YOUJNG LIBERALS3 L'LY , IA-THOT11 TONHALL,
Sp~~ P~ in~ iLee, e.~ c h~ by~ e Hon. R. G-Menzies
Mr, Chairman., Mr,, Seanl.-;% n and I. adies and Clentlemen
This is a v, rv interestin--evening for me, beas
1 began my political, my parliamentary ife, 7 if you may so
describe it, in this hal. it wasn~ t as gr.-and in those days,
but Hawthorn was the centre of the old seat of East Yarra,
which I b elieve still continues, and which I had the honour
of representing in Parli~ ament ini the Upper House many, many
years ago, Mr. S2canil'!-n has also recalled to mly mind that sQm3
trifle of 33 or 34j years ago we established a rathier radical
moverment called -the Young Fationalists, * r^ d lik-. e -to tell you
that all this ha ' ppened in tbi. study of my lhouse in Kew, where
1Billy Kent Hughes and Mr,, Grceenwood who was tiaen Member for
Nunawading, and I sat down and we agreed about one thing,
unanimously, the sort of thing that you have in mind very
frequently of late-, " Time tha old boys were shaken up a bit"
( Lauglhter, 9 Applause). Ind so we dec: ided to shake them up a
bit. Perhaps we did,
All I can say for myself is that in those Jaays and
for at least ten years thereafter, I found myself referred to
quite habitually, as a promising young mani and nowr, of
cours'e, people dontt say it to my face I know from around
the corner, that they are beginning to say sijhe old boy has
had a good run". ( Laughter, Applause),
However, Sir, I am not unduly disturbed about that,-
because I just want to remaind you that I really couldn't leave
at the present time, btx-cause I am--the Government'ls majority
( Laughter Applause). I see my distinguished collea gue
Harold Hoit * here, whom I still. rofer to as " young HaroldI~
( Laughter) and hie's registering a protest,, He thinks hers
the Clvrnin' majority.,,-( Laughter) And so lie is. All1
I know is that we have a majority of one, and it is a case of
all hands to th. e pump, until the& next elcction, a-' ter which
we'll have a majority of much beer thnoo Har, hoar)
( Applause) I want particularly I_, orighti to address mayself to
the, what I'll call compendiousl~ y, Youn~ g Liberals, because
they have somthng to contribute to th-e affairs of tha naotion.
The drive, the dyrnamism of the noxt ten-twenty, thirty years
is in your hands., And T th~ ei-fore iv., a1. t to taTlk to you in
that sense. What is the business of govc-rnnient? The business
of government in the Coimionwealth of Aist'. al-ia is to produ~ ce,
to expound, to advocalte ,,, eat objectivoe:: of uational poli-* C-y,
We exre not here just to win an elcotion. Ncx are you here
just to hclp to Win arn e. LCoticn., I-1 are here ; O-o win something,
to do something for oair coutntry. Arid there fare we must at
all times, try to behave according to t! 1e standa~ e. Ths of stlatesmanship
and not just acccrdinL to-the,, standards of vote-getting,
I am the last person to dony thLat unless you haNve votes, you
have singularly little o'pportu-i-ity of tV-he statosmanship,
( Laughter) But getting votcos ii2 PWe be-anll and -the enJ-all.
We must have sorn pictur-o J. n cour mindsc of wshot wo want -to do,
This perhaps is maoreo tai o.-n ic -the yocung than it is
-for me. Though it i isuprl imaprtant for me because I have
the major respon-sibi11ty in rgovcrnment, But it is vastly
important for you),
Whiat are -tho, object ive:, s of na-tona1 polifcy?
Iwould v\ ienture to sa-" y to you. i'n a -few conciso fentencas
i. hat lj a/ c in mind, is of 01.19 owc-objective irust~ ba,
-Go buil. d a balanced, stroig, proEgrCes,_ vo( and civilised notion
in which. advances a:, e shared all secticns of tiao people0
Noxu that mnay sound. to you a'lmost a platitude,, it isn't such
a platitude. Wha~ t did 1 say " a bzalanced nation". A ny
cheapjack can como al~ ong wiLtha somec rati,. or rmsretricious poliCy,
some catchpenny policy, and get votes and disturb thae balance
ofC the naition but it is balonnoc that counts,~ if a Ination is
to build on its f~ oundations0 Wo want a-strong natilon., thnat's
el~ ementary. We want a progrossive one" IP11 say something
botthis later on, b-cus thre e those whlo were to be
heard last year who appeared to be -under the impression that
the Federal Government alidntt believe in progrc-s9 but believed
ñ Ln some vjrotched form of stagnation,, And we -at'Iler lost that
propaganda battl. e. So I repeat:, , e want a pr-ogressive nation.,
There is nothiLng for thto youang in this country
that can attract thenj or us, unlo._: s it is tlie vision of
progress for the:, future, bua above all1 things, twe t-iant a
civilised nation,, Not a nation in wichn every, p lI I
issue is determined in terms of pounds shil' ings and ponce..
Nota~ teiaistc aton but a nation that tunes itself to
high endeavouro and to great ide-alsi a civilised na-tio~ n, 0
In the course of Dy thl-irty-odd years in Parliaraentq
one way or anothoiuI'eher a good. deal about the alleged
class struggle in 1Australia0There are alwais pecople to be
fol. m~ d who ir. ant to set class against,, class, !-nat class I
be* Lcng -to, Ivve neverr quito di" scovered9 but I do believe that
there is only one groat and, hionouraibie class distinction in
Australia and that's th.-[ e distiln-ction between the industrIous
and the idle. W4hcinevor hecar , m7y Co-, m, nmi st . Iwas going
to say 11frio. ndrs" theyore nt,( Laughter) Whenever I
hear the Communssrte arCriunists talki ng about the
class struggle so muohc~ be-Love( d of Marx, I remind myself that
in this cotuntry of naina. anci. yours, all thaot Class s-tuff is
out of date, Yo'alre a wokror you're notv, and whenever
they say inr. the Jor6s of tte old u] ltimaitum the MLanifestCo
QWr" krs of the iiorl-d unite" l I foo lih ang " Hoar-, 9
, e a r' t ao fvro c'D h zro s of'L stralia iuniting
becauso, , be Leve me t I e future ofL the~ o country depends upon
the-porcentr-o of pople afhoc iwTUroors and theo pw,, C entage
of thIe people Wbno are not" Thiis is tlie 7, ne class distinction
thLat I recoganise0 So T. paS on from that, Wihnat is the second
great objective of natIi-onal pol1icy? It is the objective o f
building, our young rnation iLn'ko a strong and splendid he-ritage
and this can' t be achieved by a. people who acquire hoabits of
do D-ondency0 It centb acOL~ cl. by peopl e who ha -e been
reared up -to Say the3 curymnt s. Logan 1+ Why doosn2t th. o Governmeont
do something abo--u t it? Tt alw1, ays soe1-, 1. to meto be
theo mest ele-montary thin. g ~ n tho th-at if you iwant an
inepndn ntini rmjtbe built' up if indopendent people.
Tf yo--wnt -a nation th-. at is -tn a prsltion to
be pushed over by,, othur nat-o. ns o f error if you like. ' Ou-t of
gi. cateGr devot+ ion and ntuoLaa,-Lhn You ; qji]. J f-ind i in EL
nation which_ has leanrn O. Lto-soyj Lalv it to thnu Government,
doñ!-t leave it to mc.; Th1-is is a ticme,, ndous t. ing, I beg
ovfe y oug an and evelrry ,/, ung w; oma-n heetonighLt to
recall i~ t an irtdopoen nP; r ' ti-on. necdn epe
people of ccu: a~ e~ a~ iha spir.-t' of . adventure
with a desire to , and n a~ Kya dosiare to receive
3 0 0 S 0
from that mystic body known as th-government a rising . evel
of civic unselfishness. I hope that nobody will suppose that I'm being,
as you might say, parscnical about this. I'm afraid as a
working politician I've been in the midst of the fray for
many, many years, and my greatest disappointments in politics
have been at the persistence of selfish judgments, of selfish
standards, a loss of the old spirit of independence which.
after all, has made Australia what it is today. This is a
great banner for you to carry, You will be told by older
people who will pretend that they are wiser people, " But all
that's airy, fairy stuff that doesn't matter." I tell you,
as one of the oldest, if not the wisest among them, that this
is the only thing that does count. That we, in our time,
should make an unselfish contribution to a great country which
will be greater and greater as time goes on, but which must
not be allowed to become merely greater in economic terms at
the sacrifice of civilised standards of life, and of thought,
and of character, Now, Sir, having said that, may I just say something
about what we're pleased to call nowadays, the economic
policy for Australia; the national objectives, because I find,
rather to my surprise, that some of these objectives, particularly
in our own Party are not all that well understood.
So I will try to illustrate a few of them.
We must build up, in Australia, if we are to be
a great country and an independent country, a groat and growing
population. That doesn't necessarily mean only at home, but
by immigration from abroad. It's been, I think, one of the
glories of the post-war period in Australia. This has been
no party matter. One of the glories, that our population
has been increasing in Australia at least as rapidly per cent
as the population of Japan This is a very interesting
rellection. A few millions a year ago, a little more a little
time later. When in 1949 you sent me and my colleagues back
into power in Australia, the population seemod to some people to
have reached almost an optimum level, But today, there are
between two and three million people more than there wore then,
many of them coming from distant countries, many of them coming
here with now traditions and new histories and new cultures
and finding their place in the Australian community to our
immense enrichment. And as we look forward to the future, we know now
that the pessimists of the twenties who thought that we would
never have a population of more than six or seven millions are
completely out of date, But today we have ten and a half
and the day will come before long when we will have twenty or
thirty and become, in terms of population, a very, very
considerable nation, And that's tremendously important.
This is a big country. ItJs no mere figure of speech to say
that I nyer go into the United States of America without
reminding myself that that country is roughly the same size
geographically, as Australia and that it has 180 or 190 million
people. And, if there's one thing that helps the people in
the United States to understand something of the problems of
Australia, it is their superb, optimistic belief, looking back
on their own history, that the day will cone when Australia
will have as many people as they have today. They look back
on their own history they look back on their own great
migration waves and they look at us as if we were a sort of
younger brother, going through the experiences of growth which
they had themsclves. Ani this is a great tasko We must not
falter in it. We must build up our population, e / o4
Dut J. i we are to b' Ld op ce11" co -t i orni e mt
not build uo an armay O'f: pole who1 1" vC r-0o TO toC' do xid
tbe~ s . qere mry second objecti-ve ione. s Je v eq
in l-, ustraiia, thue f,: ullest enmloyment' of manpower and of
available resources,, You w Lbtod vrnwadth
uitia relference to current fi.--urias tnia tftere is sofae
registered un-employmont today,,
Ladies and gen.-tlcmen., Ihnlo1o kl hack: ove(-r the
last twleyearsD, T musL say tfaat th-e record of ful-l employinent
i. n A1ustralia has bee) n so r; emarkcable. -that nobody before
thie wrar -, ould h~ ave believed it Possible,. I weant to say
to You, the younger people " Don't take those things for
granted." Whan i first w-n-t into the Fedoral Parliament
aIs Member for Kocyong, wheon I i-ias an itornpy-Gc,.-eral under
the -late IMr, Lyons we; had, in -ustrzalIJa, a Lvlof
unemployment w. hstrigfrom the-pa of tryDoi-cern.,
in th( 3 great dy f JT laibad fallen ' L. o fifteeon, totwelve;,
tcn, and theose a cthievom., i. ntIs wore ro-i. rdod as so
remarkabloe in 1Ius-, tLaJ~ ia tt L the Lyons Gover. nme--nt w as r--
elected time afte r tin0 tl today, a" ltar theio war, 7w ith
all. the circums'an,-icz th'at ! have cxi etd, we take certain
ttiings for gvantcd, The faict arnd I dont 6 doy It, I
assort i-t-ta one o-f our g-reatest objecti-ves of nzational
poliy mr~ atn verto etun to state 0 o ffairs, but
to liave a full employmnt!* in u o,. m country ofmen, of
manpower, and of physical rG-sourcos,,
Blut, Sir, v mentionevd two th1-ings whl'ich oroduce
thneir -prob-lorms Moro anid more~ peoplo, ancthaer qu-iraror of a0
million peoplc a y~ aer th.-probleom of ' ull onlotc and,
t te same time, weo -I-ust-rest-r-in inflat-Ion, No,, v, don't
homisled by some of tiU allgedwsare h. il akt
you and say that all t 1Lalk of Infl-ation is nsne
Infliation of t currcoy-a ! rclcting -ice level the,
sucking---ip of r. eal va 7CIIII t MmiI o ny the L ' oi r, 7ceiVe-3
is a -trcman'lous socia p* Yoblem -nd i~ f itis allo-J'ed to
Continuea, is a trxwnerdous social cri. Influction imust
be rostrain~ j'r. And , ven1h ea ve spoke,-n in the pas a bout
Stab. li1ty, ani tv-c. Lira thtv ' av rdcd tbljy
a lt~ ofpepl hvetakc, n thei op-.-ortunity of saying. " Oh,
ye! s. but stbJi. mero t~ eio% Ad sn you got thte
bflrloigwtw ii -a11 f, 7--3w~ thn9 but the? governr"
c--. nt is al1l-for ot--i t; Dn"~ je rionsomn-' e this is, J 4t
a, pity th-at anybody,-, proJe. -sing b a smp-portor of the
government sh-oul. d be bogieu. 3d tby Sua nonse--Snse00. f cour se,
stability is lprai
For thIast o. Lhtcon m.-onths. as a re-sult of
p-olicie(-s of theo FPrlOvaimn, olicie) s for whicha ray
colleag ue the Titeasurcr h.-s been L;-ost (': ickedily blamed as if
hwe er soo. y and singl~ y rcsm~ oefo31 then--L) nrder tho se
policie-s we havo fo) r the-J. ast cig~ en, month'-s had coirpleiAe
b l-, jlity in C3. rLSLIMir LrI. OeS 4n Australia, Eighteen i. onths
howould have th.-ought it -ossJ ble" oe t; ie? Arid that
ha s -tuant Lht. h vailue o f 1.-one; ha s bcoo-n pre Se+ rvodc, The
3plw t4.-C thoir n the sav-nogs bark haenotIj zceen
taom,;:-fiter awa y+ Thuc pe-)-lo wln hkave inve stjA JIn gover-nment
stocks im vc-seolee of1hhir ivm mrsmn-b filtor
awa pep-jOJv n> xdicmshv bThne able to
s-y wvJLi er~~ tv-~ I " esnIb. II~ Ic n-r whLat tha-t -Inc-jae is
WDrth" 21-. 1 h o t beae~ e~~ in tecou-ntry the
beenr achieved0 e a 0 a a/
Now, I said to you just now that there are people who
believe t-hat. when we talk of stability, we Liberals, wevre
talking in negative terms, we're professing something that's
the opposite number of growtho In fact, you'll hear the
question put, won't you " Are you for growth, or are you for
stability?" Je happen to be for both, and in order to remind
you how important stability is for growth I just want to tell
you that over this period of eighteen months when this hardearned
stability has been achieved, we have, at the same time,
carried out or heavily contributed to, one of the greatest
development programmes in the history of Australia the Snowy
Mountains Scheme, Some of you have been there, Some of
you have seen it.
If, at one stage in our life, preferably just before
an election, I had been able to say, " All right, We are
going to spend œ 400M on hydro-electric schemes and irrigation
headworks on the Snowy," people would have said, " Ah, there's
a progressive man, That's a fine chap. Yes, he's for growth,
Hets the man for our money," But this is exactly what we've
been doing. Year after year I hesitate to mention the figures
in the presence of Harold Holt, who has to flinch under them
year by year, poor chap, But year by year, we're finding out
of the Budget round about œ 20M for the Snowy and by the time it
is finished, it will have cost œ 400M-odd and it will be then
acknowledged to be what many people now acknowledge it to be
one of the wonders of the world, one of the great developmental
projects in this country or in this hemisphere.
At the same time, over this pericd think of the other
matters uniform gauge, I came down in the now train from
Sydney to Melbourne the " Aurora" 0 We had a great deal to do
with this, It is perhaps forgotten. A great deal to do with
it, Seventy percnt, of it in the long run. And this great
piece of development Sydney to Melbourne on a uniform gauge
has already, I am happy to say, although it was finished only
a month or two ago has already made a powerful contribution
to freight returns and to passenger returns on that line, In
other words, this has been a rumarkable contribution to the
stability of the railways system in Australia,
Up in Queensland, where they were beguiled into thinking
the opposite, ( Laughter) c. What have we done over this
period? I am talking now about a period of eighteen months
of stability on the price level the Mt, Isa venture this
tremendous railway conversion, which will enable Mt, Isa mine to
become the greatest copper mine in the world, and a tremendous
source of export wealth for this country beef roads, coal
ports in Queensland and in New South Wales to enable an export
trade in coal to go on and to grow, Al aiese things have
been happening at a time when we were told that stability in our
mouths meant stagnation, Did you ever hear such nnsense?
I think, you know, that our political opponents frequently
rely on their implicit belief that no Liberal has a good memory.
I wanyou younger ones about this, You must cultivate a good
memory. You must keep on, You don't want to be like the Lourbons
and learn nothing and forget nothingr., but at any rate start by
forgetting nothing, because they want you to forget th.: t when at
the end of ' 1949 you sent us back into powc. r, one of the great
problems in Australia was coal. Do you remember it? Some of
you older ones will, Coal. , Jo were importing coal in Australia
from South Africa and from other places0 There was a tremcndous
shortage of coal, Po. wer was rationed because the power stations
were short of coal. People forgt thse ths tings For the first
two or three years of this po) r, stagnant, decadent governncnt of
0 * f000 .16
yours, wev er devoting our attention to getting coal from
anywhere that it cculd. be got from. And today, nrt only does
Australia have all the coal that it needs, but it is developing
very large export markets for coal to the other countries of
the world. We never have a deputation today to say we're
short of coal, but we do have deputations to say, " Ie're short
of the ways and means of exporting our coalo Give us a better
port, give us better handling facilities. Do something for
us that will enable us to use our surplus of coal for the
advantage of Australia,"
You heard something about beef roads. We don't have
too many beef roads in Hawthorn, ( Laughter) The only one I
can remember offhand is the run down towards the Richmond
Abattoirs. The beef roads in Queensland, in ! est Australia,
in the Northern Territory, in parts of New South Wales and
South Australia these are tremendously important, because
we have entered into the export phase of our lives as a nation,
and we want to provide the ways and means for getting cattle
to market, and getting stock to market in good condition with
proper speed, so that our exports of these matters to the world
may grow and flourish, No Government in the history of the
Commonwealth has done so much in this field or is doing so
much as your own Government and all this has been going on
at a time when anti-inflationary measures were regarded as the
very definition of stagnation by our own opponents,
Now, Sir, I don't want to go on and make a catalogue
of these matters; I've quoted a few examples to demonstrate
to you that that great objective of policy to restr?' n
inflation is the very condition of encouraging growth and
development. If my colleague, the Treasurer were speaking
to you tonight, he would Le able to tell you that as a result
of this stability, as a result of the philosophies and actions
of our Government our credit around the world has never been
as high. We must borrow money, because no country of
million can generate all the capital it needs for the development
of a continents But our credit rating abroad is
phenomenal. If I had the time to talk to you about the
terms on which Australia, as at present governed, can raise
money overseas, you would be staggered. And why? Why does
this happen? Why dons it happen that, year by year, over this
period, particularly the periods of stability, hundreds of
millions have been invested in Australia from outside Australia
invested by hard-headed peoples by people who, like most
investors, look at what they call the growth factor, when they're
making an investment. And here we've had, over this term of
years, hundreds and hundreds of millions coming into Australia
from other countries, coming into Australia from private
investors, because they believe that on the basis of honest
stability in the currency and vast developmental projects,
Australia is the best place in which to invest their money,
And, indeed, if that didn't happen, how do you suppose that
we would receive all those migrants? How do you suppose we
could build up our population, unless we had, year by year,
at the same time, the capital behind them to enable them to
make their own powerful contribution to the ffture of Australiao
And our next national objective is that we must have,
in Australia, a growing manufacturing industry0 Now, when
I was a small boy, witi long ears listening, in the country,
in a little village, in a rather political household, ( because
you will be surprised to know, some of you, that this is an
hereditary defect in me) ( Laughte:) t. he g-eat arguments were
.0 o .0 oo / 7
protection and free trade, within the country, and mc. t of
the people were in favour of free trade and a few hardy souls
were in favour of protection. But this really determined
whether you were a good man or a bad man, It was like cowboys
and Indians on the films, All that, I believe, is dying
away. The fact is that nobody with a balanced mind today
denies that you can't increase the population by a quarter of
a million a year without having a steadily growing manufacturing
industry, Because, on the land, where the increase in
productivity has been admirable, over these years, there's not
much scope for employing more people. The more farming is
mechanised, the more science is applied to the processes of
agriculture and of the pastoral industry the more likely
is it to be that you won't have any grea% increase in the
employed population. That is quite true, Everybody concedes
it. And therefore, if you want to have a quarter of a million
more people every year, there's just no escape from it and
I don't mind, I'm all in favour of it thoro's no escape
from the proposition that you'll have growing manufacturing
industries and growing service and tertiary industries in
Australia on a scale which will accommodate this population
and give it employment.
Now, Sir, I said a while ago that all these things
produce their own problems, So they do, An increased
population, the struggle to restrain inflation which may
persuade people that policies are negative at the same time,
the vital importance of building up manufacturing industries
the vital importance of developing basic resources in Australia
and all. of these things, except the restraining of inflation,
tend to create it, And this is something we must watch,
This produces some of that cution that you've been told about
from time to time.
Because, you see, ladies and gentlemen, we could
build up our manufacturing industries almost extravagantly.
We could build up our population. We could devote ourselves
to the principles of full employment, but if the results were
that the farm industries of Australia found their costs rising
and rising against them, this country would be brought to ruin,
because let's have no mistake about it; the great export
industries of Australia, to wit, the primary export industries,
are responsible in the true sense for the prosperity of
Australia, directly and indireccly, For a start, they
produce most of our overseas income, and they are able to sell
abroad and to extend their production and to sell more abroad,
because their costs have not yet got out of hand. But if the
day comes when, because of inflationary processes at home,
their costs rise against them, they can be tossed out of their
world markets. What would happen then?
I beg of you, think about these matters. Don't
be bemused by the people who say, " Well, that's all right.
We can always handle the currency internally, We can always
have monetary mechanisms which wi. ll make up for that, My
friends of all the hundreds of millions that are earned by
the Australian wool and wheat and meat and dairying industry
and so on, down the lino, the m: tal industry, seventy percent.,
a safe estimate, pays for imports into Australia of items
needed by Australian manufacturorso
This idea that everything that is imported into
Australia is a chiffon of some kind what the economists are
pleased to call " consumer goods" this is all nonsense,
The groat bulk of the imports into Australia, paid for by
wool and wheat and moat and so on are materials to be used
and plant and equipment to be use.. in Australian manufacturing oo0ooo o/ 8
Ind'ustry. ~ Id it is in that sense that the nvrnufocturer
himself, whose supporter I am as I bave indicated, must always
remember that he must not, 9 arid we must not, price the primary
producer out of that vital market in the rest of the world,,
And, therefore, thatts another of our great objectives to
preserve the cost level of the exportu industries to preserve
it not only by allowing the costs against it in ihat positive
sense but also ( this goes for manufacturing also) to concentrate
our attention on getting their costs of production down by
improving their efficiency,, I just want to illustrate that
to you, without being too tedicus.
You take manufacturing. You may have not.-ced that
last February and thereafter in Parliament, we introduced
provisions for an investment allowance on new plant in manufacturing.
The whole purpose of this was to encourage manufacturers
to improve their plant and therefore to improve their
efficiency, and therefore to reduce their costs of production
and therefore to render less necessary the rate of tariff
protection which might otherwise have been required, This
is a practical, sensible,~ reasoned approach to the matter.
Anid, in the case of t~ ie man on the land, we have, in Australia,
superb scientific organisations the C. S. I. R. 0 is one of the
great things in the world in that field. Much research is
done but the results of it must be brought to the man on
the larm if we are going to have Pall advantage and, therefore,
we have devoted a lot of attention to extension services and
matters of that kind and have a lot more to do before we are
finished. Now, Sir, I have spoken to you about national
objectives, These are some of them. These mostly rolate
to what goes on inside Australia. Their achievcement seems to
me to represent a magnificent challenge a challenge not to
complacency, but to the spirit of adventure, and, therefore
above all things, a challenge to young men and women who will
be responsible for these matters when I am a mere dusty
memory, Thasaa:. oa marvellous challenge. Thore is nothing
negative about them, they are positive and they're compelling,
and these are the problems of the dreary science, the problems
of the economy. They are not the only problems that we have.
I wonder if we realise always that we are so few in a land so
great that we can't expect the rest of the world just to be
kind t us, to look after us, for some inscrutable reason.
What we have to do in the world, and we do it through our
Government primarily, is to establish with other countries in
the world a position of respect, a posi~ tion in which they
will encourage us, a position in which they will be delighted
to give us such help as they can, The business of foreign
policy, so complicated by some of the commentators, is at
base a very simple one. The business of foreign policy is to
make friends and keep them. Not to go into a war72 if a war
is not unavoidable, but if you go into one, to go into it with
strong and resolute friends. This is the simplified statement
of foreign policy, and those who represent you in Australia in
the Government and who go around the world and speak for you
in the councils of the world, must speak for you to the Prime
Minister and Cabinet of Great Britain, the President of France
and the Chancellor of Germany and the President of the United
States of America and so on, right round all the spots of the
world. I think you'll agree with me that it's very desirable
that whoever speaks for you in that sense should speak for a
country that knows its own mind, that Iunov. s where it's going,
that is determined to make sacrifices to get there, which is
honest a country whose word cali be takon, a country which will
00 0 : 00/ 9
be regarded as a fPriendly country in all1 the countries of the
worLd0 Thi~ s is tromean2ously important0
I don~ t propose at this time to try to make a speech
to you on the Common Market, because I have said somethi-ng
about that since I came back home, but I'll just say this to
you: This is a great problem,, It is a great problem for
Australian primary industry; it is a great problem for
Australian secondary industry; it is a great problem for the
Commonwealth. There are powerful political arguments for
Great Britain going into Europe, and she alone will decide
whether they are valid or not, There ara~ economic arguiments
for Great Britain going into Europe, and she alone will decide
whether they are valid or not. You have the six nations of
Western Europe all concerned because they are already within
the Treaty of Rome. You have Great Britain you Lave the
United States of America, in which this problem is lively and
produces activity in the minds and actions of the President
and the Administration., These are tremendous problems.
I can see all the advantages of Western Europe
having some form of association which may drub out of her ccr~ aiaceani
consciousness the old feuds between the French and the Germans
and perhaps offers some prospect of peace. I can see all that.
I can see all the advantages of Great Britain being inside the
councils of Europe in order to give what no other country can
give in such full measure, wiso counsel and sensible and
experienced guidance. I can understand that. I can understand
why the United States of America would like this to happen.
I can understand the arguments that are put by some people at
any rate, in Great Britain about the economic advantages 01
being inside a customs union which would give to Great Britain
a home market of 250 million people, instead of 50. These are
all quite intelligible things,
Our great problem, a delicate problem, a difficult
problem, a problem not to be solved by violent statements at
all, or by violent action, our great problem has been to keep
on reminding those concerned that9 up to now, the great pattern
of trade for us and for Great Britain, has been the Commonwealth
pattern of trade, and that this is something with its roots well
down now in history, which will not be thrown away l~ ightly or
casually. I don'tthirik it will be thrown away lightly or
casually, I have no doubts whatever after my visits to both
countries that the most stronuous efforts are being made by
the British negotiators to preserve, if not in form but, at any
rate, in substance, the pattern of Commonwealth trade which
means so much to us, and which as I reminded them, has meant
so much to Great Britain herself in our lifetime,
But this is not the time to be conducting longrange
debates en the matter. All that I can tell you is that
I have no doubt whatever that the negotiators, the Ministers of
Great Britain, understand our case completely, I am happy to
say that I think that the Administration of the United States,
from the President down, understand our case in substance very
well. And as they are both our traditional friends, I have
not yet reached a state of mind in which I want to abandon
myself to despair. Indeed let me warn you against this,
Don't let us get into a state of undue exercise over these
matters, Don't let us become too much the doubters on -these
matters, because all we will do will be to damage our own
economic activity at home. ' tie will create fears and uncertainty.
I will be going over there unless, as I concede, we are tossed
out in Auf'-' st 1.1-blc,: Pudrget Sessi. on6But subject to that risk,
00/ i0
Ipropose to be there with one or two of my colleagues in
September, and will then be in a much better position to form
judgments and to offer arguments.
All I want to say to you is that the Common Market
argument is not just an argument about a market or markets,
This is an argument about the most remarkable development in
international affairs of this century, All those of you who
have read history will remember that the balance of power
policy of Great Britain has been a cardinal point for a long
time. If, as a result of the present negotiations, the
United Kingdom goes into Europe with mutual obligations, with
the inhibitions arising from that on her powers; if that
happens, that will be a most remarkable development in British
foreign policy, We are not to permit ourselves the luxury
of saying, " You ought not to do that", instead we must say,
" This is for you to say": but we are of the family, we have
lived together and traded together and that pattern is not
lightly to be put aside.
1 come back to where I began, Perhaps for people
of my generation, the retrospective attitude begins to cloud
the mind. But in the next twenty, thirty, forty, years, it
will be the spirit of adventure that will be paramount and
that spirit will have to come from you young Liberals or
where is it to come from?