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CENSURE MOTION
Statement in the House of Representatives by
the Rt. Hon. the Prime Minister Sir Robert
Menzies, on Thursday, 18th April, 1963.
I must say Mr. Speaker, that I listened, as I always
do, with great interest to the words of my old friend the
honourable member for Bonython ( Mr. Makin), who became, I
thought at one moment quite impassioned on this subject.
I do want to point out to him with all friendliness that he
fell into a few errors. He made a demand for parliamentary
control in this matter. Everything that has been done and
which is now the subject of attack has been done under
statute of this Parliament and through an instrumentality
set up under a statute passed by this Parliament.
I would have suggested to my honourable friend that
he be a little cautious about invoking the authority of
Parliament when, in the case of his own party authority has
been handed over to the 36 men. Honourable members opposite
may moan and may groan, but the Leader of the Opposition
( Mr. Calwell) would not be allowed to move a censure motion
here today unless it came within the authority of the 36.
Just remember that fact. Then the honourable gentleman
attacked the Act of Parliament. This is a censure motion,
and presumably, like its happy predecessor last week or the
week before, is designed to defeat the Government and produce
an election. It is wonderful to realise how passionately
fond the Labour Party has suddenly become of an election
fought on the television law. Already two elections have
gone by since the law was passed, and I do not recall the
Labour Party making a point of it at either. Of course, the
reason why it did not make a point of it in either election
was that it was convenient on those occasions to play for the
support of some, at least, of the commercial television
stations. Well Sir, that prudence has now been abandoned.
The Labour Party with authority, I trust, from its outside
36 has nailed its colours to the mast. In this debate it
has said ", Je are for nationalization of television. If we
come into office we will take the earliest possible steps to
wipe out the existing commercial television licences and put
the whole thing into the hands of the Government." No longer
is there any mystery about that policy. I hope it will be well
remembered when the time comes. In due course some time off
yet we will be having an election.,
Then, my honourable friend got rather heated, I thought
if I could apply such a word to so mild a man about a licence
being given to a wealthy group. I hope he will forgive me if,
looking at this report, I point out and I am reading the
names of applicants that I never heard of until we got the
report that Community Television Limited it was a splendid
arrangement is comprised of 1,000,000 shareholders of
shares held by returned servicemen and returned servicemen's
clubs; members and affiliated branches of the Australian
Labour Party ( Victorian Branch); and then, to my joy and
surprise, members and affiliated branches of the Liberal and
Country Party. I did not know they had this money. Then
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the next class is Electronic Industries Limited they are in
for 1,000,000 shares and Electronic Industries Limited and
holders of ordinary shares in Electronic Industries Limited.
They are practically the same people, and they are in for
1,000,000, Then consider the directorate. This is a povertystricken
affair. My friend talks about the Government giving
a licence to a wealthy group. Bless my soul, 1,000,000 shares
out of 5,000,000, so far as I can judge from this document,
are in the hands of the Warners. I thought from what I heard
from the Leader of the Opposition that the Warners were
anathema. They are rather comfortable people when the Labour
Party and my party and somebody else wants to get a licence.
This is not a bankrupt show, I venture to say on the face of
it. Then my honourable friend says, " Is not this dreadful
that a licence is to go to a wealthy group?" I venture to say
that none of us in this House would want to sit down and concoct
an application for a licence, and find ourselves called upon,
by the inevitable logic of circumstances to find œ 1 000,000
or œ 2,000,000 and to have to carry a loss of œ 500,00 or
perhaps œ 250,600, before we got into the profit bracket.
I would become so excited at that prospect that I would become
unfit for further work.
Because our time is limited I want to point out a few
distinctions that have been overlooked by honourable members
opposite. I do not mind them moving a want of confidence
motion about television policy, but they have directed very
little attention to that. They have concentrated their venom
on the recent applications and the recent decisions. I just
want to say this: It is one thing for any governmont to
establish a royal commission which is designed to make
recommendations on policy. W! e have had those. We had a
celebrated royal commission on banking of which the late Mr.
Chifloy was a member. That commission mado a valuable report.
It was not binding on any government on either side. As a
matter of fact, it was a long time before any one of the
recommendations was taken up and put into effect. A royal
commission which is designed to produce policy recommendations
does not exempt the government of the day from accepting its
own responsibility on policy. That goes for a Labour Government,
I am sure, as much as it goes for mine.
But where you have as in this case, an Act of Parliament
which provides for the setting up of a broadcasting control
board, for the calling of applications for a licence and the
reference of applications to that statutory board and then
requires that statutory board to make a report and recommendations,
it is an entirely different matter. This is not a
broad question of policy. I think honourable members forget
that. Lot me talk about Victoria in this instance. The
Government called applications for a licence. About seven or
eight I have forgotten the exact number of applications
were received. The applicants formed companies and established
boards of directors. They spent thousands and thousands of
pounds in completing their financial arrangements and schemes,
engaging solicitors and counsel and in producing evidence. I
suppose that in the case of the Victorian applications and
it goes for everywhere there must have been sores of thousands
of pounds, and many wooks, expended in the making, pursuit, and
the hearing and criticism of the various individual applications.
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It would be a very strange thing for a government to say,
when all that is over, " Sorry; you have wasted your tjme and
your money; we propose to pay no attention to the report
of the boardo" I give it to my honourable friend that if he had his
way there would not be a board and there would not be
commerciallicences I understand that but let him accept
the proposition and let everybody accept the proposition
that there is a law, that there are commercial licences that
there is a board, that there are investigations and thaI
there are reports all made under the law of this land. In
these circumstances, a government, I venture to say, having
received a report would need to have overwhelming reasons
before it rejected the recommendation. I am putting this
as a cold, hard matter of fact; it would need to have
overwhelming reasons because, if it did not and it said,
" We do not like this recommendation", what does it do then?
Does it say, " He is out; we do not care for this; send
it back for another enquiry; let everybody cone along once
more and we will have another investigation, or perhaps open
it up for other people," This is not real life, Would the
Opposition I invite them to consider this very carefully,
and I invite the people to consider it if it did not like
the nomination, say, " Right; that is finished; we will now
pick our own." I wonder.
I repeat that apart from two casual observations that
were made to me a week or two before this report became
available, I did not know who the applicants were in Victoria.
Now I do. I have seen their names, I might say to myself
that some of the reasoning in the report is quite unsatisfying
to my mind I could well say that but didI therefore
say. " No, I reject your nomination; on looking over the
list I am goinj to pick so and so" I wonder what would be
said then, It is a very interesting thing for honourable members
to carry in their minds, that the successfu, applicant has a
board, the chairman and'dominating man in which is Mr, Reg,
Ansett, whom I perhaps meet once a year, who has no political
affiliations that ever I heard of. Indeed, my first association
with him was when I was the Victorian Minister of Railways
and put through a transport regulation bill which put him off
the roads. Such bosom friends are we that that is the simple
truth, That is a fact, Anyhow, this is a man of enterprise.
He is tough. he is a driver; and he has undoubtedly achieved
remarkable things9 When I first knew him he was very
favourably regarded by the Labour Party, indeed, but now he
has succeeded and of course, that is fatal. But he has a
company, the board of which embraces, as we have been reminded
by the honourable member for Indi ( Mr. Holten) this afternoon,
a couple of gentlemon who could not by any stretch of the
imagination be regarded as supporters or admirers of the
Government. They include, of course, a celebrated Labour
candidate, Sir George Jones.
But if honourable members look back at the other one
what is its name? United Telecasters, it has nine men on
the board, eight of whom are, and have been for years, my
very close personal friends, but they did not get the
recommendation. This is what all this favouritism charge
is worth. Here are men, literally eight out of nine, who
are close personal friends of myself, some of whom I strongly
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suspect may be supporters of the party that I lead, and the
board does not recommend that group, It recommends Ansett
Transport Industries, with no political associations except
to the extent that there are known hostile ones. I gets the
nomination. Can we as a Government now reject the recommendation
and substitute for it some choice of our own? If we had
substituted our choice; if we had, for example, selected Universal
Telecastors, the one of which Sir Frank Selleck is chairman,
I could imagine honourable members opposite being in such a
passion of rage that they would have had seizures.
Sir, the essence of this matter is that when you
establish an independent board and that board conducts exhaustive
inquiries, very costly to the parties concerned, you are not
entitled to reject the recommendation of the board except for
overwhelmingly powerful reasons and none, of course, have been
put forward. Time runs on and, therefore, I just want to turn to
another aspect of this matter. The honourable the Leader of
the Opposition knowing, because he is not without intelligence,
the force of these arguments, and knowing them in advance,
thought fit to conveit this discussion into what I can only
describe as a villainous attack on a series of people
wicked and villainous. I was shocked by it. If it had come
from other sources in his party, I would have understood it,
but coming from him I must confess that I was shocked by it.
What has he said about the matter? First of all he has
accused Mr. Ansett and his company because you cannot
distinguish them for this purpose of being bankrupt. This
is a terrible thing for a man to say under the cover of
Parliamentary privilege, to make a remark so actionable if
spoken outside Parliament that the honourable gentleman would
find himself ending up in the bankruptcy court. Let me remind
the House and let me remind the people of what he said about
this man who has battled his own way and achieved a remarkable
success. He said
" Ansett Transport Industries Limited has œ 6,000000
worth of assets of dubious valueand liabilities
amounting to œ 32,000,000."
If he had only troubled to look at the balance sheet of Ansett
Transport Industries Ltd, he would have found that the assets
were not œ 6,000,000 but 5,000 000 but he did not bother
about that; he set out to creato a false impression. He
continued to all intents and purposes the man is broke."
That is a nice thing to say, is it not, about a man conducting
a great service industry in this country he is broke. He
would not dare to say this outside Parliament. Then
" Anybody who has seen his balance sheet wonders how
he carries on. He carries on only because he has
the backing and support of this Government,"
all his obligations to which will have been discharged completely
by the beginning of next year. Then he goes on rashly and
says " He is the only man who has borrowed money at 8 per
cent, and & 8 per cent. around Australia and been
able to survive, Korman has crashed, Hooker has
crashed...."
When did L. J. Hookers crash? I suggest to the honourable 00000.15
member that ho say that outside Parliament and see what this
firm has to do about it. But, they have all crashed, and
he continues *" Ansett is the only one so far who has escaped."
It is a great pity that the honourable gentleman is so unconcerned
about the facts before he makes these charges because I just
want to tell him, if he likes to be told, that on the stock
exchange during the past twelve months, unsecured notes at the
rate of 8 per cent, interest were registered on behalf of
Australian Consolidated Press. I did not hear that it was
bankrupt. Ampol Petroleum had unsecured notes listed at
72 per cent. I had not heard it was bankrupt. Clyde Securities
had them listed at 8-per cent. Felt and Textiles, one of the
great textile industries of this country, is borrowing at 8 per
cent. Then we have General Motors Acceptance how bankrupt
they are borrowing at 8 per cent. and Humos Limited borrowing
at 8 per cent. The Overseas Corporation has unsecured notes
listed at 8 per cent, I do not need to protract the list.
The fact is that this was a monstrous untruth. If the honourable
member really wants to escape the condemnation of decent people
in this country, he ought to take the first opportunity to
retract it. So much for his charge against the Ansett Company.
But he does not stop there. He makes a charge of
dishonesty and corruption against the Government. Let us be
quite clear about this. He says that the Government told the
board what recommendation to make. He produced no evidence of
such a monstrosity. I am the head of the Governmant and,
until a fortnight ago, I had heard of no applicants at all, and
thon I heard cf a couple by accident. He charges the Government
with having said to the board, " This is what you are to recommend.'-
That is corruption if over there was.
I cannot imagine anything more dishonest than for a
government to suborn a statutory committee to forego its duty
and to make a false report not carrying its own judgment. But
that is his charge against the Government. Of course, his third
charge is against the board itself. These are reputable men.
They cannot stand up in this House and answer, and they cannot
take proceedings in the courts of the land for statements made
here. And these people are accused of having so far foresworn
their duty as to take instructions from the Government and then
go through the arrant humbug of conducting hearings, listening
to evidence and making a reporti The honourable member for
Eden-Monaro ( Mr. Allan Fraser) yawns, because this is his cup
of tea, this is his form; but it is not normally the form of
the Leader of the Opposition,
These are the charges, and I want everybody in Australia
to understand that these charges have been made without a skerrick
of support for them. He talks about a royal commission. I
wonder what he would say. Does he want a royal commission on
his charges with no parliamentary privilege, with himself
available to be put into the box to disclose the alleged sources
of his information? Of course he does not! We have had
experience of that before today. And so he says, " Let us have
a royal commission, not about these foul, damaging charges that
I have rade, but on the general question which was investigated
by a royal commission only a few years ago,"
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Si~ one thing that stands out crystal clear in
this debate, which I ' think is a valuable one is that the
Opposition, having set about the task of deszroying the
Government, is not for thie first time destroyed by its own
attack. In reality what emerges from it and whiat everybody
ought to take notice of in the cities and in the country is
-the fact that if the Labour Party came back into office,
commercial television would go out and people would be cj~ osed
up. They might let their licences run for a year or two,
but they are bound by their policy which is to close up
commercial television and put all the instruments of television
communication with the people into the hands of a government
body, which, if exper-ience counts for anything, will be
compelled by a Lbour government 4ob" tekeei h os
of Rimmon, This is a very simple debate from my poi*; nt of
view. If I may say so, it has been. a very enjoyable debate.
I have never felt so clearly that an attack w~ as so futile
or so doomed to disaster,