OPENING OF NEWT CLINICAL SCHOOL BUJILDINGS
ST. VINCENT'S HOSPITAL, SYDNEY
3RD MAY, 1964+
Speech by the Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Mengies
Mr. Chairman, Your Eminence, Mr. Sheahan, Mother Rectress and
Ladies and Gentlemen My simple function this afternoon is to declare
the Clincical School and the Students' Residence open. If
somebody will be good enough to remind me at the right time,
I will do that. In the meantime, I take leave to tell you, as you
have already discovered, that here is a sort of port of last
call. Whenever an occasion of this kind happens and I look at
my State colleagues even a good friend of mine like Mr.
Sheahan, I know that before he finishes, he will lay a little
hand on me ( Laughter) and throw out a broad hint about something,
I don't mind that from another politician, but if I may say so,
with all the truculence of a Presbyterian ( Laughter), I take
great exception to being nudged by the Cardinal ( Laughter)
( Applause), because when we went through the students' residence,
I may have imagined it, but I felt quite certain that he gave
me a quick dig in the ribs. ( Laughter) And under these circumstances,
I think that I really ought to say a few words in my
own defence, unaccustomed as I am to that kind of exercise.
( Laughter) It is quite true, as you have been told, that I have
been fortunate enough to have more than a little to do with the
entry of the Commonwealth into tertiary education, with the
Murray Committee and the adoption of the Murray Report and then
the creation of the Universities Commission, and those things
undoubtedly though they have produced occasional discomfort
for the Treasury have been a great opportunity for new life
to the universities of Australia and for that I am thankful,
but you know, it wasn't until after that had beon done that I
was approached by various people and invited to consider whether
the teaching hospitals ought to be put on some footing which
would approximhate them to the universities proper. So in order
to secure a completely unbiased report, I added to the Universities
Commission a well.-known professor of medicine; that is
a very good way of seeing that nothing is overlooked. And in
the result, we decided two things: First that we would include
teaching hospitals who were, in the view of the Advisory Committee,
doing work that could be properly be described as university
work, that we would include them in the recommendation for grants
to be made by the Commission. Now that was a very great step
forward in the teaching hospitals.
In the second place, we decided we would, pending
a rather fuller examination of running costs because it is not
easy to segregate the normal costs of running a hospital from
the special costs attaching to tuition of a clinical kind
pending the conclusion of that matter we would make contributions
for the capital expenditure of ieaching hospitals. Now
that is a comparatively recent matter. I expect that before this
year is out, we will have received and acted upon the report on
the recurring expenditure side. I say that because my friend,
Mr. Sheahan, was getting in a bit early on this, as if we hadn't
thought of it. I expect before the year is out, that this will
have borne fruit. ./ 2
2
But in the meantime, I tell you, I had a bit of
pleasure in walking through this clinical school this afternoon
because it is literally one of the first fruits of that new policy
and I am delighted and I hope that it will be followed by many
other hospitals in many other places.
I suppose I don't know, but I suppose that centuries
ago you didn't need to know much to be a doctor. Judging by some
of the seventeenth and eighteenth century works that I have read
in my time, you needed to have some of the faculties of a butcher
and your patients needed to have endurance far beyond that of Job.
But in the last hundred years, what miracles we have seen, haven't
we? The great miracles in surgery, the great revolution in
medicine which converted it from a ways and means of sedation for
the patient while nature did the work to this positive antibiotic
approach to the cure of disease these have been marvellous
changes, and not one of themn has been made by Act of Parliament.
( Laughter) We want to remember this. We are a little bit given in
Australia to thinking that if only politicians were all sensible
meaning by that if they all agreed with all of us everything
would be solved, which is of course untrue. None of these changes
that I have referred to were made by Acts of Parliament. How
could they be? They were brought about by devoted men and women
of immense skill going in for research, tackling problems, incurring
risks, making revolutionary changes.
Who would dare to compare the hospital of today with
what hospitals must have been before my time a hundred years ago,
U I said " before my time" because I sometimes feel I am getting
near that point ( Laughter) though, of course, I am encouraged by
the example of Mr. Chancellor, whom I always refer to both
publicly and privately as Peter Pan. ( Laughter) ( Applause) This
is all a magnificent pieco of hum-on endeavour. The complexity
of today far exceeds the complexity of the past.
People don't always perhaps realise it but the work
of a Prime Minister, particulairly in a Federal community, today is
three times as complex as it was when I first became Prime Minister,
and ten times as great as it was for a Prime Minister in the middle
of the nineteenth century in Great Britain. The world, as it
grows smaller, becomes more complex, the whole body of knowledge
in science, in any profession, and above all, in medicine and in
surgery, keeps crowding in. There are more things to be learned,
and the more things there are to be learned, the greater must be
0 the facilities for teaching them and for studying them and the
result is that today's hospital, particularly a teaching hospital,
has a complexity of responsibility, very good for the human race,
of immense benefit to mankind but it can't be done cheaply.
It can't be done without consiantly keeping up to date, it can't
be done without being able to call on the skill of the right
kind of people. Now, Sir Douglas Miller who has spoken to you today is
at shining example of what can be done by a man of great skill
and of great devotion. ( Applouse) I have read in the documents
that were given to me in view of today not for the first time
some account of the honorary medical staff, people who with little,
or for the most part, no remuneration, have used their time and
their talent and their enthusiasm in order to train other people,
in order to help ether people. You know, that's a marvellous
thing; I hope that spirit will never die, I hope we won't become
so highly organised someday in Australia that everybody does what
he is paid to do and no more and that we pay for everything and
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that we expect to get everything. The world is moving not by
people with that attitude of mind but as result of people of
energy and enthusiasm and imagination who never thought for one
moment that it was someone else's responsibi-Lity to do what
they themselves could do. This is, I think, one of the glories
of the medical profession.
There was a time when I was at the Bar, when I used
to cross-examine medical men quite freely. As a rule, they were
very poor witnesses. ( Laughter) Anyhow, there used to be a lot
of cross-examination going on, and once or twice, because I had
performed some exercise of logic, in which I had outwitted the
medical witness, I used to think to myself, " You know, those
doctors, Put a query against I have long
since got over that childish illusion. I have the most
tremendous respect, and so have you for the medical profession
and I will continue to respect it, so long as it produces, and
it has so far, such marvellous examples of fidelity to ideals,
of energy, of cdication to the task in hand. This, I think, is
one of the things that will be learned in the clinical school.
I had a look at the motto of the institution today
on the front of the cover of the programme. If I may, I would
just like to emphasise, Your Eminence, one word in it, though
this may sound painfully like a sermon " caritas" yes,
charity. I prefer, myself, rather to say " the love of Christ
urges us on." Urges there is an urgency about it.,
The word " urge" is of tremendous importance. Wie must all have
a sense or urgency about the things that we hove to do because
we don't know what tomorrow will bring forth. Urgency is it.
Urgency is in the mind and spirit of the groeat medical worker
as he tackles his problems, isn't it? " This is not something I
can put off for a month or a week or a year; this is the job.
Look at this pationt. Look at this problem" and he is urged on,
he is driven on by these feelings that he has in his heart and
in his mind. This is a wonderful spirit. Wonderful spirit.
All I can say is that I hope that out of this clinical school,
there will come not only medical men of wonderful skill and
medical women. I hope that not only will it produce good doctors,
talented doctors but that it will produce generation after
generation of what I choose to call the Millers of this world,
the enthusiasts, the people who will have a sense of urgency and
who will never relapse into doing their bare duty or observing
the barren rules of routine.
And therefore I am delighted to be here, honoured to
be here. I have made a mental note of what His Eminence, the
Cardinal, said. All I can tell him is that I will take an
opportunity of trying to pass the buck to somebody else ( Laughterl
always reserving the simple truth that I am a port of last
resort, for the time it reaches me there is nobody to whom I can
pass it. But you nay be assured at all times of my own understanding
of the problem and my own simple pleasure at having
been able to take a small part in solving, or helping to solve,
some of these problems in the modern educational world.
And so on this happy day when the heavens have been
smiling on us, I would take liberty huxzibly myself to smile on
you and say that I am. d'e lighted to be here, and remembering with
magnificent accuracy what I an here for I now declare the
Clincial School and the Students' Building open,