BLOODHORSE BREEDERS1 ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA
DINNER AT HOTEL AUSTRALIA, SYDNEY
23RD MARCH, 1264
Speech by the Prime Minister., the-Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Menzies
Mr, Chairman and Distinguished Colleagues at the Top Table,
excluding Alister McMullin, and Gentlemen
I am here under false pretences. Part of them is
attributable to Alister McMullin and part of them to myself
because this man McMullin who masquerades as the President of
the Senate and I must say in past experience, can always be
relied on to vote the right way ( Laughter) has for some years
said to me, " Why don't you come to the Bloodhorse Breeders?
annual dinner?" and I'v said, " Oh, Alister, you know really
with great respect I notoriously know nothing a bout it, Even
my political opponents regard me as being rather inbred."
( Laughter, applause) Though as a matter of fact, I'm not; the
lines are good. Then this time he came around in that disarming
manner that people acquire in the Senate. After all, they have
nothing else to do ( Laughter), except to acquire a disarming
manner. And he said, " Now, I wish you'd come. They are all
friends of mine" which I thought was a pretty bold remark.
( Laughter) and " 21ou know, it will be an easy, informal evening."
He gave me to understand, though I can't pin him to the words,
that there would be no speeches, and I thought, wellq I have
always wanted to go to a dinner where there were no speeches.
Of course, it turned out that he had deceived me, Well, I have
put him in possession of my views on that matter.
But the other aspect in which I am here under false
pretences is entirely due to me. If you wanted to produce as an
exhibit tonight a man whose degree of ignorance was perfection
( Laughter), then you've picked the right man, The Chairman was
good enough to make a reference to the fact that my distinguished
colleague, the Treasurer knows something about this business and
has been seen from time to time at great events. Well back in
191+ 0 I think it was, Harold Holt spoke to me and he sail., " You
know, old man, it's all right about this cricket business and so
on. Dontt you realise that the greatest cross-section of the
community is to be found at a racecourse. You must go to
Caulfield," ( I think it was to the Cup) Well, there was an
election somewhere in the offing, ( Laughter) and I succumbed and
I went, and it was very agreeable. We had a splendid lunch with
the Committee and one of the oddities about me is that I always
know all the members of the Committee though I don't know what is
going on, In due course, the main event was to occur, and in the
meantime I met a very well known man in Melbourne who was a great
friend o1 mine, and we wandered off across the lawn and stood near
some rosebushes and got deep into conversation no doubt, as I
was a party to it, frightfully highbrow. And it happened that when
the main race was being run, we were so deep in conversation that
we had our backs to the track and there we were and the moment the
race was over, Harold Holt came across to me and said, " I'm sorry,
old man, never come again." ( Laughter) What I have designed as
something that would build us up for the next election, you've
converted into a positive disaster." So there you are. This
demonstrates what a hopeless exhibit I am, but still I am not
unaccustomed to this. There are a few things in life that I know
something about. Occasionally I get the opportunity of talking
about them. But most of the honorific things that have come to me have
come in the most queer garb. For example, when I arrived in Sydney
this afternoon, I was wearing a lovely green necktie with coats of
-2
arms on it and somebody said, " What is that?" I said, " I would
have you know that I am a Fellow of the Royal Australian College
of Surgeons." This just rocked them because since I was a small
boy in the country and chopped the head off a chook occasionally,.
I have never performed any surgical operations whatever and now
I am a Fellow of the Royal Australian College of Surgeons. I am
a physician. ( Laughter) I cantt heal even a break in the Party.
( Laughter) ( Applause) The last time we had a Prime Minister's
Conference in London, I was taken away at the end of one afternoon
and taken around, on due warning, to the Royal College of
Gynaecologists and Obstetricians'and I was made a Fellow of the
College. I had to turn side on and explain that my position was
somewhat ambiguous because they might not know whether I was
there as a patient or as a practitioner ( Laughter). If I were
called on by an angry wife to build a dog kennel the kennel would
fall over within five minutes, but I am an archiiect, Understand
this, gentlemen? This is one of the few joys of public life to
be a physician, a surgeon, a gynecologist, an obstetrician, an
architect, a builder yes, I'm a builder I'm a plumber, and
therefore I am not unaccustomed to masquerading in a sort of
false capacity and I hope that these fellows like young Maloney
hero tonight, or even young Bob Heffron, if he were here, will
not use this against me because life is something of a masquerade.
But the one thing that I would like to say to you is
this, that ignorant as I am, brutishly ignorant as I am of the
fine points of your great enterprises like all amateurs, I have
my moments. L-4 the old days when we iravelled by train at the
weekend to Melbourne and back on Sunday nights, I had two people
on my staff and a then Chairman of Committees of the House of
Representatives who sat in the same compartment and who read
pink papers all the way from Albury to Melbourne. They all had
lead pencils and they were, I understood, engaged in that rather
esoteric exercise of studying form ( Laughter) and by the time
we were within twenty miles of Melbourne they would turn to me
hopefully and sayI " Well, what do you think will win the main
race today?" I would say " Well, how would I knogi. Give me
your papers." And I woulci look at them and by some metaphorical
process of putting a pin in a piece of paper, I would say, " O0h,
Dogsbody, of course, obviously will win today. Dogsbody is
improving right along the line." And Dcgsbody used to win.
( Laughter) I usad to receive the most tremendous accolades from
my staff for this almost diabolical knowledge that I hod of form.
I have lived a long time and I have been in politics
a long time and I've been Prime Minister now for an almost
deplorable amount of time and I had enough sense to know that
when I had done that four times running, that wns the time to
retire ( Laughter) and never again did I offer any advice.
But I have been talking tonight to Mr. Crowley about
your great exercise. Very international. He has had people
here from a number of Asian countries. I venture to believe,
knowing some of the people concerned in it, that Australian
racing authorities have done an enormous service to racing right
round the world. ( Applause) That is not to say that they would
ever take me with them except as " Exhibit A" l, but really it is
a fascinating thing in a world in which, so many occasions of
difference arise, so many brawls going on either public or
subdued, so many quarrels, so many well alivertised differences
of opinion things that really make you feel anxious about the
future of Lhe world, that one of the great counterbalancing
activities has been international sport in its various forms.
( Applause) This is true. I hope I won't be thought to blaspheme
if I refer to the fact that we have recently had a cricket team
here from South Africa. Now, there have been all sorts of
-3-
arguments about South Afr~ ca. Nobody i~ n Australia who saw them
or met them will argue about the superb quality of the South
African cricketers, tLheir courtesy, their character. They were
tremendous diplomatic representatives of' their own country.
( Applause) As you move around the world, as I do from time to time
at your expense, once a year, sometimes twice a year you really
become astonished to realise how many of these sporting activities,
games activities, are going on which tend to bring nations
together. Sometimes they don't of course, sometimes there is a
bit of a brawl and of course a brawl is something that is
completely foreign to my nature. But by and large, all round the
world there are more and more people who think of another country
in terms of their own particular sport, whether it is racing,
whether it's cricket, whether it's soccer, whether it's football,
whatever it may be, and this is to me one of the great hopes of
the world because I don't believe that we will ever solve international
problems by cold reason. I don't think they will ever
be solved by the people who write books and who conduct dialectical
exercises. They will increasingly bp solved if we understand
each other, if people around the world get to understand that
exciting truth that human beings are human beings wherever they
may be ( Applause) This is a tremendous and exciting thing.
Whether it means that in some far-flung corner of the earth I have
to encounter by accident some deplorable character like Bill Dovey
and say, " How are you, Bill?" and he says " Have a look at this
next race"; I have a look at it and wonder what on earth has
happened. Whether it's that way or on a cricket field or on a
football ground, whatever it may be, even in the field of lawn
tennis ( Laughter) if I may refer to such a non-controversial
matter ( Laughter), in all of these things I believe that the
world makes progress because the world ge'is to understand itself
and the people of the world get to understand each other better.
This is, I think, a matter of great moment.
And soI Sir I hope you will allow me to make my apology.
Everybody knows thai almost on everything that matters I am
completely ignorant. I never attend a businessmen's dinner, whether
it is manufacturing or commerce without being given to understand
that while I am an agreeaible sort of fellow it is a pity I don't
understand what's going on in their particular world. But the
longer I live and I have now lived a fair time or an unfair
time the longer I live the more I realise that the proper study
of mankind is man and that the proper answer to most of our
problems is to know the other fellow, to understand the other
fellow, because the moment you do that, reconciliation becomes so
much easier. Now of course, there are a lot of seriously-rainded people
in the world who regard sport as something a little below the
salt. You musn't be too interested in horse-racing in cricket
of something of that kind this won't do, this lacks gravity.
I think the world has had enough gravity, quite enough to carry
it on for a long time. What the world needs is a growing sense
of fun and happiness and it is because I feel that way that I
was cajoled by Alister McMullin into coming and, as it turns out,
if I may say So, have enjoyed myself enormously.