PRESENTATION OF HOOVER AdIARDS FOR MAKTING
A~ T OTEL hiX-AT-CANBERRA4 CANBERRA
Speech bU the Prm Mln-trh Rjt. Hion, SirRoberU enis
Sir, I begin all my speeches by a couple of preliminary
remarks. One is that when I was invited to come to this
enterprise, I burst into loud moans and said, " Oh, no. Look
I have to prepare about eight or ten speeches over that period,"
and then somebody said to me, " vK6,1l, of course, Professor
Baxter has invited you" and, do you know I must confess, I am
a little frightened of this chap. ( Laughter) In adidition to
being frightened of him, I have a very great respect for him,
and so I said, in that grudging voice with which my staff is
familiar ( Laughter) " All right, well, if Baxter wants me to
go1 I suppose I must*" You know, with falling infloxion,
An~ then I said, " Well, what dope have you? You know, " dope"
is the professional term. ( Laughter) And I was given a certain
amount of " dope" and then T found that my distinguished
colleague, Mr. McEwen had written or spoken I've forgotten
which something on Lhis matter. That wretclied fellow,
" Iesterman, will know. ( Laughter)
This afternoon in the Cabinet, well, we were discussing
other prcblems not without difficulty and at about
twenty to six John McEwen said to me, ' Y9ould you mind very much
if I didn't turn out to be there tonight?" ( He had a very good
reason for nct coming) and I said, " My dear boy, I will be
delighted if you don't come because I have read your statement
and I. propose to cannibalise it in what I have to say tonight."
( Laughter) So with apologies from John MzEwen, I am delighted
that he is no~ t here because at any given moment he might have
looked up and said, " No, no, no. You've misunderstood me.
( Laughter) Anyhow, I was then given a handsome book, a splendid
book, which contained all sorts of things in it, and I read a
passage which I will take leave to read to you. It said this:
" The Hoover Award for Marketing expresses the
conviction of the Hoover Organisation that progress
in marketing, comparable to that in production
techniques and organisation, is vital to the development
of the Australian as of all free economies."
( Up to that time, I was right, I agreed, which I seldom do)
" Progressive improvement in the standards of living
is dependent on greater efficiency in all marketing
functions, both within Australia and overseas." 1
Now, Sir, I am not always profoundly moved by what I read in a
book, but I was profoundly moved by that because I thought,
" Now that's it. This is true," because you know Sir, we
donlt always realise do we, that in our own lifehimes and
most of yours are a little shorter than mine there has been
a revolutionary increase in the complexity of government and
in the complexity of economic affairs, 9 ea 9 / 2
-2
Now, I have very little reason to have any vanity
about myself except that the people in a sort of occulting
fashion have supported me for a long time, but I can remember
what nobody else here can remember, namely, what it was like
to be the head of' the Government in 1939 that's twentyfive
years ago and to remember the kind of problem that came on to
the table at that time. I very well remember, in my vanity, in
1939 saying, " Well, V11l be Treasurer and I'm going to make a
Budget speech without writing it in advance." You know, this
was a mere exercise in vanity and of course I had my reward
because no newspaper ever published it. ( Laughter) But one
thing I do recall and it is wrorthwzhile recall~ ing it to your
own minds and that is that there it was in 1939 not all that
long time ago and I -as Prime Minister and Treasurer produced
to the Commonwealth Parliament the first Commonwealth Budget of
a œ C10014. Now, of' course, for you juveniles here tonight, this
gives you the horse laughi, doesn't it: The first Commonwealth
Budget of œ 1001. I recalled that in Gladstone's last Budget in
England, he produced the first fœ 100M Budget in Great Britain.
Well, of course, things have happened since then. I don~' t want
to anticipate what my colleague, the Treasurer, will say tomcrrow
afternioon, but let us say, in a very loose way that tomorrow
night it will be about œ C2,500M. I rememaber that because I remember
that the economic problems were less complicated; that we had,
to use the modern jatrgon, a rather less sophisticated economy.
Yt, you know Sir, in sp te u f all this vast experience-we do
thn, don't we every now and then of our problems as if' they
were problems ol A or B or C, problems in separation, problems
of' one bit at a time, instead of realising that they are problems
of an entire character in which the whole pattern of tha3 economy
and of life must be considered.
Now, Sj. r, all I can say about that is there have been
developments in the modern world. In my earliest days in
Parliament. and as a Prime Minister, everything was simple;
you know, simple but difficult, but simple in a sense, and ever
since then in our own country we have come a cross the complexity
of life, the complexity of the economy, the complexity of national
life, the necessity of reconciling the development of' our country
with the stability of' our country, with all sorts of other matters
involving interiiational relations. All this is perfectly true.
Now, it was said and very interestingly I think
by the famous author of' " The Affluent Society" that the world
had been devoting itself' to production and that he doubted whether
production was the main problem. W4ell, he may have had something
to be said for him. M1ost of us who have been concerned with these
affairs have for year after year wanted to develop production and
productivity. Why? Because we have known that all the talk in
the world about rising standards of living doesn't mean much
unless you have rising standards of' production, that you must
develop what is available to the people, develop it and develop
it and develop it before you can give way to eager ideas on the
distribution of what is produced and so, very properly I think, we
have had our minds fixed on productivit-y, on production.
Then, in the last few years perhaps, we have found our
minds directed to how you encourage production, how you make
production effective and this has brought us tho great problem
of marketing, of salesmanship, because after all, you may produce
all the things in the world but unless people want to buy them,
unless people get them and use them and live with them, there is
eo a */ 3
-3-
no real increase in the standard of living of the people. Now
this is quite true, Somebody, in an idle moment some years
back, made me a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, I hope
you gentlemen will treat me with proper respect when you know
that. The Royal Society of Arts produces from time to time a
Journal containing their proceedings, the reports of what goes
on and in the last number that I received and in one of my
multiple hours of leisure at the weekend, I read this. It
produced a number which was devoted to advertising. Now, of
course, there are gentlemen here who know more about this than
I do. I am always a little alleigic to advertising unless I've
settled the photograph ( Laughter, but on this occasion, Mr.
John Hobson, speaking on the social and economic context of
advertising said, among other things, two very interesting
things. Some of you may know him or know of him.
First of all, he said increased production presupposes
increased consumption but increased consumption can't be achieved
merely by making an increase of goods available. This is
something you will all understand. It can only be achieved by
making the products wanted. This raises the question of
salesmanship which cn a mass scale is what advertising is.
Now, with very great respect to Mr. John Hobsoq I think that
was a profoundly wise remark and it posed a problem which the
author of " The Affluent Society" had not really coped with,
Then later on he went on to say: " The economic phencmencn of
abundance at1 mass level has a natural com~ plement in what
historians will, I think, recognise as one of the social
phanomena of the century -the rise in importance of salesmanship.
In the eyes of a limited intellectual and upper-class minority" t
( such as I am addressing ( Laughter) here tonight), he said
" salesmanship is not quite respectable. In the eyes of the great
majority of the public, it presents vary little problem. On
the whole, o know, people enjoy being sold. things." Now
that, I thought, was pretty wise.
But this brings me, doesn't it to the problem
producti. on productivity, the development of our resources
all these things which are vital to the future of the country
and yet they could all be defeated unless what we produced we
could sell, unless what Australia can grow tind produce Australia
can sell. Therefore salesmanship has become, if it wasnt
always one of the great tasks, one of the great techniques in
the modern economy.
Now, of course, I am so old that I can remember Major
Douglas and I met him once and I thought he was very amusing.
He had a simple theory. He said that if you are to sell all the
things you produce, then all you have to do is to produce money.
Well, we've produced money, Heaven only knows. Here we are
living in a country in which the state of the liquidity is almost
without precedent, in which the people of Australia, man, woman
and child, have hundreds of pounds in savings bank accounts.
But how do you marry these two things? How do you marry enormous
productivity, all the good foi-tune that we have had, good
harvests, good seasons, great overseas markets how do you
marry these things with the people who have the money to spend
and perhaps are not so much disposed to spend it. Now here,
gontlemen, is where you come into this picture, because I believe
that just as we have attacked and not without success, the
problems of productivity just as we have encouraged productivity,
just as my own Government Heaven help it has devised ways and
means of increasing productivity, we must develop ways and
means of getting bigger and better, more enduring, more expanding
ma rke ts. eee
I
4-
Now I know, Sir, that there is a great disposition
in some parts of the country to raise an eyebrow which few
people can do as well as I can I'm told ( Laughter) to raise
an eyebrow about the civil servant, about the bureaucrats, about
this Department or that. I want to tell you, and 1 reserve all
my rights to have a first-class argument with any Department,
but I just want to tell you, reserving that right, that if
somebody objectively sits down to write the history of the last
ten years, he will find most remarkable events because he will
find that this country, through its Government, through its
Departments, has set out to win m-qrkets, to instruct markets
to have trade comissioners, to have trade m-Issions, to do all
these things which are designed to marry our own rare capacity
for production with the eager demand, much to be encouraged, of
people in the other countries of the world. This is quite true.
This is, I think, of tremendous importance.
The more we produce, the more we must sell. The
more we need to sell, the more we need to have people. who are
experts in selling. We must get over this silly idea that a
salesman is a rather dv. bious character. We must get ovEr this
idea that advertising is, in a sense a curiously dishonest
exercise, because the truth is that If we are going to bchireve
what we want to achieve in Australia then we must produce anci
we must sell. We may produce by cajoling people. -Je may produce
by having, what I've become familiar with now, some stabilization
scheme Westerman knows all about this. Vie may do that, at that
end. At the other end we must have people who will sell what we
produice. And one of our dangers is that the producer may say,
" Well, Itve produced this. Itts up to somebody else to sell"
and that the seller may 11say, " W4ell, I don't know, there is a
limit to what I can do." The truth is the sulvency of this
company in the long run depends not only on production and I
give that a high plac; e in my world but on solesmanshil). This
is why tonight is so important.
It's a very curious thing, I think, that we should
fall into doubts and difficulties about these matters. I don't
know why we should. The truth is that we are all and don't
forget this members one of another. The old idea that I grew
up with when I was a boy in the bush that you were either a
primary industry man or you were a secondary industry man; you
were either a free trader or a protectionist all these lovely,
simple, simple rules these simple dichotomies are always so
false. I grew up wiLh them when I was a boy. Whatever success
I have had in life is due to the fact that before I was much
older I regarded them with utter contempt because in reality we
are ail members one of another. You can have the greatest
productive genius applied to what goes on in Australia and unless
it is married to the greatest salesmanship on behalf of Australia,
we will be no better off and indeed much worse off than when we
started. Therefore, let us get to understand that we are all
members one of another, that nobody can really succeed in
Australia if the other man9 in a big way, fails. We must work
together. Therefore, Professor 3) xter, you who sit in the middle
of all this and occasionally give me my orders, now much more
audible that my old colleague, Sir William Spooner, has come
from under your grasp ( Laughter) therefore, Sir, I want to
say that I in reality came here, believing as I do most a. a
faithfully that the art of selling, the business of selling,
the Trade Commissioner service, the Trade Mission, the
advertising of our own products has, in this day, become
the most important complement of all to the drive for
production in our own country.
Therefore, Sir, I can say to you as I would say
if I were addressing the Primary Producers? Uniob., who
would regard me with modified rapture ( Laughter) and I can
say to you Sirg as I would say to them because I believe
profoundly in what they are doing, tha this is a splendid
occasion on which to recall that there is a balance in life,
a balance in our own economic de-velopment. a balancing of
factors in our o m growth which. we must always remember, and
as you represent one aide of that balancel then Sir I want
to say, thank you very much. I will be delighted to hand
out a prize and, of course, as a pol. itician, no less delighted
because tthe Hoover organization, I gather, is finding it.
and I'm not,.
I ' d 0