TIE CA1D1NAL'S DINNER
S E -14 N S I.-3OT JU1Y64
Seech byte Prime Minister the Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Menzies
My Lord Cardinal, My Lords Bishops, Parliamentary Colleagues
and Ladies and Gentlemen This is really a most embarrassing occasion
for me. There is nothing I enjoy half so much as a hostile
audience. ( Laughter) Tinignt I have been listening to speeches,
eminently true about her, and deplorably exaggerated about me.
( Laughter) I think this is rathebad for me. I doi.' t think
a politician ought to be too much praised in his own lifetime.
Well, I'll put it this way to you, in the worst moments of my
unpopularity with this writer or this paper or that, I have
been perfectly certain that the obituary notice will be pretty
good. ( Laughter) ( Applause)
aSince we are in Shakespearian mood, I am bound
to tell you at once that i am no orator as Muldoon is ( Applause)
but I hope that somebody has recorded what he said ( Laughter)
and I will arrange with my solicitors to have this sent with a
compliments slip on thie day of my demise, and it will read very
rell then and my grandchildren will enjoy it. My children will
read it with a slightly lifted eyebrow ( Laughter) and my wife,
God bless her, will in her charity say, " Ah, if they only knew".
( Laughter) ( Applause) Now, your 1 ninence, it's a little late and I
don't want to take up too much of your tJme, but one thing I
did think about as I contemplated this evening and that was that
it is not so lcng ago oh, in the last year or two tht I
encountered a telegrLaph messenger on a bicycle, You inow, that's
not such an uncommon phenomenon a telegraph messenger on a
bicycle. He'd come to the Lodge, probably to deliver a few
abusive telegrams. hnd i stopped him and with a quiet face
I said to him, " My dear bcy, what are you going to be in the
long run? A Cardinal? A Minister of the Crown? A Director-
General of Postal Services?" And he looked at me with a blank
face and rode off. i don't think he has ever come back to the
Lodge. ( Laughter) I think he went back to the Postmaster and
said, " The old fellowts a nut". ( Laughter) And yet it's
perfectly true. A Cardinal, Sir9 Ministers of the Crown,
Directors-General, they all began life as telegraph messengers.
( Laughter) The one thing that really upsets me as a sound
Presbyterian and Protestant in this deplorable gathering tonight
( Laughter), the one thing that upsets me is that there is no
record of a Moderator-General having been a telegraph messenger.
( Laughter) ( Applause) Anyhow, Sir, there is a great significance.
I say no more about your over-kind remarks. I wish only that
I merited them. But i do want to say something to you about one
or two prooblems. The first thing to say about them is that
there is too much time wasted in this world on side issues.
There is too much time wasted by people who have the end in
common taking time off to fight each other about the methods
of achieving the end, In other words, to put it quite bluntly,
there is far too much intolerance in the world, and in Australia. ø/ 2
( Dame Pattie)
If I come here tonight, as I have, there will be some
alleged Christian who will say I'm cultivating your vote.
You know? ( Laughter) PJell, it's a little bit too late to
do that, at the moment. But there is this nagging idea
in so many minds that although we are all the children of
God and hope to serve His purposes in this world, there is
an unbridgeable difference between those who do it this
way and those who do it that way.
Your Eminence, we are all members one of
another. This is something we must never lose sight cf,
and whether we be Catholic or Protestant or Jewish or
Muslim, the end remains clear: Vie have an overwhelming
duty to serve cur country on the highest level and to the
best of our talents, and so what I want to say to you is,
first of all, a little plea for tolerance.
Tolerance does not mean flabbiness.
Tolerance of each other does not mean that we condone evil
things or that we are not prepared to fight against evil
things. Tolerance is mutual understanding, forbearance, a
desire to assemble ourselves every time there is a common
cause to be served. And we need tolerance not only
religious tolerance political tolerance, social tolerance.
I suppose i' is one of the signs of the fact that we are a
rather young country that there is still too much intolerance
and bitterness. If I were asked at the end of my political
life to say, " d/ Jell, Menzies, do you think you ever did anything
that was any good?" I would pause for a reply, but I
think one thing I would like to say for myself would be that
I had never lent myself to any bitter disputes between people
on the basis of their religion, their political views or their
social position. ( Applause) In other words, Sir, I believe
that there is a chronic need in our cuuntry, and indeed in all
countries, for cool, objective, dispassionate discussion,
thought and utterance, My friend, Sir Charles McDonald, who rather
overplays me, I think, in his speech, is a classical scholar.
3very time I meet him I am reminded cf this because he takes
me promptly out of my depth by some profound classical
allusion ( Laughter) but I would like him to know that there
is a famous passage in Horace which I will do into English
for the benefit of those educated at the Sydney University
( Laughter) and that is, as he will recall " I remember
always to keep a calm mind in difficult matters". This is
a profound truth " I remember always to keep a calm mind in
difficult matters". This is the greatest advice that could
be given to anybody. We would solve our problems more quickly
and soundly if we remembered that observation all the time
something cool, dispassionate, objective.
Now I am mentioning that to you because
one thing that I wanc to say something about tonight is
that there has been a little controversy going on I
believe it is still going on about my famous proposal, now
in operation, that the Commonwealth Government not by
reason of any obligation but as a contribution to education
in Australia would find œ 5M. a year, for science teaching.
I will use a comprehensive expression for science laboratories,
science equipment in secondary schools. Now this,
in my innocence, I thought was a sensible idea. I didn't
know when I pronounced it, that it was so loaded with sinister aspects. / 3
Five millonpoundsa year yes, it's a great sum of money, and
particularly if it is each year, a useful sum of money, and why
did we do it? iell, we had various things in mind. In the
first place, Australia in this scientific technological age,
needs more people trained in science, better trained in science.
The Australian universities need to have better equipped students
coming up to them in science. Ve need to have, so far as we can,
in the secondary school stages, such an encouragement of talent
by teaching and equipment and every other way as to produce more
people who will teach in these universities, maintain the standards
of the past and increase them, improve them, as they ought to be
improved for the future.
The greatest shortage in the forward look in universities
is the shortage of trained and competent staff. All these
cther things are material things money, bricks, mortar. I am
not saying that there is no limit to these things, but they are,
* viewed in comparison, the smallest aspects of the problem, and
if we are to have more and more people being trained in science,
trained through some aspect of science in medicine, trained in
engineering and if we are to have this done in universities
that are not third-rate universities so that we won't have bad
* money driving out good, then everything that can be done to
improve the standard of the student in the secondary school, many
of whom will go to the university, many of whom will go into
other fields of applied jcience, anything that we can do seems
to me to be all to the good,
Therefore, in my innocence, I thought: " lell, this
is a pretty good. idea, We'll do it." And we've done it and
we will go on doing it, ( Applause) Then, apparently, some
dispute arises. Should you do this for church secondary schools?
That's the first question.
SWell. I had the numbers typed out for me today and
the position is chat in the secondary schools of Australia as at
present, we have 674000 students and of these :-92,000 are in
Government schools, 120,000 ( I am taking it to the nearest
thousand) in Catholic schools and 62,000 inn: n-Cathoic schools.
Well, those are very interesting figures. The first question
that presents itseli is: Should the Commonwealth confine its
aid to science and equipment to the Government secondary schools?
Well, now, I am not going to buy into fields so much
more competently handled by some of my friends here tonight as to
what a State ought to do. Not a bit, because if a State which
has the direct responsibility for primary and secondary education
decides that it will have one system of education that the State
will conduct, that's the State's business. Don't treat me as
intervening in that field.
But when the Commonwealth comes along, with no
obligation, making a grant in aid for a particular purpose, then
the Commonwealth is bound to recognise that in fact there are
two systems, that in fact there are Government secondary schools
and there are non-Government secondary schools, and therefore
the first thing that the opponent finds himself putting up is,
" All right. IWell, now I don't mind the Commonwealth finding œ XM.
a year for science laboratories in State or Government schools,
but you are not to extend this to non-Government schools, whatever
they may be." Well, now, this seems to me to defy not only the facts
of life which are that a very substantial percentage of students
in secondary schools are in non-Government schools, but it also / 4.
would involve me in saying, " I'm not running the State educational
system-I'm producing a grant in aid by the Commonealth. Now
on what principle do I say this may go to the Government of New
South Wales but no portion of it may go to the Sydney Grammar
School, or name any non-Government school you care to mention."
And, quite frankly, whether: it is through stupidity or otherwise,
I just don't understand how any such distinction can be made.
For us to discriminate in making a grant in aid fcr a purpose
ofo high national significance, for us to discriminate between
Government schools and non-Government schools, would open up a
world of discrimination in other fields to my mind equally
unjustifiable. Then, of course, there are those who say, " Well,
whatever you do, if you decide you won't discriminate, you can't
fail to discriminate between Protestant schools and Roman
Catholic schools", And the answer is that if I hiad to do that,
I wouldntt want to be in public life,, ( Applause)
Now, I think that a good deal of this confusion
that has arisen, has aciser because these elementary facto that
I have been referring to haven't been understood and I repeat
them for emphasis. What a State dces about its educational system,
what it decides as to which sy3tem it will support i. s its business
and there is a long history behind these things. Buat the
Commonwealth Government coming in to give some special assistance
for a speciol purpcse has no right to discrimi. nate. The benefit
of its aid must go all round for the purpose that has been
indicated. ( Applause" And, Sir, I am happy to say, rightly or weonqly,
Ive ben acting on this principle for a long time, becalse it
was my own Government which introduced tax rebates on school
fees, and I don't remember at that time any argument gci. ng on
to the effect that a parent could have a deduction from income
tax for school fees paid to a State high school but not for school
fees paid to the Methodist Ladies College. I didn't hear any
argument to that effect and I think if it had been put, it would
have been laughed out of court. Anyhow, it never was put.
And then right back in 1950/ 51, I began my own
exercises which I am happy -o say have been not unfrui'ful in
the universities field because we are not responsible for the
universities except for our own in Canberra. A Committee was
put up to make a very quick investigation and I was told at a
certain stage that the Committee took the view that the residential
colleges at the universities ought not to be in the picture
because presumably a university could exist without them or
alternatively, they were not really part of a university. ft
gave me singular satisfaction at that time to say to the Comnittee:
" Unless there is some recommendation in your list for the
residential colleges at the universities, I will ignore your
report" and so we got a little toe in the door I think that's
the expression. Then when the Murray Committee came along, all
this was established, and from that time on, as you know, we have
found very substantial sums of money for residential colleges,
and the interesting thing is that I don't remember any residential
college refusing ( Laughter). IJe didn't discriminate. Thore
are colleges connected with the churches in the University of
Sydney. I don't remember any one of them saying, " Sorry, we
can't take this." Of course they took it, because they understood
quite clearly that this was something extra being put in by the
Commonwealth, not of obligation, but as a national contribution,
every penny of which is provided by the people of the nation,
whatever their religious denomination may be. ( Applause) And so
that has gone along very successfully, very happily, and as I go
into the universities, I realise, to the very great advantage of
the universities. Look, ladies and gentlemen, there is one thing that
all of us here tonight must bear in mind all the time. Everything
I say is about what the Commonwealth does in this rather extra
operation that it performs. But I have always been a tremendous
believer in schools and in colleges at universities which have a
background of religion and the reason for that the overwhelming
reason for that is that I would get no satisfaction in thinking
that we had pledged ourselves to a highly intellectual, if you
like, but highly pagan future. ( Applause) The world is full of
talent. Not quite so full of character.
The world is full of the most tremendous skill,
inventive genius the things that have gone on in my lifetime are
unbelievable. Nobody would ever have believed them in 1900 when
I was a boy of five. Nobody would have. But the whole century
has been marred, time after time, by man's inhumanity to man, by
a failure of the spirit, and a failure of the spirit is a failure
V of the character, and if we are going to have a high spirit and a
high character, an enduring character, then it is all nonsense to
say that I must engage in these almost absurd discriminations that
have been suggested. I am all for character. I am all for the
man whose character is rooted in eternal beliefs because he is the
man, she is the woman who will assure the future of this country.
( Applause) My Lord Cardinal, I am very grateful to the Bishop
for that speech of his. I am sure ha must have spoken it with a
slight mental reservation. ( Laughter) I don t want to engage in
theological arguments but it was all, you know, rather true in
a sense. Flattering in more senses than one. but very heartwarming.
But I wouldn't like him to think he was bound to go on believing
it for the rest of his life. ( Laughter)
0 Your Eminence, I began by a little glancing reference
to your earliest days. I vas very amused when you told me tonight
that at the last meeting in Rome the debate was conducted in Latin
but there were people who spoke Latin with a French pronunciation
and some with a German and some with an Italian pronunciation in
which they say " in c( h) aelo". I never quite understood... but
anyhow...... And others with different pronunciations. Well this
must have been extraordinarily difficult because even with us there
is the old pronunciation on which Charles McDonald was brought up,
no doubt, there is the new pronunciation on which a mere boy like
me was brought up ( Laughter), there is a law courts pronunciation
which is one of highly enlightened illiteracy. ( Laughter)
All I know is that on one occasion, one year, my wife
and I were in Malta. We visited Malta for a day and one of the
things to be done in that hectic day was for me to be given not
for the first time an unearned increment, an honorary degree at
the Royal University of Malta. Just as we set out on our journey,
they put into my hands the Latin that I had to pronounce at a
faldstool in the course of getting this degree. It was about
two or three hundred words. For a fellow a littly rusty in his
Latin, this was a grim prospect. However, I read it through and
thought about it a bit, and when we entered ultimately the
university, the Vice Chancellor who was a lively character met me
a o e / 6
6.
and I said," Quickly, quickly before we go up there, what is
it? New pronunciation or old?" He said " It doesn't matter.
None of them will know. You just mumcle. ( Laughter) So to
the great puzzlement of my wife and my staff, there I ws kneeling
and mumbling. ( Laughter) My wife said to me afterwards, " Never
heard you mumble like that before". And I said, " No and you
have never heard me mumble in a better cause." ( Laughter)
Sir, ladies and gentlemen, you have beer more than
kind. We've enjoyed this very muh. I hope to get the written
record at some time. It will come in handy for me, not only
with my fellow politicians important though that may be but
occasionally uFeful with my wife ( Laughter), always useful with
my children and. beyond rubies with my grandchildren.