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PRESS CONFER~ ENCE GIVEN BY THE PRIME MINISTER,
THE RT. HON. SIR ROBERT MENZIES, 9 AT PAR3LIAIENT
HOUSE, CANBERRA, ON TUESDAY, 22ND OCTOBER, 1963
QUESTION-. Any plans for your election policy speech, Sir?
PRIME
MINISTER: November 12th I have in mind.
Q. Have you got any details of your itinerary thereafter?
P. M. No. I think perhaps when I say the 12th November, I ought
to explain to you what I have in mind. You see, we are
living in a new world nowadays. WIe have meetings, we have
television, we have broadcasting all of these, of course,
I will have to employ very actively in all States. I am
proposing this time to do something quite novel. I am
proposing to do my policy speech on television. I know what
that means. That means that I will have to do it telerecord
it, or whatever the words are two or three days
before because, of course it wjill be necessary for it to
be seen and heard in all htates at the same time with of
course simultaneous broadcasting. I have given a lo of
thoughz to this and I think that witn all these new means
available to people of seeing and hearing, it is a modern
thing to say, very well, the policy speech I will this time
do on television so that some I don't know how many two
or three million people will have the opportunity of hearing
and seeing, if that gives them any satisfaction.
Q6 It will be broadcast as well?
P. M. It will be simultaneously broadcast. Yes. That would go
over all round Australia on the 12th November and then on
the 13th I would propose to have my usual large meeting in
my own electorate. You know, in the orthodox way, not just
repeating the policy speech but making a major speech to
my own constituents..... questions.... all the usual business.
Q. Could I ask, Sir, whether that will be in Canterbury or Kew
Town Hall?
P. M. I haven't soon the details of the itinerary, but I do know
that by meetings, by broadcasting of course I always have
to do a number of those a number of televisions, a series
of meetings, I'll go into every State and, I think I am
right in saying, twice into Victoria, New South Wales and
Queensland. So it will be a pretty strenuous business with
a lot of travelling and covering a lot of ground.
Q. Will your policy speech take a. full hour, Sir?
P. M. Oh, I don't know yet. I haven't yot gone through the pangs
of giving birth to it. A lot of work to be done on that yet.
I haven't really got cracking on it, and we have to have
of course, Cabinet discussions, and a lot of work to be lone
on that. I couldn't undertake to say the length of it.
All I know is that in the past when I Love had to sit down
only one man can write a policy speech. Of course lots of
people put their ideas into the pool, but when it comes to
the point, somebody has to write it. I usually start off
by producing cbout 15,000 words and getting it down to
12,000 and then, following the advice Johnson
wasn't it? crossing out all the passages that seemed to / 2
-2-
P. M. be uncommonly fine and ultimately you get down to 6,000
( Contd.) words. That is in a normal course. I don't know how
long this time. I suppose in one sense, one might say, that
the longest a television audience can be expected to survive.
Q. I take it, Sir, that you will try for a complete national
hook-up?
P. M. Yes.
Q. By that I mean that you would use commercial stations.......
P. M. Oh, I am hoping so. Yes Kew Town Hall, November 13th, I
have just been given. That is the night after this policy
speech. By the way, I don't know whether you knew it, but
after I had come to this conclusion, I found that in the
last West Australian election both policy speeches were put
on T. V. Any of you hear that? Im told that was quite
successful. People appreciated it.
Q. I recall, Sir, that Mr. Chifley did one policy speech over
the radio.
P. M. Yes. That was by broadcasting, there being no T. V. at that
time. Anyhow, T. V. will give people an opportunity of
looking and listening.
Q. Can you tell us, Sir, whether you will be going largely on
the Government's record or will you be breaking a fair amount
of new ground?
P. M. Oh, don't ask me that. I haven't written the policy speech,
my dear fellow. All that will emerge.
Q. Is there any significance, Sir, in that you have to go twice
to Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales?
P. M. Well, I can answer that quite frankly. It is in those
States that we I think7 have the more critical things. Of
course, in West Australia we lost a couple of seats narrowly
and I am going to West Australia, naturally but it would be
pretence to say that Queensland and New South Wales are not
uncommonly important to the Government. They are.
Q. Would you like to give us your forecast, Sir, seat by seat?
Mr. Calwell did it for us last week.
P. M. I know. Mr. Calwell has a faculty for prophecy, and a
taste for it that I have never sought to imitate. All I
know is that by midnight on November 30th, we will have a
pretty good idea.
Q. He is prophesying that you are giving Mr. Holt an armchair
ride into the Prime Ministership.
P. M. Yes, I have noticed this. He seems to keep on repeating
this. Very interesting. Let's see. It is interesting
for two reasons, One is, of course, in saying thathe
assumes that I am going to win the election, which is a
rather agreeable assumption because, of course, if I lose
the election, we will all have an armchair ride to the
Opposition benches, so obviously Mr. Calwell and he has
made that clear anyhow doesn't expect to win the election;
doesn't want it; doesn't expect to win it and is therefore
afraid, so he says, that Mr. Holt will get an armchair ride.
S. ./ 3
-3
P. M. Unlike me, unlike any of his predecessors, he is to have an
( Contd.) armchair ride, Well, that assumes that I am going to
win. I think that is not a bad assumption. In the second
place, Mr. Caiwell knows as well as I do that if the day
came when I suppose in the course of Nature it will come
some time when I go out, presuming that I am in office, the
succession to me in the leadership of the Liberal Party will
be determined by the members of the Parliamentary Liberal
Party in both Houses. They will make their own choice, not
I, not Mr. Colwell.
Q. Sir, his assumption apparently is that having won the
election, you will then retire somewhere about next June.
P. M. Ah, I see. Well, just to finish that other one. Nobody
gets an armchair ride. People have to be elected and the
parties decide that on my side just as much as on the other.
So the only interesting thing about the prophecy is its
implicit assumption that we are going to win. Well, as to
what happens to me..... Really, one of these days if I ever
get round to writing some memoirs, I will have to set down,
election after election, what the prophecies were. Three
times now Vote for Menzies, and before you can say
" knife", he w-1ill be in the House of Lords. You wontt be
happy, some of you cha-, ps until you make some wretched
thing like an Earl or a L3scount out of me. Doar mae, I
have no ambitions whatever in that direction. Sorry to
disappoint you, None whatever. Then having made me a
peer of some kind, two and three times, now I am going to
resign out of hand. Well, I am feoling pretty well, thank
you. I have heard this sort of story about people
I remember years ago when Mr. Lyons I think it was in
1931; the end of 1931 when ho had become the leader of
what was then the United Australia Party. Everybody said:
Ah, you wait. Of course if they win the election, he won't
be Prime Minister for more than a month or two. One of the
other fellows.... I think it was Sir John Lathara on that
occasion... he was going to be Prime Minister. W4e11, it
didn't happen. Joe Lyons was Prime Minister for seven years
and I am not putting a terminal date on to my tern of office.
The electors-may, if they think fit on November
But I Im not.
Q. Sir, can we take it that you have got no intentions at this
stage of retiring......
P. M. I haven't got it in contemplation at all.
Q* Sir, there is one other thing about the November
election. Mr, Bob Holt, on the day after you made your
announcem., ent of November 30th, the State President of the
A. L. P. in Victoria, said he welcomed the election. Mr.
Calwell now says that the A. L. P. doesn't want the election
on November 30. Have you any thoughts as to why?
P. M, Well I didn't knew tha-t Mr. Halt wanted one. R. 94. Halt
is il? I knew that Mr. Colwell didn't want one because
having been very eager to have one far a long timae in this
Parliament, he has devoted the la-st five or six weeks to
explaining what a terrible thing it is and I understand
the other night he said he doesn't wont one. Of course
he doesn't want one. If I thought I was going to lose the
election, I wouldn't want one either. It's just as simple
as that. Politics is a renl business. 0 0 0 0/ 4
Q. Well, Sir, what about his other charge that having got
back on November 30, you will immediately put in some sort
of a credit squeeze. In other words, he talks about a
snap election and a snap credit squeeze.
P. M. Oh yes, I read that. Very clever phrases these are. He has
got to say something. This is a mere figment of his
imagination about a credit squeeze. After all I sympathise
with my friend Mr. Calwell. For the last eighteen months,
he has been talking about nothing but unemployment and now
it is disappearing out of the window in fact, completely
gone well, you have to get on to something else. I have
been an Opposition Leader, I know what it is like. Credit
squeeze, gometimes these fellows ought to make up their
minds as to what they really do believe. In one breath
they say the country is in a terrible state of depression
and misery, and in the next breath, they say there is such
a boom that you fellows will impose a credit squeeze. They
can't be right both ways.
Q. Sir, in Queensland which seats do you plan to concentrate on?
P. M. Oh, I don't know. I haven't seen the itinerary, but your
guess is as good as mine. You know the seats we lost. Of
course nowadays with so many ways of addressing the electors,
you can occasionally cover a couple of seats from one place.
I haven't worked out this itinerary yet. All my fellows are
wcrking on that.
Q. Do you, Sir, intend to use television much more extensively
this is for personal interview than you have done in the
past?
P. M. Well, I hale forgotten how much I used last time, but I think
it runs something like this: that I am proposing to televise
the policy speech for obvious reasons and this is a modern
matter. Then I think that I may do a couple more much
shorter television pieces you know, under the allocation
that is made for purposes of the election. I know that I am
taking part in two or three or four party television setups
you know, the kind of thing that happened last time.
So I daresay I will have to gaze into the camera into that
wretched unresponsive lens, what? Half a dozen times.
Perhaps more. Then I think I am up for about half a dozen
five-minute broadcasts and perhaps a final broadcast which
takes longer. Butapart from that, I will be on the platform
and having meetings in the orthodox way and no doubt
receiving the compliments from the boys at the back of the
hall. But I enjoy that.
Q. Will you be making any statements, Sir, before the House
rises, on the timetable or the proposed form of the restrictive
trade practices?
P. M. Oh, don't ask me this. Look now you're asking me to say
what is going to be in my policy speech. Oh, no.
Q. In Western Australia, Sir, will you -a ve time to gat to
Gora ldton?
P. M. I would doubt it. I'm not sure. You see7 the trouble is,
within the limited period of time, there is a limiit to how far
you can go. I will have to travel many thousands of miles
anyhow. .000* 0
Q. Do you recall that trip last time to Gcraldton?
P. M. I do. I do very much. Anyhow we cane back with some
Dongara crays. Did you ret any? I wondered what was wrong
with you.
Q. Moving away from elections in a way, has the Government
provisionally chosen the bomber, or will the bomber to be
chosen depend on the outcome of Mr. Townley's discussions?
P. M. Look, all I can say about that problem is that Mr. Townley
went over especially on this matter. He is extremely well
acquainted with the Secretary for Defence, Mr. McNamara
in America. They are on very close terms. He is at
this moment engaging in discussions with him. I can't say
any more than that at the present time, but when I can,
I will.