18th October. 1961
Speech by the Prime Ministers th~ Rt. Hon. -Sir Robert& Meze
Well Sir, I am bound to say that this is a
singularly unbalanced audience. If I look at that part of it.
I have to turn my back on the others, so I will address mysell
to a most dubious collection of Parliamentary colleagues in front
of me. I am bound to say that I envy my colleague the Minister.
He has publicly stated that he has a split personality. All I want
to tell him is that that will come in mighty handy if he is ever
charged with ~ pmicide. There is another thing that just struck me since
I arrived and sat down and that is that there is a cunning arrangement
on the 3hop just across the alleyway here. I suppose it was
put there by intelligent anticipation to remind us all that there
is an election coming on because I can see nothing but references
to pies, whether they're in the sky or not I dcnlt know and
cakes, and this, I think, is a stimulating thing for all of us
to see. I am sorry that my Parliamentary colleagues have their
backs to it. The third thing I want to say is that for some
inscrutable reason I have had to open quite a number of buildings
in my time and I have always been warned, " Now be very careful
to declare it open because otherwise it won't be open." Well my
Job today is purely retrospective because it is open, and it Is
in use and they're all working, so I suppose, Gordon, what I do
is to declare it retrospectively open, and so I do.
One of the interesting things about this building
is that up to now a variety of Commonwealth Departments have been
installed in what, 12 or 13 or 11+ different places in the city
and this, of courseg is the largest city in Au-stralia and a
tremendously important one and from the point of view of the
public convenience, of getting in touch with Departments, people
who want to see one Department and perhaps want to see two or three,
it is a wonderful thing to have them concentrated in this fashion
in one building in the very heart of the city and therefore this
is, not only from the point of view of the Commonwealth, but from
the point of view of the citizens of this place, a very'happy
event. It is a formidable addition to the city of Sydney and
St is a formidable addition to the convenience and well-being of
he people who live here. Therefore this is a notable event.
Now my colleague made a glancing reference just
now to " civil servants". I have always got into the habit of
calling them " civil servants" and I am told I ought to say
" iPublic servants". Anyhow I will continue to call them " civil
servants". You knowt I am so 00ld and de crepit a s everybody
knows nowadays, that I can remember a time when it was rather a
point of honour in any club, or places where men meet together,
to make some rather adverse comments on these wretched civil
servants, the bureaucrats, and yet whenever I come to one of these
gatherings where businessmen of great eminence are to be seen, I
see former civil servants who are now most eminent in private
enterprise and in general business very well regarded and much
sought after, and I think it is quite true that all this silly
old prejudice has gone. I remember many years ago an amusing
friend of mine saying to me " You know there is one thing you
must always remember about Lhe civil service, it provides a level,
a level of ability and competence below which no Government can
sensibly fall." Now you think about thatq that has a world of
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truth in it. It is not the function of the civil service to
govern the country, It is the function of the civil service to
contribute all it has in talent and study and experience in giving
effect to the Policies of the country which are hammered out by
people elected by the electors of the country, and therefore, the
function of tt~ e civil servant is a very high and responsible one,
a very objective one and speaking as one who has been a Minister
for , oh, more years Lhan the locusts have eaten, and Prime
Minister for far more years than one or two of my friends here
would desire, I want to say that nobody could be more indebted
than I am to the high standards of the great work of the civil
service and indeed nobody could be more indebted to them than
the people who engage in production and selling, commerce and
transportation, in this country, because every day they have some
occasion to have some contact with them.
Somebody once coined a phrase; it is now quite
shop-soiled. He said with all the air of novelty " What we want
is more business in Government and less GovernmenZ in business."
This is one of those delightful cliches that is to be regarded
now, as I think, something of a curio, because my experience not
a brief one, has been that for the most part, when people gel
into difficulty, when they have some problem which affects the
future of their own enterprises something happens and some
politician is put in receipt of their views on the matter and
some Government or other is asked -to do something about it. So
that, let's face up to it, w-i have reached a stage of life in
Australia in which the whole essence of life is that there should
be not hostility between public administration and private business
but the utmost of co-operation between the two; the utmost of
mutual Lunderstanding between the two and I assure you that in
dealing with the civil service, and Lhis goes for civil servants
wherever they may' be, Commonwealth or State in Australia, you're
dealing with a mass of people, the ovexwt-L-ming bulk of whom are
honest, objective, public-spirited people and here in this
building we will have concentrated a very great number of them.
The only other thing I would like to say to you
because a lot of men here are very distinguished in private business,
in seats of learning and in other aspects of the community and
it is this: " We have a constant danger of adopting what might be
called " false dichotomy". Everything is black or it is white.
If you are on my side in politics perhaps you think I am pretty
good; nothing to be said against me. Well I say that with
modified rapture. If you're against me then of course, there is
nothing good to be said for me. I am all black. Whereas, of
course, the trouble is that we, most of us, are grey some of us
in the hair but all of us in our attributes and qualifications.
We are neither black nor white, we are just ordinary people and
therefore we have something to be said for us and something to
be said against us. This is fair enough, but one of the choices
that we seem to have been offered in the past is this. It is
said that some expenditures in the country, those administered
by public departments are in the public sector and others are in
the private sector. This is one of those jargon-like phrases that
economists delight to invent it is the public sector or the
private sector, Gentlemen, I venture to say with all my belief in
the expansion of genuine personal and private enterprise in this
country I wnture to say that it just could not happen without
the public expenditure that goes on to a very large extent and
at great expense in this country. What are these things that
are administered by some people in this building and by some
people who are engaged in public affairs the provision of
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water, the provision of power, the provision of light, or roads,
of schools all these things which provide the very foundation
on which normal enterprise may build and be strong, and therefore,
I beg of you, put all these false conflicts on one side. W~ e in
Australia are a very considerable nation* We can be a much more
considerable nation as time goes on. WIe will become that the
more rapidly and the more surely if we understand that is is not
one man against another, it is all men together for this coun~ try,
that co-operation is much more important than hostility. Of
course there will be some hostilities, not necessarily personal
hostilities political hostilities of the first kind arise from
differences in points of view and that is very good. That's the
democratic process but don't line up the ordinary citi: en against
government or ordinary business against the civil service administrators,
because tUhis is the right way to produce the wrong
results. This task that we all have is a task of co-operating,
not dependently, not subserviently, but with full vigour full
capacity to express our own views, but in the long run, t
co-operate for the achievement of the great national result and
therefore don't let us have a feeling that a civil servant Is a
curious fellow, detached and almost monastic, except for his
alleged devotion to idleness. Don't let us fall into the error
of pursuing that kind of idea, and don't let us fall into the
error of thinking that wnaat Governments do in works in development,
in the nation, is irrelevant to what must be Aone by
thousands of other people, to build on those foundations to put
them to effective use and thereby to improve the production, the
distribution the commercial activities of the country, the
tran'sport aciivities of the country, so that we may have more and
more people, more 3nd~ more to do, and more and more real power
in our own country, Ncw, I am sorry to take up your time by getting
rather " into the pulpit" on this matter, but to tell you the
truth, I have looked around here and I have seen so many of you
before, I have tried to remember what I said to you last time
and, mercifully, I can't, and I know anyhow you have all come
along here, not to have a look at me, but to have a talk with
each other, have a crack at both sides in the political contest
and, with a little bit of luck, though I don't trust my Minister,
have a drink at the end.
I retrospectively declare the building open0