GREY BY-ELECTION MEETING HELD AT PORT
PIRIE, SOUTH AUSTRALIA
ON 6TH MAY, 1963
Speech by the Prime MInIster, the Rt. Hong Sir Robert Menzies
Sir Mr. Premier, Parliamentary Colleagues and Ladies and
Gentlemen I want to say how indebted I am to the Premier
( Interjector " Speak up") Can't you hear me? ( Laughter)
I am very indebted to the Premiei who was this afternoon ssfroray
from here as Mount Gambiev for having come up here tonight
they tell me that he knew the road so well that he drove
himself. ( Laughter) ( Applause)
But before I begin to engage in a by-election
speech in a political statement, I would like to say here in
Port Pirie how much I regret the occasion of this by-election.
After all, you had for very many years the late Mr. Russell as
your Member, and in my experience of him, he spared no effort
in his desire to serve you in Parliament0 ( Hear hear.
Applause) We all liked him li. ry much. I was delighted as I
came in here tonight to have the opportunity of shaking hands
with his daughter, who gave him devoted assistance for a long,
long time in the work that he was doing for you, ( Applause)
But the fact that he has gcne and that we ar-e
having a by-election will serve to dlsolose, I think, a very
interesting fact, and that was that Edgar Russell probably
secured many votes from people who woul-d not not normally be
Labour supporters, I am ncit criticising that; I think it
admirable but I think it vas due to his own personality and
his contacts with people in the electorate, so that the Party
lines as we would normally call them tended to be blurred.
That Is entirely an honcurable thing to be recorded about any
man0 But it means that at this by-election we will tend, I
suppose, to come back to what I will call Party lines so that
people who are Liberals will support the Liberal candidate and
people who are Labour will support the Labour candidate except
those who support the Independent Labour candidate and so on.
And I am here, not only as Prime Minister, but as Leader of
the Liberal Party to do what I can to bring about the result
of having Mr. V. Dyason in the Federal Parliament. ( Applause)
And for that reason, of course I am delighted to see so big
a meeting and delighted to find that apart from one chap who is
so eager to get to question time that he can hardly wait
( Laughter) there appears to be a very sound body of opinion
represented here tonight in favour of the candidate I am
supporting. Now, Sir, we have had up in Canberra, a couple of
" No Confidence" motions and when an Opposition moves a " No
Confidence" motion it, as A rule, selects the topic as the topic
on which it would like to go to an election if it won in the
vote, After all, let us admit it at once my Government has,
with a Speaker in the Chair, a majority ol one in division.
A majority of one. ( To interjector And if the one were you,
my friend I would resign at once) ( Applause) After all, if
an Opposition moves a " No Confidence" motion, and the Government
has a majority of one, then all the Opposition has to do is to
detach one voter from the Government side if possible and the
Government is out and we are out to the country at an election.
And, therefore, it is proper, I think, to regard the first of
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their " No Confidence" motions which was fairly general, as
representing the issues on which they want to go to the
country and, therefore, I think I am entitled to treat them
as the issues on which they would desire the Grey by-election
to be fought, and I want to say something about the two issues
which they raise, One of them is internal and the other is external.
It makes a fair balance, if I say something to yoa, I hope not
tediously, about each of them. In the first place, they said
that our economic management of the affairs of Australia had
resulted in chaos, in next-door to disaster, in the halting
of the economic processes, in a stagnant economy; in fact, I
could hardly remember all the words that they used to describe
the shocking state that Australia is in. And yet, I must
say as one who goes around Australia a fair bit, I don't feel
that I am going through a country that is suffering from
disaster. Do you? Some of these people who talk about
Australia being in a depressed condition, near disaster, ought
to have a look at some other countries in the world. I venture
to say to you, and I say this after now being continuously in
office for over thirteen years, that this country has the
highest standard of living of any country in the world.
( Applause) ( To interjectors Save it up, boys; save it
up, and practise the questions for after the meeting. Sit
down) I will be able to answer questions when the meeting is
over, Now, Sir, let me just support that broad statement.
We have had, in this period of time, the most tremendous
development in Australia. If you look around the nation
and the nation matters and see the enormous works of development
that have gone on all over Australia in the last ten years,
then you will at once admit that; there has been a tremendous
period of developmento Now, a great period of development in
the country ( Now this silly chap is talking on his fingers
to me ( Laughter) You would almost think I was deaf. Save it
up, mate. Save it up, Go out and buy a bottle of soda water)
( Laughter) Now, I was saying, ladies and gentlemen and
everybody here knows it is true we have had the most phenomenal
development going on in this country, and that development has
been made possible for a variety of reasons, one of which is
the fact that we have had a tremendous programme of migration
into Australia during that time, and it is quite clear to
anybody who looks into the matter that unless we had had this
enormous population increase, we could nev ELave had this degree
of development that we have had in the last ten years,
( Interjector " Who brought them in, Bob?") The Labour Party.
I agree, ( Laughter) You know, I am very glad you made that
interjection because this great migration programme was begun
by the Labour Government in which Mr. Calwell was the Minister
for Immigration, and I have always made it quite clear that I
regard this as a very statesmanlike action ,....( Interjector
" You was a Labour man") I've never been a Labour man, Oh, ho,
ho. ( Laughter) ( Applause) Oh, really, if you repeat that you
will hurt my feelings, ( Laughter) I have my own pride, you
must remember that. Oh, sit down. You know I have a sneaking
idea they came here to hear me, not you, ( Applause)
You will, of course, ladies and gentlemen, not
fail to realise that whenever somebody like myself is on a
platform and scoring something, some alleged Labour supporter
will get up and squeal like a stuck pig. It is always the
way. I repeat One of the statesmanlike things done by the
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last Labour Government was to implement the migration
programme and the migration programme will always be
associated, to his credit with Arthur Calwell. I have
given him credit, time after time. The amazing thing to
me is that although if I were a Labour man I would be
claiming credit heavens high for the migration programme,
half the Labour interjectors I encounter around Australia
are not only ashamed of the immigration programme. but appear
to be against it. That is an astonishing thing 6o me,
because without it, we wouldn't have had the rate of development
that we have hado
Now, there is another factor in this matter.
Australia with 10 million, 10J million people can't
( Interjector 11) !-ell, it will soon be 11. You do
something about it. ( Laughter) ( Applause) Now, ladies and
gentlemen, with 10 million, 101, 11 million people in
Australia. we cannot out of our own savings though we do
save money very well we cannot cut of our own savings,
produce all the capital moneys that are needed to develop
this country at the rate at which we must develop it, if we
are to hold it. Therefore, we have found, over these last
ten years, a tremendous coming-in of capital from outside
Australia not just coming in on Government borrowings;
there has been a little of that but coming in primarily by
the establishment or building up of new industries in
Australia. Hundreds of millions each year come into Australia
on private capital investment account and this has been a
phenomenally good thing for us, Wherever I go in Australia,
I can see factories, enterprises of various kinds which are
there because overseas investors had enough confidence in
this country, in the stability of its government, in the
liveliness of its future, to invest their money in it, and
you will see that wherever you goo
Have you ever heard any Labour leader in the
Federal Parliament say a kind word about investment from
overseas because I never have, I would be fascinated to
know who her anybody in the audience over heard a good word
spoken by Labour about overseas investment in Australia, On
the contrary one of their great slogans is that Australia
is putting itself in pawn to the rich overseas interests.
Now ladies and gentlemen, that is one of the other factors
in the growth. But another factor is related to our internal
attitude in Australia, the spirit of confidence, the desire
to get on with the job and that reflects itself in the fact
that in the primary industries vital to our future the
cost level of which is vital to future we have seen,
in my own time of office most remarkable increases in
production. I'm not talking in terms of money, but talking
in terms of actual physical production of the matters concerned.
I had a look at the figures I won't weary you with many of
them. Beef and veal 37 per cent, up sugar 96 per cent, up;
wool 61 per cent, up; wheat 30 per cent. up; mutton and
lamb 83 per cent, up. These are very remarkable figures
because they show that in spite of all the difficulties of
varying prices, the problems that primary industries have had
in overseas markets all the kinds of problems that we have
had leading up to the discussions on the Common Market, the
man on the land in Australia has kept on improving his efficiency
and increasing his production and the result is that the nation
is wealthier to that extent.
Now, Sir, apart from that let me say thiso
When we came into office when was it? at the end of 1949,
Australia was importing coal. We had the finest coal measures
in the Southern Hemisphere but we were importing coal5 and we
were importing coal because the coal-mining industry had been
allowed to fall into a state of chaos,, ( Interjector -" Rubbish")
These are the factsø Well you must tell me sometime how it is
that we had to import coal, If we had all the coal in the
ground, we were still importing it and importing it from India,
from South Africa, paying through the nose for the freights on
it because charter rates were extraordinarily high.
Today, the production of coal in Australia has gone
up 64 per cent. and so far fr'om having to import coal we are
now developing a growing and substantial export market for coal.
Indeed, one of the things done by my Governmont on the east coast
has been, in relation to Gladstone and Newcastle, to provide
extra coal-loading facilities so that these export markets
could be developed. Now, that is a pretty good thing isn't it?
Something that any Government might be proud of any group of
governments might be proud of to know that in these important
commodities, productivity in Austre. lia in actual terms has been
going up. And indeed, Sir, we are now, as a result of a series
of wise incentive policies on our part, developing with the
co-operation of intelligent manufacturers, exports of manufactured
good, There was a time ( Interjector " How many shares
have you got?") Look, don't cry yourself to sleep wanting to
know how many shares IVve got in something. I've got a terrific
set of shares in Australia Unlimited. ( Hear, hear. Applause)
Now, Sir3 I was saying about manufacturing, that
we decided that we oughtn~ t to have all our eggs in one basket,
that we ought not to depend as much as we have in the past on
the exports of primary prcducts0 We need to develop our exports
in that field,, We need, and we are working for it at this
very moments both here and abroad, to get a more stabilised price
level " or the things that are produced on the land, a safer
market, a more stable market, But if we are going to be a large
country, industrialized as well as on the land, then we must
develop export manufactures. ( Inaudible interjections) All
right. Some chap who is obviously an old friend of mine, he
says Did he say that the Labour Party did this thirty
years ago? I wonder0( Interjector " Remember what you
said thirty years ago") Of course I can't,. Ive even forgotten
what stupid remarks you were making thirty years ago, ( Laughter,
Applause) When Labour went out of office, the exports of
manufactured goods from Austra]. ia were œ 29M and this year, they
are œ 134M. Now that is a tremendous growth from œ 29M to
œ 134M and I am hoping very much that as a result of the taxation
incentives and other arrangements that have been made, we will
find that our manufacturing industries will increasingly be
able to produce, at a cost level which will enable them to
compete in overseas markets and Lord knows, there are plenty
of them around Australia on competitive terms, and when that
happens we will find that we have a balanced economic growth.
But all these things, if they are to be done, require something
that is not always popular, They require a stable value of
money. You can't expect the man on the land to go on saying," Oh,
yes. I'll keep on producing, I'll increase my production of
this or that" if in fact inflation is going on inside Australia
so fast that all his costs have built up against him while his
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price from overseas remains uninfluenced by inflation. And
therefore, for the man on the land, stable currency is of the
essence, And for the manufacturer, people say, " Oh, well,
he doesn't care because he can pass it on to the customer,"
A manufacturer can't pass it on to the overseas customer,
Therefore, he has a tremendous interest in keeping his costs
stable ana, indeed, cutting them down by increased efficiency
of plant and of management and so one And the man who is
employed, whether it is on the land or in the city, in the
factory, he has a lively interest in avoiding inflation because
I may tell you, to take a simple example, he is a very
substantial holder of savings in the savings banks.
Do you know, ladies and gentlemen, it is a thing
worth remembering, that in the savings banks Australia, there
are 10 million accounts and that the average in each of these
accounts is f185. That shows how poverty-stricken we are in
Australia, Ten million accounts in savings banks average
œ 18o5 And the employee who has money in the savings bank
he doesntt want to see the value of it run away by inflation.
The man and there are millions of them in Australia who
insures his life against his old age for lage or small sums
doesn't want to see the value of his insurance run awayo
Let me remindl you that there is no man who has got a livelier
interest in stabilised price levels than tha man who works for
wages. And what has occurred?
The fact is that as a result of policies which
sometimes have been unpopular I remember them very well
we have had stability i. n the cost and price level in Australia
for just about three years, This, of course, is the most
tremendous encouragement to people from other countries who
are looking around with surplus capital to invest and who are
looking for a country in which there is stability, in which
there is security, in which there won't be ratbag governments
or irresponsible governments. They have had plenty of
experience in South America of countries that turned out to
be completely unreliableo Increasingly, they are coming here
and so far from resenting it I take great pride in it and I
hope and believe that Australians all do,
Having spoken about that, I want to turn to the
other branch of the famous censure motiono ( Interjector
" I want to ask you a question") Oh, well, you are in a bit
of a hurry, lad, because when the meeting is over, when I am
finished you can get up and ask it but I might tell you in
advance that I will listen to the question and you'll jolly
well listen to the answero ( Applause)
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I perhaps occupied a
little too much time on that, because I want to turn to the
external problems on which the Labour Party took us to task,
What was their policy when they dealt with external affairs?
It seemed to me that they had two or three points and these
ought to be understood because if they win the next election,
these two or three points of theirs will represent the policy
of Australia, so let's all be careful as to what we are doing
about it. Dontt think you can have the best of all worlds at
all times. If the present Government's policy is bringing us
in the world, increasingly, friendship and security, then you
must hesitate before you throw it away in order to experiment
with people whose policy I am just now about to describe.
6
First of all they said, " Internationally, well,
Australia has some troops in Malaya." Quite true, we have some
troops in Malaya as part of the strategic reserve under the
South East Asia Treaty. The South East Asia Treaty which we
signed, which we advocated, contains in its membership Pakistan.
Thailand, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand, France and
the United States of America and the United Kingdom. This is
the group included in the South East Asia Treaty, commonly called
SEATO. And we have, with Great Britain, and New Zealand,
contributed to a relatively small reserve force in Malaya0 When
it went there, our friends the Malayans, under their distinguished
Prime Minister, the Tunku Abdul Rhaman, were being harassed by
a lot of Communist bandits in their northern counties. These
people were being fed and assisted from across the border and
it took a long time to defeat them and control them, and our
troops took a part in this business I had always thought, with
the warm approval of the general public of Australian
But the Labour policy, as expressed the other day
by a prominent front-bench Member and you know front-bench
Members of the Opposition at Canberra don't speak outside the
instructions of the 36 men outside, so this is authoritative you
may be perfectly certain he said, " Well, withdraw the troops
from Malaya. What has Malaya to do with us?" This is what
this spokesman for Labour said " What has Malaya to do with us?"
And now the proposal has been advanced and is considerably
advanced, to establish Malaysiaooo.. ( To interjector I know,
you are interested in everything except thiso You said that
earlier, But Australians are interested in this) ( Applause)
The Prime Minister of Malaya sponsored a proposal
under which tte Federation of Malaya and Singapore, where the
great naval base is and the three Borneo provinces, Sarawak,
Brunei and North Borneo should, with the agreement of their own
people, come together in a Federation of Malaysia and we, as
the Government warmly approve of this, as does the Government
of the United Kingdom as does the Government of the United States,
because this would establish a hard circle of countries highly
friendly to us and we need countries that are highly friendly
to us auite frankly, because all the pressure in our direction
here is from Communist China, down through Laos down through
North Vietnam and with constant threats on the Thailand border,
We would need to be blind if we didn't realise that the threat to
our future comes from that direction and from that source and so
we say we are all for Malaysia.
The Labour Party, after its recent Conference of the
36, who gave their orders, said, ' Woll, yes we have nothing to
say about in Malaysia in particular except that we are glad that
they will no longer be colonies." Not a positive word about
Malaysia, The Melbourne " Age", one of the greatest newspapers
in the Southern Hemisphere, wrote a leading article on it of the
most pungent description. It was a poor, equivocal, shuffling
attitude towards a great problem,
Then there is the next one, What is their policy
about nuclear affairs? Well, I hope you won't mind if I take
just five or ten minutes to deal with this because it is of
the first importance, They are bgginning to talk as if they
were the only people that wore against nuclear war, You know,
ban-the-bomb and all this business. They act as if they
were the only people against it. Presumably we are a lot of
blood-thirsty fellows in Government who want to get on with a
nuclear war. And they have the unparalleled impertinence in
a0* 0e aee* ac/
7
the course of debate of' quoting what the Commonwealth Prime
Ministers agreed on a couple of years ago i~ n London, forgetting
that I was one of them, and indeed not knowing perhaps that
the paragraph they most rely on was actually written by me and
accepted unanimously by all the Prime Ministers present. Now
we said two things on this disarmament problem. Wde said we
were all for dlsarmament7 we were all for getting armaents
down, step by step. we believed and, of course, we still
believe that the eliminating of nuclear and conventional
armaments ( non-nuclear armaments) must be so phased that at
no stage will any country or group of countries obtain a
significant military advantage. So I want you to follow what
that means. At the present time, Jit you talk about orthodox
weapons, conventional weapons, great armies, air forces not
devoted to the use of nuclear weapons and so on the Soviet
Union would outnumber the entire world put togelhero' If you
could abolishi all the rniclear weapons in' -the world at thin
moment and stick thorn in the uttermost parts of the sea, there
would be nothing to prevent the Soviet Union from taking charge
of Europe any fortnight it occurred to them, because she has
overwhelming power in non-nucloar forces, It is the fact that
the United States primarily and Great Britain to a certain
extent have nuclear weapons which serves as a deterrent to them
that prevents them from continuing their aggression in Western
Europe, an aggression which has been halted. now for about
eight or nine years. Now this is t emendously importat
What we said as Prime Ministers was, " Well. look, it would be
silly to wipe out or to reduce nuclear arms if you left the
others untouched, Therefore they must all be dealt with.
They must all be cut down -toget; her so that no country, or group
of countries is put at the mercy of' another country Qr roup
of countries. We all agreed on this. The Pr~ ime Ministers,
with an imiheasurable variety of ideas on most things, were
unanimous, And in the second place, we came to this paragraph
that I referred to, as I have a particular interest in it,.
and we said this, I am telling you this because I am tired of
al! this nonsense about the Labour Party being the only people
who are interested in this matter. We said this " Every
effort should be made to secure rapid agreement -to the permanent
banning of nuclear weapon te7. sts by all nattions and to arrangements
for verifying the observance of the agreement. Such an agreement
is urgent, otherwise further countries may soon become nuclear
powers, wicih would increase the danger of war and further
complicate the problem of disarmament."
Not much to quarrel wita there, I venture to say.
That is what we wanted. That is what we want. But ever
since that time, every conference at Geneva designed to bring
about a cessation of nuclear tests has dealt with positive
proposals by Great Britain and the United States to cease them
and complete obstruction by the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union
gets out of it by saying, " Well, it's all right for you, but we
are not going to have anybody inside our territories inspecting
what we do and finding out whether we are making nuclear tet.
The Communist power, the great Communist nuclear power the
O3oviet Union is today solely responsible for the fact ? hat
neclear tests are allowed to go on,
Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, I venture to say
that the Labour Party starts on this problem a little bit
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off-balance, but having claimed in this rather arrogant fashion
that they are the great spcnsors of getting rid of nuclear war,
then, egged on let's speak quite frankly egged on by the
Communist Party which began this scheme, they have now said,
" We are for making the world South ofl the Equator a nuclearfree
area, not allowing any nuclear weapon to come into it or
be discharged from it or be stock-piled in it or to be made
in it." This is the policy that you will be voting for in the
next election in Australia if you vote -Tor Labour,
Now, I just want to remind you, ladies and gentlemen,
what that means. ', Je are not a nuclear power. We have stood
clear of this kind of thing. We are not ambitious to be building
nuclear weapons. UIe think the fewer hands that they are in
the more chance of avoiding disaster in the world. But, under
the South East Asia Treaty and more particularly under the ANZIJS
Pact which my Government sponsored Australia, New Zealand
the inhited States under that pact, America is our ally, ana
America is a nuclear power and if a igreat war arose, you don't
suppose that we would be left out of it. Would we be just
the unwilling prize of victory to whoever won? It is worth
thinking about. But if a great world war broke out which
Heaven forbid would the United States a..( Interjector-
" You'd resign tomorrow) You couldn't be more wrong. I
resigned in August, .1941. It is about as accurate as most of the
things you have been saying,
However, ladies and gentlecmen,, I want to pursue this
serious topic,. Suppose there were a great war, and suppose
China by this time has developed nuclear weapons as undoubtedly
she will before long, and the United StEates of America is our
ally, and the United States decides to use nuclear weapons
herself in answer to a nuclear attack. Now this is something
that is no use shutting ou-r eyes to and pretending there is no
such danger,, We have to open our minds and our eyes and look
at it quite plainly, Would we say would you like the
Australian Government rather to say to the United States, " You
are not to have in the Southern Hemisphere, south of the
equator, any submarinas with nuclear weapons on them, you are
not to fly around south of the equator any aircraft with nuclear
weapons on them because thiat's against our beliefs. Suppose the
United States said, " We don't care what you say, we are going
to do it." This is a great contribution to our alliance
isnst it? But suppose, on the other hand, they said, " Well,,
we'll do what you want us to do. We will leave Australia out
of all this business. We will put our fellows in and take the
rap." How would they get into the Indian Ocean, which
strategically is essential -to an attack on the Soviet Union or
on Communist China? Do you know how they would have to get
into the Indian Ocean? Through the Suez Canal. You realise how
long that would be oren, or through the Straits of Malacca,
next door to Indonesi. a,, ( Continuous interjections) It's all
right, ladies and gentlemen, I sympathise with you, but it is
a well-known statistical fac~ t that in a population of say, 800,
you are bound to have a couple of nuts,, ( Laughter, applause)
The third item of Labour policy which I want to
mention to you quite briefly concerns itself with the proposed
installation of a radio signalling station by the United States
in the North-West of Australia, North-West Cape
( To constant interjector You ydon't think you've done me any
harm, do you? On the contrary, youlve been worth 100 votes
tonight to Vern Dyason) ( Applause) 000.0./ 9
9-
I come to the final aspect of this matter, the radio
communications station in the North-West of Western Australia,
Here is something which, as everybody now knows, I hope and
itfs been made clear from the beginning is a radio signalling
station, under which the United States authorities can convey
messages to their naval vessels within the range of the station,
that is to say, in the Indian Ocean and the South West Pacific.
Very important that they should have this as in other parts of
the world, This is rather a blank spot. And they asked us
whether we would agree ou~ o allies and of course we said we
would, It wasn't without interest that it is going to be very
expensive and they are going to pay for it. It is a pure means
of conveying messages to their naval vessels and has nothing to
do with controlling thei~ r fire or these fanciful things that
people have been talking about, This is a perfectly commonplace,
straightforward idea.
What did the Labour Party do about it? ( Interjector
" What about the 36?" 1) Thank you very much. Yes, I wanted that
question. Yes, I'll tell you. The 36 outside bosses of the
Labour Party because the Labour Party doesn~ t believe in
control by Parliament but by control by 36 outside bosses who
lay down the law the 36 outside men or women they decided
ultimately that they would approve of this proviled that the
United States was not to use it in the event of war without
the approval of the then Australian Government. ( Interjector
" That's fair enough") Well, you say so, but I' 11 make two
comments on it,
First of all, that was carried by 19 to 17; 17 out
of the 36, apparently, didn~ t want them there at all and but
for one man switching his vote, it would have been Aall or
19.. 17 the other Now, how do you like that? Don't forget
that the 36 are not dead; they meet from time to time and they
lay down the lauy from time ' to tim-and every man in the Federal
Parliament on the Labour side is bound by it. Just within a
whisker of saying to thie United States of America, " You keep
off."' They must be feeling strong. They must be feeling that
Australia is a tremendously powerful country in spite of the
wrctched Menzies Government. They are prepared to say, 2We
are able to go alone, Wle don't wrant you the United States,.
coming along and building a n~ e-ion,." Imore fantastic point
of view I have never heard of and yet it went within a touch
of being carried, and the 19 said, " Yes well, no doubt there is
a lot in what you say, but it will be all right if, in the event
of a war, the Americans can be ordered out by us."
Now, ladies and gentlemen, do you like to imagine a
war in this part of the wrorld in which we are engaged, in which
the United States is not alongsIde us? Do you like to think of
it and if you were an American, woldv you expect that if you
hal an alliance with Australia, Australia would be along if
you were engaged in a war? The United States of America cantt
be engaged in a war in which it requires these facilities for
its naval forces unless that's a great war and a great war
against whom? Against the Cormmunist powers. There is no other
enemy, And to think that any nation would be prepared to invest
its money and its time and its skill in putting up a signalling
station on the North-West coast of Aus-tralia only to be told
that at the very moment it needed it, it couldn't use it, This
to me is sheer lunacy. Lunacy. And if that point of view
prevailed, I wouldn't give tuppence for the durability of our
arrangements with the United States of America and, quite frankly,
B & 0606/ 1 0
if I couldn't give tuppence for the durability vr thzoce
arrangements, I would-n't be -able to offer much for our
chances of surviLval0
And yet, this unreal view, this fantastic view is
the one that went within well was carried by 19-17 and
but for a little accident en route, it would have gone still
further and the Americans would have been ordered out if
I may be completely Irish before they arrived. ( Laughter)
Ladies and gentlemen, these are great problems
and they are problems here in a by-election, they are problems
in the next Australian election and, apart from being a matter
of political debate or argument, they are great problems for
our country, because this is our country and we have the
liveliest sense of obligation to preserve it security and
to preserve the standards and future of the people who live
in it, Now I really thiink, if I may say so, that this
by-olection where there is an a-xnirable candidate as you all
know, gives you a splendid opportunity of firing a shot across
the bows of the Labour Opposition at Canberra,
1U