australia we uero hit by two things.
One was the export prices for our export
2.
commodities, notably wool and wheat, which went down to such
fantastic depths that they amounted to wiping out a considerable
section of our export income.
At the same time, and perhaps because of that, and
because of the impact of the depression all round the world,
our capacity to raise money outside Australia dried up. The
loan markets closed against us, and at that time, in
consequence, we had an experience in Australia which produced
at its peak, I remind you, something over 30% of unemployment.
That is not going to happen again. Having regard to
our developments it can't happen again. At that time
Australian manufacturing was, although substantial, small
compared with That it is today. It was, indeed, after that,
that you had the major accelerations in manufacturing. Since
the second world war, we have seen miracles of development in
the manufacturing field. lie are looking at one of the latest
of them here today.
The result is that we now, economically speaking,
stand not just on one foot, but on two. Kie are not exposed to
anything like the same degree, to the wind and the weather of
world markets, as we woere then because we have a vastly
developing population largely engaged in this enormous
development ofManufacture, and in supplying the needs of our
own country. So I haven't the faintest doubt that economically we
are infinitely stronger, infinitely more capable of resisting
what I! ve just called the " wind and the weather".
There is another aspect of that matter that i just
want to say a word about.
Jo, from4dme to time, have tremendous arguments in
Australia I've evcn heard one or two of them myself of late
about economic problems. QJe are constantly reminded of the
profound, and inescapable truth that all economists who advise
governments are incompetent; and that all economists who
advise newspapers are invariably correct. ( Laughter) This is
one of the great facts of life and I don't mind it, not at
all. But do let me say this to you, just as a matter of
pure commonsense. We will always have a tendency to balance of
payment problems. These problems will tend to recur as your
balances go up, and as they come down, if we depend almost
essentially on primary production for our export income.
If our expo. rt income is primarily made up of great
staples like wool, and wheat and meat, and so on, then,
inevitably, as their prices fluctuate, our overseas income will
fluctuate, with all the repurcussions that it has, and would
havo if there were no government at all, on the intornal
credit structure. These are, as I say, the elements of the problem.
Therefore I believe, and my colleagues believe, that the
ultimate insurance against these fluctuations having these
rather severe results, is to introduce more and more into our
export earnings manufactured and processed commodities.
Because, more and more, to the extent to which we can do that,
we will, externally be standing on two feet, as we do now
stand, internally, domestically, on two feet.
Now how you arc going to develop export, how you are
going to improve your balance of payment problem, is a matter
which again lends itself to two considera -q
One of them is, what commodities are there that you
are importing into Australia, that you are paying for out of
your earnings, that you could make here, effectively,
economically? And if you can discover some of those, then you
will reduce your demand for imports in that field, and satisfy
the requirement at home. 3y saving œ 5 million on some item of
that kind, we are, in terms of our balances of payments, just
as well off as if we had increased our export income by
million. That is why I am very attracted, Sir, by the figures
that you gave about what the importation has been in your own
field. And therefore to the extent to which you replace that
by a commodity which has such quality that nobody can deny its
presence, or its right to be present on the market, then, if
you do that, you are, in effect, adding to our export position
by reducing the volume of our imports.
Of course, on the other hand, we would be poor
Australians, we would have a very, very small confidence in
ourselves if we didn't believe that with this growing
population of ours, growing at an enormous rate, growing at a
percentage rate greater than that of Japan at the present time,
if we didn't believe that with this greatly increased
population with the vision that we have of more millions of
people in the future, , rith ou:: usual and proper confidence in
our own capacity to do things in Australia our sil, our
resourcefulness, our free-mindodness we would have very little
faith in ourselves if we didn't believe that this country is
going to be a ve:: y substantial exporter of the products of its
factories. I have been discussing this matter only in the last
few days with representatives of industry. The problem is a
complex one. It has to be approached not with a collection of
old fashioned or conservative ideas that is not for a
government to do, or that is for a government to do.. how can we
break into the markets in such and such a place because we have
a relatively high cost structure.
If woe are going to achieve entry into new markets,
strategically placed, as we are in this corner of the world,
if we are going to expand the markets that we already have,
then we will have to do two things,.
First, in co-operation between industry and government
we must seek out every pos'ible means of increasing export,
rthodox or unorthodox. Some matters may have to be done
overseas; some matters may have to be attended to inside
Australia. But unless we have a go at this, unless wo can
get out of the old idea that our costs of manufacture are so
great that we can't possibly sell to the rest of the world,
unless we get away from that, then I just want to say to you
that we will go on essentially depending upon a large export
earning, because we essentially depend, and so does manufacturing
industry, to a large extent, on largo imports of materials,
and plant and skills from the rest of the world.
But if we are t have all those things, these
hundreds and hundreds of millions of pounds worth of things
that come in across our exports, our imports, for the use and
benefit of manufacturing, must be paid for.
And if we are g'ing to pay for them, and pay f'-r
them steadily and increasingly, then our export income nust be
steady and increasing. 3ecause if it isn't, and it
fluctuates wildly, according to whether wool is 70d. or
then we will inevitably have problems of balances of pay! ments,
problems of imports, problems of international finance which
we could all well acfford to be vithout.
96 V to So, I am all for the development of those industries
in Australia which I am certain will find beforu they are very
much older, that they have markets open to them, not necessarily
in Canada or the United States, if one talks about your own
commoi-dity, but in South-East Asia.
There are other countries around the world. Don't
let us forget that one of the purposes of the Colombo Plan
under which great aid has been given, and is being given, to
South and South-East Asian countries, is to lift the standard
of living. There is no quicker way of lifting the standard of
living in those countries than by giving them some industrial
development; and as they develop in that way, so their demands
will grow. The more industrialised Australia has become, the
more we have imported; and that is going to be their experience
in due course. The result will be that particularly if we keep
our sights up, and our quality high, there will be a very
remarkable prospect and a growing prospect of doing export
business. olea re working very hard on this; the work has been
done for years, or for some years now, in the Department of
Trade with great energy, as I think everybody will concede. Wo
are intensifying our search for these ways and means of
increasing our exports, because it is in these two aspects of
saving imports, and of increasing overseas earnings that the
future of Australia is so intimately wrapped up , with the future
of Australian manufacturing production.
That is a rather long-uinded kind of serm. in. But
seeing that I am in the presence of the usual collection of
highly responsible business men all of whom, occasionally, have
reason to doubt whether I ever think about anything, I thought
I would just offer you these few observations for your
assistance and for mine.
But before I conclude I want to say one personal thing
I ias delighted when I read, and today when I heard, that my old
friend Tim Clapp was to be here. I see he's over there,
( Applause) I think I am right in saying, Tim, that in may first
manifestation as a Prime Minister you and I had something to do
with buying some aluminium in the United States of America during
the early year or two of the war.
But that is not his greatest claim, although he is a
great citizen. I want to tell you that in my earlier Land more
reputable days when I ras Attorney-General and I came over to
Sydney and was so unimportant that no pressman wanted to interview
me at the railway station, or on the airport, if there had
been one, iir. Clapp used to take me out on the harbour, heavily
disguised as a yachtsman ( Laughter) and my functions were very
simple. i'hen we got into a quiet stretch of the harbour, with
no obvious obstructions to traffic in sight, he allowed me to
take the helm, telling me precisely how I should just steer about
half a point off the wind wonderful political training it was
for me. Then he went down below and he always produced, ultimately,
for lunch you don't mind me going into these intimate
details do you steamed sausages for which I've always had a
great and sneaking regard ever since, surrounded by some kind of
spaghetti. But the whole point was this: before that
happened his hand would come up through the hatchway, not holding
a sword like Excalibur but holding a large glass of some
exotic liquid which really set me up for the day. ( Laughter)
Ladies and : entlemenc now that I have mentioned that
to you, your mind wilt be. in t run so much on those liquid refreshrents
that were delicatoly_ hinted at by the last speaker,
that I'll conclude. But beforo i concludo I'll doclare this
factory Open e. nd wish it the greatest success. ( Applause)