YOUNG LIBERAL MOVEMENT CONVENTION
YoWC. A. HALLo SYDNEY
27TH JULY 196
Speech by the Prime Miiniste_ rtheRt. Hcno RG,_ Menez
Sir I am delighted to be here and I am very
sorry that I didn't hear the whole of that last debates
The three speeches that I listened to I thought had a quality
that has almost disappeared at Canberra, ( Laughter) 3revity
and point. But I would like to take exception to the statement
made, a most misleading statement by one of the speakers,
that in Australian Rules football, there are three umpires.
( Laughter). He said this in a rather derogatory fashion.
I take leave to point out that there are five, ( Laughter) and
they are very sharply to be distinguished from those who
officiate in Rugby League in Sydney, ( Laughter) because some
of them have been publicly known to be right. ( Laughter)
Now, the Chairman has betrayed one of my guilty
secrets, He has pointed out that a long time ago, I was a
young Nationalist: indeed, a long time ago I was one of three
fellows who sat down in the study of my own house in Melbourne
and established the Young Nationalist Movement, And so that
I will be on easy terms with all of you, I would like to tell
you that on that occasion, we said to each other, as no doubt
you have many times, " Too many old fellows in this outfit of
ours0( Laughter) " Time we gave the old boys a bit of a stirring
up, What we need is new blcod." We became very formidable.
We stood at street corners; we had tomatoes and occasionally
a little other garden truck ( Laughter) thrown at us, occasionally
a friendly but fragile egg ( Laughter) and by the time I
became a Minister for the first time and, indeed, the second
time and the third time, it will surprise you to know, looking
at my sunny locks, ( Laughter) that I was always referred to as
" one of the more promising young men." So I say this to you
in order to establish that though times have changed for me,
I hope they haven't changed for you. Because, at that time,
we believed and rightly, that the future of our side of
politics depended upon youth and vigour, with a little age and
experience throiwn in we were always prepared to concede
that but, above all, youth and vigouro And this must always
be the motto of a political party that hopes to have a future
and not merely to dwell on its past0
It isn't so long ago, from my point of view,
back before the 1949 election, before the 1946 election, when
I, myself, being Leader of the Opposition, had occasion to
look over the field in Australia and to say " Are we putting
ourselves into shape to win the election and to govern the
country?" This was a serious question, but not a very easy
one to answer at that time because, under the pressure of
adversity, we split up into various groups and factions,
There were about three different political parties, non-Labor,
in New South Wales. I think there were about four in Victoria,
and so it went around Australia until I think when I convened
the original meeting to establish the Liberal Party, I had to
send notices to at least thirteen different organisationso
I know it well because it was all done in my offices as Leader
of the Opposition and by 1944, we were establishing the united
party; by 1945 we had it well under way, In 1946, we won
a few seats, nou too many, we couldn't hope to win an election,
but we won a few seats, and in 1949, we were swept into power
at what was then almost a record level of majority. 3 e. 0 0 o0 / 2
Now all that happened because we had something
to believe in, not just something to oppose, but something
to believe in. If we have fallen into any dangers in the
last few years, it perhaps is because we have lost sight
of the idea what is it we believe in and have perhaps
concentrated unduly on dealing with our opponents and demonstrating
how wrong they are,
Now, Sir, nobody could be a greater believer than
I am in the Young Liberal Movement, and for those reasons,
because long after I am merely a dusty memory, there will
be plenty of you in this hall tonight who will be occupying
leading posts in the political life of Australia and carrying
great responsibility in that political lifeo But you will
do iG and do it in positions of power ani responsibility orly
if you and nll the rest of us from tim-6o time sit down and
say, " What is it we believe in?"
Modern history is, as you all know, full of
examples of great movements that disappeared because they
had ceased to have any genuine reason for existence. I
remember speaking about the British Commonwealth a penetrating
man saying to me only six months ago, " You know, there is
a lot of argument about the Commonwrealth but the thing I am
always trying to discover is what does it stand for? what does
it believe in." And this is a great problem. It is not
enough just to accommodate the structure to new things or new
events, the important thing is to have a faith to live by,
And that goes for us, in this Party,
Now, Sir, I don't want to make a sort of thoiogical
speech to you, but I do want to say a few things about what I
believe in and what, as I hope, you believe in. This is not
a matter for some casual, contemporary observations, I want
to talk to you about some of the great things, as it seems to
me, that matter in our country and in which your mind and
your heart and your spirit will be determining factors in the
years to come, ' iJhat is the first objective, Sir, of national policy
in Australia? Not just to be in office or to stay there, but
to build something, to build a balanced nation, a strong nation,
a progressive nation, a civilised nation, in which advances
and advantages belong to all the people, Now you may say
that's almost platitudinous, so platitudinous that half the
people have forgotten ito All the people represent our
constituency of thought and of action,, ve must work for all
the people and build for all of the people and have our vision
of a civilised Australia for the benefit of all the people.
A good deal has been said in my time, politically,
about class distinction. We still have a few hopelessly
reactionary people, like socialists and communists, ( the most
reactionary people in the country) who want to whip up something
about class distinction, A Liberal regards this country as
having only one valid class distinction, the distinction between
the active and the idle If the world belongs to the workers,
in the words of the Communist Manifesto and I believe it's
true Ict it belong to the workers,
Let us believe that it is the industrious people in
a country who matter, that they are the contributors to a
national life, and don't let us, as Liberals above all things,
fall into those easy ideas that the modern conception of life
allows you to be idle, to be dependent, to leave it to the
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Government, and between a yawn and a yawn, cast a vote about
something. This is a wonderful country; it's going to be
more wonderful still, but it will achieve greater wonders
on the hard work and efforts of its people, and not by a
spirit of dependency, not on that kind of attitude towards
governments and what governments ought to do that our
opponents find so easy,
Sir, it's quite true we must always remember it,
that we have a strong and splenaid heritage in Australia,
We can all look back, most of us at any rate, except those
who have only jus-t newly arrived, Ln our forefathers in this
country. We talk easily about the pioneers. We sometimes
forget what remarkable things have been done. It WGoud be
a marvellous thing for all of us if, by some retrospective
photography, we could be taken back fif-y years. That's all,
Fifty years, and look at how things were fifty years ago,
and then look around us today, and there are those here
tonight who in fifty years' time will. look around them and,
remembering how things looked today, will marvel at the
achievements of this country.
We come of a great race of people. We have every
reason to be proud of them but oiir pride in them will be
worthless unless we are determined to be an even greater race
of people ourselves, unless we are determined that the future
that will be looked at, perhaps by another generation in
Australia, is going to be as astonishing as the one we look
at today. These thingsE Sir, don't call for a spirit of
quiet acceptance of what a Government will do. These things
call for a spirit of adventure, they call for a desire to
contribute, a rising level of civic unselfishness, Again I
say to you, don't take those things for granted. Civic
unselfishness. We don't know too many people, do we, who
would answer to that description We know a great number of
people who want something, who want to have it, who want to
be given it. There are not so many people in the country,
outside this room, whose great ambition is to contribute to
the nation. And yet, if Liberalism stands for anything, and
young Liberalism above all, it's for a passion to contribute
to the nation, to be free but to be contributors, to submit
to the discipline of the mind instead of the ordinary, dull
discipline of a regimented mass of people. These are wonderful
things for us to have in our mindso
If I turn away from that to what might be regarded
as more concrete matters, could I just say to you, quite
briefly, something about the objectives of national policy
other than those I have already mentioned, because they are
very important. They represent a constructive task, The
first one of them is that this country must have more and more
and more people year by year, and this means a very active
policy of migration in Australia. It is very hard for me
to realise that when we came back into office Senator
Spoonor will remember with me at the end of 1949, the
population of Australia was about 2-million people less than
it is today, and that is one of the marvels of this period,
that with this enormous increase in population, an increase
of something like 33% or 34%; in that period of time, our
living standards have risen and our growth has been so great.
We must have that population. de cannot indefinitely suppose
that we are going to be allowed to be the trustees of a halfempty
continent, Migration, the determination to maintain
migration, the rise in the population of Australia will continue
to be one of the great challenges to our national future,
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But, Sir, not only must we build up the population,
we must have a busy and employed population, and the maintenance
of full employment of people and of full employment of material
resources in Australia is not an easy thing to marry to an
active migration programme, Don't forget that because every
migrant who comes to Australia establishes, in the short run,
a capital demand whether it is for a house or roadwork or
school or church or some portion of a hospital, He establislhec
capital demands, and his own labour will rot contribute
correspondingly for some years to come, That's what people
mean when they sa: that a larre migration programme is. in the
short run, full of inflationary tendencies but, in the long
run, the essence of national growth. Therefore we have to
watch these two things together.
In the third place and this appears in so. me quarters
to be rather an unpopular idea, I gather we must restrain
inflation and preserve the value of the currency, and the
value of savings, Some of our opponents, from whatever side
they may come, are a little bit i. nclined to say about us
" Oh, these people arE. obsessed by the idea of stability,'
This is only because they don't understand what stability is.
They think that stability is stagnation It's nothing of
the kind, We are not the apostles of stagnation, but we want
stability, so that we may build a great structure on it.
We are builders, not contemplaters of foundations, Builders.
But if you are going to build a great national structure,
then anybody can tell you that you must have some stability
in the foundations, If you are going to have, coming into
Australia from the other parts of the wcidr, investments
capital which we so badly need for our national development,
you are not going to have it if your economy is in a state of
flux, if the value of your money is declining. We know this
from long and painful experience, but give it stability and
the results flowo
And I want to remind you, all of you, that in spite
of all the problems we have been going through, in spite of
the unpopularity that is attracted by many of the measures
we've taken, the fact is that for the last eighteen months,
the consumer price index in Australia has been stable. For
the last eighteen months, we have had no inflation of the
currency because we have had no perceptible movement upward
in the price level0 This, you would agree if you looked
around at the experience of the rest of the world is a very
remarkable thing, and one of its by-products has been, not
stagnation but a record-breaking movement of investable
capital into Australia from people outside who see in this
country all the possibilities of development in the future,
Sir it will be a pretty poor thing if we have less confidence
in ustralia than foreigners have in Australiaø
Then Sir, there is another aspect of this stability,
falsely so-called stagnation. Just look back, if you
wouldngt mind on the last few months, on the last twelve
months just to see what it is we stand for in the objectives
of policy, Have we been sitting down contemplating this
glorious index figure and saying, " Ah, it's the same now as
it was three months ago, This is fine," Have we just sat
back and looked at our balances of payments overseas ar] d said
how splendid they are, how much recovered they are from the
dangers of two years ago? Not at allo o oo0O
It's over this very period when we have had
stability of this kind, that we've been able to spend
many millions on the Snowy Mountains Scheme under the
Ministerial control of my colleague, Senator Spooner,
millions on uniform gauge works, millions on the Mt.
Isa railway to the coast to develop what will be the
greatest copper mine in the world, full of export income;
coal ports in New South Wales and Queensland, beef roads
in Western Australia, in the Northern Territory, in the
North of Queensland these things add up to almost fantastic
sums of money, and we have been contributing our money for
these purposes at the very time whei we have been maintaining
stability in the currency and in the value of money, I
mention those things becaase to my mind they are practically
conclusive evidence of the falsity of thr claim that stability
means stagnation and that the Liberal 2Paty has lost its
imagination and its drive.
There has been no Party in the history of Australia
that has had such a picture in its mind of Australian
development, There is no Party in the history of Australia
that has so far done more to paint that picture, to bring
it into existence, and with your good help, there will be
no Party over the next ten years tLat will do more to extend
the boundaries of development, so that we may carry a vast
population, so that w3 may improve our security, so that we
may improve the living standards of our people and do it all
on a basis of growing civilisation, ( Applause)
And then, Sir, I would just like to mention a
couple of matters. When I was a boy, in the bush, and many
people think that intellectually I am still there, ( Laughter)
the first political arguments that I ever listened to ( because
I was born in a rather talkative and political family) were
about protection and free tradeo And as it was in the
country, the fashionable thing at that time was to think of
all the manufacturers as evil creatures, battening on the
man on the land you know and because my old man was a
protectionist, he was frequently in strife with the neighbours.
All that is goneo That's as dead as the dodo. The fact is
that it would be a rare person today in either city or country
who didn't realise that the greatest example of interdependency
that we have in Australia is manufacturing on the one
hand and primary production on the other. And I think all
the more advanced leaders and thinkers on both sides have
long since realised that, But today we need to carry our
examination of it a little further.
I said something about population. We must have
more and more people coming here, I said that that presented
a problem, not only to the stability of the currency but a
problem of full employment of men and of materials But if
we are going to have a large migration, we are not going to
have it moving into the rural industries to any perceptible
extento All the leaders of rural industries concede this
point when we have discussions with themn More and more
mechanisation is coming on the land more and more advanced
methods of applied science and greater productivity, with no
necessary increase in the number of people employed.
Consequently, if you are going to bring people into Australia
and have them usefully employed, you must look to the
secondary industries and to the tertiary, service industries
rather than to the primary, This, of course, lends great
point to the necessity of having a growing manufacture in
Australia, to balance our economy, to take up a great
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increase in the population and to give us, more and more,
as time goes on, two feet -to stand on,
You know, before the time of many of you, there
was a great depression back in 1929 and a few following
years, and one of the things about -that depression that
everybody ought to know about is this: that at that time,
our manufacturing industries were comparatively small-,
our export industries, as today, were comparatively great,
But because we m~ a lir-it to manufacture in Australia,
because we were, as we confronted the world, standing rather
on one foot, the primary industr-y foot, when the depression
began overseas and reached us, it reached us in the form
of a tragic fall in the prices of wool and wheat and the
commodities that we exported. Fantasti-. NoboQ: T ' U. day,
thinking about tcdt. yls prices, would believe what they were
back in 1929 and 1930, with wool a few pence a pound and
wheat I remember getting down to eighteenpence a bushel,
about 2d. a bushel less than the average freigh-t that had
' to be paid on it to -take it from a country station.
These were tiagic things. That can't happen
to us today because we have manufacturing industries in
Australia which enable us to stand with both feet, and if
we lose a little one way, we hope to gain a little the
othor, We wontt always do it, but at any rate, we have
sought to establish some forma of economic balance, and it
is one of the great tasks of our Government and of our
Party to maintain it, That's the whole case, or rather,
it's the immediate case for maintaining manufacturing in
Australia, not recklessly but soundly, persistently, with
the knowledge that upon the steady growth of manufacturing
industry, the steady growth of Australian population will
primarily depend, I have mentioned to you population, stability,
employment of resources, employment of people, manufacturing
and its relation to immigration, but there is another thing.
We, in Australia, still continue to depend, in terms of
external trade, primarily upon the products of the land
and we will continue so to depOend for many years to come,
Wool, wheat, dairy products meat run through the whole
list -these are the very s~ aplie o. u epr icm and
as another proof of the interdependency of primary and
secondary industry in Australia, the bulk of the export, the
bulk of the money we lay out fLor imports into Australia
and we have imports because we have exports the bulk of
it is laid out on imports for the manufacturing industries,
either in plant or raw materials or whatever it may be.
If you were to abolish the wool industry and the wheat
industry and the others tomorrow, manufacturing in Australia
would come to an end,,
This is a tremendous interdependency, If we are
going to have it then we must never lose sight of the
position of our primary industries. Don't you allow this
to become the perquisite of anybody else. This is our
business. The Liberal Party has always stood for a lively
interest in this matter and I hope th-at it always will,
The primary industries can, unless we are careful,
be costed out of their markets, I have had distinguished
representatives of the wool industry come into my office in
the last thiree-wee . ks and point out to me xv'at they estimated
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to be the cost of production of wool and what was the ruling
price and pointing out that the margir., the difference was not
all that great. The same goes for wheat, the same goes,
with modifications, seasonal and otherwise9 in the case of
the great meat industry. And so on. Primary industries
are not operating on large margins in the markets of the
world, and unlike local industries, they have to take what
the world will give them. It is no use the producer of
one of these commodities saying to an overseas buyer " That's
not enough", because he either sells it or he doesn'to
The world controls our export prices and the
great hope of the primary industry consists of a positive
aspect and a negative aspect, Positively, we must oenourage
the productivity of those on the land by bringinc to their
as3istance all the modern improvements of research and applied
science and improved cransport and the like that we can
possibly provideø We do a let of research work in Australia,
splendid research work. The name of the C. SoI. R. O. is
famous in scientific circles all round the world. I am not
yet satisfied that the research work of its scientists
becomes sufficiently or quickly enough known to the man on
the farm I know that it isn't. The fact is thac we have
gaps here. We hav3 little distinctions between Commonwealth
authority and State authority. We have a problem here to
which we are directing our attention. Not as somebody who
wanus to be complacent but as people who are grossly dissatisfied,
we must do more on this level so that we may, without
increasing the population of the farm, increase its productivity
and by increasing its productivity reduce its unit
cost and by doing that, preserving its position in the world
market. These are the very conditions of advancement, and
that means that positively we must encourage productivity and
the reduction of costs for the man on the land.
Negatively, we become properly concerned, as I am
myself about manufacture and its growth and its protection,
We must always remember that secondary industry must make
itself more efficient year by year so that, in the long run,
it doesn't throw too heavy a burden upon the farmer and
grazier in Australia, That's the negative aspect. The
other is the positive aspect, We must keep down costs not
by some simple rule of thumb People argue about these
things as if they had everything to do with wages. They
have something to do with wages no doubt, but more than
anything else they have to do with our efficiency with
our capacity to paddle our own canoe, to get on with the
job. We need today in industry, manufacturing and
primary, pioneers, don't we? And we need the pioneering
spirit people who want to do it better and better and
better and thereby reduce the burden that their own industry
might otherwise cast on the community,
Now, the last thing I want to say to you is thiso
There will be a lot of people who will want to say to you,
" Oh, you know, the Government's all right We have to
support its" ( Because some people still o) ( Laughter)
" We have to support it, but you know, they do an awful lot
in the public sector" that's the phrase the economists
invented " not enough in the private sector," Now, Sir,
if we stand for anything, it's private enterprise, in this
Party top to bottom, young and old, But do we violate the
oo
L
8.
principle of private enterprise when we assist a State
Government to carry out public works without which private
enterprise could not carry on? Let's be sensible about this.
How can you develop a vast manufacturing community in
Australia unless you have schools, and schools are in the
public sector of expenditure, unless you have roads9 unless
you have water supplies, unless you have transport 6 nll
kinds. If you were to look over the average list of public
works that the State Governments bring to us each time at
the Loan Counil you would be hard put to it tc find one
that wasn't d-rectly coming to the aid of the develorment
of this country by private enterprise. You would be hard
put to it to find anybody in a great private enterprise
who didn't acknowledgthat without these provisions, he
coaldn't possibly dpvelop hi. s factory or his business.
Here's a comeback to my old and battered friend
the Senator you see. He's been getting money out of us
for the Snowy Mountains, sometimes honestly ( Laughter) but
alwa-rs successfully, for years and years and yea" H01
dig up the most marvellous hydro-electric scheme with great
irrigation storages and therefore enormous potential for
the increase of productivity in the irrigated areas of the
Murrumbidgee and * Ghe Murray. It's all being spent on the
public account, it's all regarded as activity in the public
sector it's all being performed by private contiact, and
every tittle of the advantage that comes from it in power
or in water, as the case may be is something which directly
or indirectly will assist private enterprise in Australia
to do its job and to get on with the development of the
country, I can sum up my own unsophisticated view very
simply. I don't believe that governments provide enterprise.
I think governments may provide the condition in which
enterprise is encouraged, but if you want enterprise, if
you want vision, you have to go to the individual human
being, It is human beings right through the community who
do things, who think out things, who get on with them. A
few of the human beings are elected to Parliement. But to
compare the mechanism of government, as if it were some
sentient creature with the genius of the human being is
absurd. We stand for the human being, we believe that it
is on his basis, on her basis, that this country is going
to have in the next ten years a degree of expansion unknown,
even in the last decade,
So we look forward, and I particularly tonighL,
looking at you, look forward, because I don't expect to
be around in politics J. n ten years' time and there are a lot
of people who would greet that statement with immense
enthusiasm ( Laughter), but you will be around, and I warn
you that unless you carry thi3 torch on as I believe you
will, I shall turn in my grave and reprove you if you can
hear me. ( Prolonged applause)
Thank you so much, You have convinced meo I think
I'll stay for another couple of years,