PRIME MINISTER'S SPEECH AT THE OPENING OF CURTIN HOUSE,
PERTH APRIL, 1975
Mr. dhairman, Mr. and Mrs. McLeod, Mr. and Mrs. John Curtin,
Jnr., Sir Paul and Lady Hasluck, Mr. and Mrs. John Tonkin,
Ladies and Gentlemen
A year ago on the eve of the campaign for the 1974 Federal
elections, I laid the foundation stone for John Curtin House
in Canberra. That building, now nearing completion, will be
the national headquarters of the Australian Labor Party.
Today, 2,000 miles across the continent, I have the privilege
of officially opening Curtin House as the headquarters of
the Western Australian branch of the Australian Labor Party.
So, in the national capital, where John Curtin lived and
worked as the Party's Leader and Australia's Prime Minister,
in the city where he died truly on active service and in
this western capital, near his home, his family's home,
his chosen resting place, in these two capitals, the Australian
Labor Party associates his name and memory with its continuing
and livin g work. By so doing, we do not so much honour an
imperishable name which requires no memorial in stone, but
rather dignify ourselves and our Party by being able to
associate our work with that name. He would have been
delighted to think that the work which will go on in this
building, in this site, should be associated with his name.
We are all sorry that Mrs. Elsie Curtin can' t be here. I'm
sure we are all thinking of her because on Tuesday, it will
be her 58th wedding anniversary. I know, because it will be
my 33rd wedding anniversary on. Tuesday. A few years ago,
Mrs. Curtin wrote to Margaret and me and pointed out that
our wedding took place on their 25th anniversary.
The name of these two headquarters in Canberra, in Perth,
symbolises John Curtin's commanding place in the history
of our Party and expresses our recognition of that place.
But in proclaiming him as our chief of men, we also acknowledge
a higher claim for while being our. Leader, he was the Leader
of the Nation. The circumstances of the time, his position
as Prime Minister of a Nation at war and his. own qualities,
made him pre-eminently the authentic leader of the Nation.
Yet for John Curtin there was no contradiction in his
* role as Party Leader and as the Nation's Leader, nor is
there any contradiction in the honour which we as Party
members pay him as our Party Leader and the honour which
we ds Australians pay him, as our Nation's Leader. Indeed,
in John Curtin's case, his service to the Party was a crucial
and decisive part of his service to the Nation. The intimate
relationship between the two roles has been finely perceived
and is finely expressed by Sir Paul Hasluck who, with his
wife, honours us with their presence today.
On the 25th anniversary of the Pacific victory, which John
Curtin did not live to see, nearly five years ago, Sir Paul
unveiled a memorial at the civic centre, Cottesloe. He
spoke not only as Australia's Governor-General at that time,
but as a frieno, a fellow journalist and a public servant
under John Curtin.
Let me repeat here at the opening of Curtin House in Perth,
what I quoted at the laying of the foundation stone a year
ago in Canberra at John Curtin House. Sir Paul said this on
that occasion at Cottesloe nearly five years ago:
" In 1935 he was elected to the Leadership of the
Parliamentary Labor Party. This decision of Caucus
was one fateful both . for the Party and for the
Nation. When Curtin became Leader, the Party was
dis-united and divided. He lifted it away from.
its divisions and its failures and helped it to
re-discover some central purpose, even if he
couldn't at once remove all of the more deepseated
differences. In doing so, he made the
Labor Party fit to govern and gave the Nation
the alternative Government which under our
democratic usage, was required once the formation
of a war time National Government was found to
be politically impossible. If he had not succeeded
so well in the years between 1935 and 1940, there
would not have been a viable alternative Government
at the critical point in 1941 when one had to be
found.-As Leader of the alternative Government,
he found himself Prime Minister, largely as the
result of the sound, useful work he had done as
a Party Leader in restoring the health of his
own Party. He accepted office as the destiny
of the Party."
3.
This generous tribute is all the more valuable coming as
it does from one who could speak, not only as a public
servant, an historian, a statesman, but as one throughout
his own long and distinguished political career was a good
Party man, an honourable partisan. Both his tribute to
John Curtin and his own career illustrated one of the great
truths of our democratic system. The strength of the system
depends upon the strength of the two great opposing Parties.
In our parliamentary democracy, partisanship, honourable
partisanship, is not seldom the highest patriotism. Democracy
in Britain and Australia faced the supreme physical test for
survival in the war during which John Curtin was our Leader.
In our own time, when democracy everywhere faces tests and
challenges of a very different kind, it's strength and survival,
rests, I believe, on the strength of the two Party system.
John Curtin not only re-built a broken Party, he not only
restored the Party's confidence in itself, he restored its
confidence in the idea of leadership. He gave it confidence
to lead the Nation by giving it confidence in him as its
Leader. This was the essence of his contribution to the
future of the. Australian Labor Party.
For a generation and more after the great catastrophe of the
First World War, the Australian Labor Party lost faith in the
very concept of leadership. John Curtin restored it. Not, of
course, in any sense of an imposed dictatorship, or unchallenged,
unquestioning authority, but in the sense that the leadership
must provide coherence and cohesion to the Party and its
programme. Curtin's success in re-establishing that trust
as Leader, has left the Party as a whole, in his debt and
equally has left all his successors in his deep debt.
I am proud to acknowledge my own debt to him as his successor,
as Leader of the Australian Labor Party, as his successor as
Prime Minister of Australia.
Ladies and Gentlemen, with John Tonkin, I now unveil the plaque
to commemorate the official opening of Curtin House, the
headquarters of the Western Australian branch of the Australian
Labor Party.