LIBERAL PARTY RALLY, CITY HALL$ BRISBANE
21st June. 1961
Speech by the Prime Minister the Rt. Hon, R. G.-Menzies
Mrs Chairman, Mr. Morris, parliamentary colleagues and ladies and
gentlemen: For some time now, in spite of comments to thie contrary
I have thought we were right in what we have been doing. Two
nights ago in Townsville, Townsville not being served with
television but with broadcasting, I listened to my distinguished
opponent, the Leader of the Opposition making what I thought was a
singularly generous and powerful speech in my favour. And that
encouraged me very much. But tonight looking at this remarkable
meeting, I confess to you that I am utterly certain that we are
right; and that we will form the next Government in Australia.
( Applause) In spite of the fact that I have had a lot of
experience, good, bad and indifferent, frankly I did not believe
that you had not made a mistake in taking the City Hall for the
opening meeting of the Convention, because I have many happy
memories of this hall I've been counted out most scintifically
in this hall ( Laughter) Itve been enfiladed by gentlemen who not
only disapproved of my politics, but of my ancestry ( Laughter)-
and I thought " This is a gamble,; what a risky thing this is to do,
to take the City Hall because evon if it has 1500 people in it, it
will look half empty." Now that's a very grim expr~ ssion " half
empty", because when my friends of the newspaper press are In
favour of the man who has 1500 in a hall that will hold 3,000,
they say " This vast hall was at least half full." ( Laughter)'
But when they are not so much in favour of him they dwall on the
fact that it was " practically half empty". ( Laughter) I think I
understand that that's very good colour. But tonight I must say
that even in my heyday, I can't remember a finer crowd, a greater
arowl of people in this hall than you have tonight.
I've just been up in the north and for those of you
who in spite of the intensely depressed state of the economy,
still have a television set, may have seen a rather dreary looking
old fellow on it tonight at a quarter to seven. I looked at it;
I thought it was terrible. ( Laughter) But ray wife who, being a
wife can detect a husband's faults quickly, thought it wasn't bad.
But at any rate those of you who saw it and listened to it, will
know that not for the first time in my life I have been excited
about a visit to ti-ic developing areas of this most developing
State. It's no mere piece of humbug on my part to say ti-at I
believe, I roally believe, we ought to get over the problems of
the week or the month if we can, occasionally, and have a look at
the future of this country, our country. If we do that, then, in
my opinion, wo will all increasingly look north, not just because
of some theory that we ought to have more people in the north for
some reasons of defence, or something of that kind, but because in
the northern part of Australia we have at least two, and probably
maore of the groatest potential developing industries that this
country will stimulate, and from which this country will benefit
in the next 10 years. Mincrals I must be a little alliterative
on this matter, I was going to say " minerals and cattle"
minerals and rieat. And there is no doubt about it that in spite
of the fact that the tasks are enormous, this country is going to
see a development in its north which I balieve will be exciting to
people all over Australia. ( Applause)
But, Sir, a little time ago I thought perhiaps one ought
to say something to people about the policies that we are
pursuing and the reasons for them, because sometimes they are
shrouded in mystery, i know. So I gave myself the pleasant
exercise of writing down questions which I was going to answer
Myself. Now that, of course, is a cross-examiner's dream, isn't
it? Wdrite the question down; and then write the answer.
Having thought about that, and having realised that it had been
done before I decided " Wdell I'll put down questions quite
bluntly, as I know people are putting them to us".
Tonight I thought I would talk to you about some of
them, because, after all, you are the core of Liberalism in this
State and you must have been troubled by questions; and
sometimes, for all I know, you may have found it difficult to
answer them to your own complete satisfaction. So I thought it
might be a little helpful to all of us. You don't need to be
converted to our cause, but perhaps you do need to be
strengthened in our cause, to be made more effective in our
cause; because our cause is the cause of Australia. So I will
take a few of these questions it depends entirely on the clock
as to how many I deal with. And not only on the clock, but on
your patience. I have heard this question put: " Well what would have
happened if the Government had not taken these unpopular economic
measures? IW-ouldn't the boom have faded away quietly on its own
account, and no harm done?" Now this question is put by people
who know that in 1960 we were having a tremendous boom and it
wasn't without in! terest to me, two night ago, to find that our
opponents agree, because the Leader of the Opposition, Mr.
Calwell, agreed that there was a boom and that something had to
be done about it. The differe7nce between him and me is that his
idea for curing the boom of 1960-61 is to have a referendum on
the Constitution in ' 62, or ' 63, which doesn't seem to me to be
tremendously relevant to the problems that we are dealing with.
But there was a booraT. There was a boom which was
leading to a high degroe of inflation, to a high stimulus in
costs and prices. I hoar a gre) at deal about housing, very
properly so it's a great problem. But in the boom conditions
of 1960 every house was costing more, every block of land that
somebody wanted to buy on which to build a house was costing more.
Thoro was a high degree of speculation going on. Thero was an
under-supply of labour. We easily forget it, but thero was a
groat shortage of labour in 1960, and the re sult was that people
" bid-up" for the labour thay wanted, for the resources theiy
wanted. I don't need to tell you, for example, that the
Australian iron and steel industry is at least as efficient as
any corre sponding industry anywhere in the world. Australian
steel could be exported, profitably, to the United States of
America. This is the proof of the efficiency of our industry, of
its management, of the people who work in it. And yet so great
was the demand on our resources in this tremendous booma of 1960
that instead of being exporters of steel, we became importers of
steel. The Australian steel industry could not satisfy the
demand. So we were importing at that time, and beforo it, many
maillions of pounds worth of steel every year this in a country
that can produce steel as cheaply as we can. Of course all that
had its effect on our balances of money overseas, en our
international solvency, because if your reserves overseas keep
running down, then you are going to get into trouble. Therefore,
perhaps, I don't need to labour the point that there was a great
boom, Now, Sir, booms don't come to an end on their own
account with satisfactory results for ordinary people, I was
born almost in the middle of the 90' s this is a remote period
of antiquity that is beyond the understanding of some of you
here tonight the middle of the 90' s, right on top of the great
boom of the 90' s, which was a land boom, and the great Bank smash
of the 90' s, which followed it. And there were people for the
next 10 years in Australia who lived in straitened circumstances
because a boom had happened and a boom had burst. I accept no
responsibility whatever for the well-being of speculators, none
whatever. If they bring it off, well good-luck to them; and if
they don't I've no feeling for them whatever. ( Applause) People
who gamble on the affairs of the community are not my concern.
But I have an irremoveable obligation so long as I
lead this country, to people who can be the victims of a
speculative boom, and who can suffer from a crash of that boom.
It would have boon a monstrous thing for any Government to say
" Well let the boom run its course. If we do something about it
we'll hurt somebody; that will be very unpopular." If we think
there's a boom in the motor car industry as there unquostionabj
was and we do something to damp it down, then there wi1 be
somebody in that industry who will say, " Look what they have done
to me". I understand that, I understand that.
But my business, and your business, is to look for the
good of the groat majority of the people, to be willing to impose
discomfort or inconvenience, or some sacrifice on people who are
benefiting from the boom if the result is that the boom is
brought down to a normal state of affairs in which people of
modest incomes, people of fixed incomes, can feel that their
money is worth what it appears to be worth.
There is another aspect of this matter I don't want
to labour it unduly, and that is that a boom in Australia gives
rise instantly by some of the black magic of economics to an
enormous demand for imports into Australia. When wages have been
pushed up to premium rates, when there is a shortage of labour,
when all these boom conditions obtain, then people want to buy
more goods than they ever bought before. And there is a limit
to what they can buy out of the production of their own country.
So more and more imports cone in; added to which, if I may say
so to you, there is a certain anount of snobbery about buying.
I was talking to a manufacturer a comparatively small
manufacturer in my own loctorate recently, a . ood man who has
built up a business and he was able to produce two articles to
me, one made by him in his factory, and another one imported
from the United States of Amirica. They were of the same
material and they were identical in design and in quality. But
the American one could be sold in the shops at almost twice the
price of his. You know there's a lot of that, isn't there? A
tremendous lot of it.
Whether that is so or not and I believe it is so
the fact is that in a boon condition the demand for imports
grows at the most phenomenal rate. There must be quite a few
people about you meet then don't you? who think that there is
no trouble about that: if you want an imported article you pay
for it at the shop. The process begins there; it doesn't end
there. Because the follow who sells it to you has to pay for it.
If he has bought it from an importer, the importer has to pay for
it overseas. So he is drawing money fron overseas for these
imported goods; and the money is the product of what we have sold
overseas whether it is wheat or neat or wool or butter or
whatever it may be plus what we have been able to borrow
overseas on capital account. ' We refer to this balance
sometimes as our " balnce of payments" and sonetimes as our
" overseas reserves". But if you run then down too low by an
uncommon spate of buying of imports, as we were doing in
Australia, then you know you can got to the point at which you
can't pay for your imports. That is a stage we have never
reached; that is a stage we are never going to reach while we
are in Government. Ne are not prepared to contemplate an
international bankruptcy on the part of this country. Nobody
need imagine it for one moment. Therefore when you find this
tremendous boom and this tremendous demand for goods something
has to be done about it if worse things are not to happen to the
groat majority of the people.
I said something about housing. Perhaps I ought to
add that these conditions in 1960 were lifting the price of the
building allotment lifting the price of the house that was to
be built, lifting The price of the goods to be put into the
house, whether they were refrigerators or washing machines, or
any of what the economists in their delightful jargon call
" durable consumer , oods". Lots of people didn't know they were
going up in price because they would say, " You know we can get
that refrigorator for 17/ 6 per week" nobody knows how long,
how many weeks but " it's 17/ 6 a week and I think we could
afford that". And so it goes on.
Under this boon of consumer credit, under the enormous
development of hire purchase, in itself a Lost useful
arrangement, people wore incurring debts in a boom which, in a
burst after the boom they would never be able to honour. That
doesn't please me; and I hope it doesn't please you. I wouldn't
want to see a boom that was followed by a burst which led to an
inability on the part of hundreds of thousands of good decent
hard-working people to honour the obligations they had entered
into in relation to house or home or equipment.
Therefore, Sir, we rogarded it, and I am sure that on
reflection the people of Australia will agree with us, as
imperative that we should take steps to get rid of the boom and
bring matters back to a position of some normality. When we did
that we weren't unaviare of the fact that we were about a year off
an election; we weren't unaware of the fact that you don't win
an election unless people vote for you; we weren't unaware of
the fact that policies to get rid of inflation are always
unpopular in the short run because they restrict the activity of
a nuEber of businesses, and of a number of people. But we
thought our decisions were designed to save very many people from
grievous disaster. I would like you to look back over the last almast 12
years now. We have had two or three of these relatively minor
economic crises and each tine our popularity rating has sunk
almost to the floor. I can rcmember at the end of 1953 or the
middle of 1953, beinj told by staunch supporters, candid fiends
" You're sunk. You're gone. The Government is so unpopular it
can't recover". Those are the encouragr. ents that one's friends
heap on one under these circu: stances. But we did recover. And
we won. At the last election in 1958, in spite of it all, and
the prophecies of gloom, io caule back with the largest Dajority
that any Government has had in the history of the Comi:, onwealth.
( Applause) The gruat thing on those matters is never to be
afraid because there is some unpopularity attaching to what is
done, to get rid of fear, to cast it out. The great thing is to
have a belief in the people of Australia, which I have profoundly
deep dowm in me, a belief that this is a natijn of honest, decent
people who respect firmness, who respect what they believe to be
intelligence, and who are honest and are not looking for some
cheap advantage. We must have faith in ourselves because we have
faith in our people.
Now, Sir, I have ta: ken a very long time to answer that
particular question so I had better turn to the next one,
because this is a very popular one. I have had this put to me
by great friends of mine and I understand why they put it.
One of the things we did early last year there were
certain exceptions in relation to Japan and so on was to get
rid, in substance, of import licensing. Import licensing, may I
remind you, was never devised as a protective measure. A lot of
people thought that it was. I myself, at least 10 times a year
made it quite clear in public statements that it wasn't a
protective measure. We are entitled, internationally, to introduce
import licensing in order to protect our balances of
payment, and for no other reason. If an Australian industry
is to be protected it ought to be protected by the tariff; and
the tariff board is there to investigate whatever claims may be
made. This is the traditional, sound method of protecting
Australian industry. But when we took off, in substance, import
licgnsing, which had already half disappeared over a course of
years, we were at once accused of having left Australian industry
naked to its enemies.
Therefore, perhaps I ought to tell you one simple fact.
You've heard people say " But, you know, you removed import
licensing; we have a flood of imports now. This seems to be the
wrong thing". And when one of my interlocutors comes to me and
is in a picturesque mood he'll say to me " How can you justify
importing into Australia frogs legs in aspic?" Well in the way
of justifying that matter I can remind them that only lunatics
eat fr, gs' legs in aspic! ( Laghter) I suppose about Z200.
worth of these ridiculous things have come into Australia.
But putting those silly little things on one side,
here are the facts. Since February of last year, taking the
year 1960, after the lifting of import restrictions, œ 241m. more
of imports came into Australia, f2lm. more as a result of the
lifting. Of the œ 241m. œ 190m. consisted of raw materials for
Australian manufacturing production, plant and equipment for
Australian production, and for Australian transport. Some 82%
of all these added imports were things calculated to improve
production and distribution in Australia. I occasionally think
that if we hadn't lifted the import ban I night have had other
deputations containing some of the same people who would say to
me " You're depriving us of the raw materials we need in our
industry". Now I'll come to the favourite charge, one you've
hoard made many times. I wrote it down in this way: " But the
Cormmonwcalth Govorrmiont changes its policy so frequently that
people are bewildered. They don't know where they are for more
than a few months. What do you say about that?" Now that's a
fair question isn't it? I haven't watered that one down have I?
I've heard about it; I've heard it put to me chopping and
changing, start and gc. Now I want to say something to you
about this. We have not at any time changed our policy you must
distinguish between the policy and the way you give effect to it.
The broad policy of the Liberal Party has not substantially
changed in the last 12 years; but we havve had to deal with an
enormous vriety of changing circumstances. The application of
our policy to these matters has, I think, been employed to the
considerable satisfaction of the people of Australia. The
policy is one thing; the way you give effect to it is another.
Now our policy let's got this clearly in our minds
is to produce economic stability not boom and burst economic
stability as the foundation for notional development. Every new
building must have a firm foundation. Building this now
country of Ours, with all these enormous opportunities you sop
them in your own State, in Queensland we can't develop these
resources without having capital to our hands, because all these
things take groat investments. How are you going to get capital
to your hand if your economic position is one of instability, if
inflation goes rip-snorting along? Do you suppose that people
in other countries who entrust Australians with a great deal of
their capital, would do it if the finances of this country were
blowing around like those of a South American Republic? Don't
believe it for one moment. Wiatever some of my opponents may say
about these matters, the people who count around the world have
the greatat belief iz what we are doing, and in the object that
we have to maintain a stable foundation for a great Australia.
4e were told, not so long back, a few months back,
before the end of last year, that all these strange measures we
were taking would disturb people overseas, that we were ruining
our prospects of getting investments into Australia. The answer
is that in 1960, the boom year, we had a record amount of
investment in Australia. But in 1961, the year in which we are
told that the economy is wrecked, we are having a bigger
investment from overseas than we had last year. ( Applause) I
don't want you to think that that is just a matter of Government
borrowing, I'm not talking about Government borrowing. You may
think that some plausible old boy like me can go away and borrow
a bit of money on the public account perhaps I can, I don't
know, but I've done it a bit in my time. But I'm not talking
about that. I'm talking about private capital investment in
Australia which now amounts to hundreds of millions a year. If
we didn't have it our balances of payments problem would have
become completely hopeless of being contained years ago. Why do
we want this money? I know that there are those wlho say " It's a
very great mistake to let foreigners get investrents in your own
country". Well let me tell you this, or remind you of it.
Australia has an increasing population that nobody
dreamed of once t We have a large irmigration programme. We are
today, what, l-j millions? At our present rate of advance many
of those in this hall tonight will see a population of
millions in : Lustralia. More and more as time goes on this is
becoming a considerable country in terms of human beings. But
it happens to be a country roughly the same size as the United
States of America. It has resources of many of which as yet we
know nothing. We haven't found oil yet, effectively; but I
have yet to meet a knowledgeable man who isn't confident that we
will. The indications are all there. used to thin1: of the
north as a dry and very arid country. lie knew that we had soqe
lead and zinc at Broken Hill and we know that we had groat coal
resources on the east coast of Australia and so on. We'vle onlr
just begun to realise in Australia, haven't we, the immense
resources that have been unearthed of uranium, the tremendous
resources of bauxite, with all the prospects of aluminium
industries in the very, very near future. The more the
geologists go out, and the Yeophysicists go out, the more the
mineral wealth of Australia will be tapped. But you can't
tap it without enormous investments, not only of skill, but of
money. Ten million people can't produce all the capital that is
needed to develop a country that may hold 50 or 60 millions when
it is developed. This is elementary common sense.
Therefore w( e, as a Government have always been in
favour of people investing their capital in Australia, producing
employment for thousands and th. usands of people. Making
profits? Yes. But bringing to Australia something without
which we would become a stagnant community. If our policies
were as silly, as changeable, as some people think I don't
imagine for one moment that the hard-headed people in the United
States, in Great Britain, on the Continent, would regard AustraJa
as the greatest field for investm ent that is now open to then
outside their own countries.
That is our policy stability, development. But we
have, of course, changed the applications; even since November
of last year we've made changes. And people have laughed and
said " There you are, they don't know their own minds". May I
remind you of this: every change that we have made since our
announcements of November, 1960 has been in the direction of
softening the severity of one o1 the measures announced in
November. Didn't we make it clear at the very beginning that we
weren't putting these things onfor fun; we weren't having a
credit squeeze for fun; we weren't having increased sales tax
for fun; we weren't doing what we were doing about deductibility
of interest in Company transactions for fun? U4e were doing it to
quell a boom, and, that as we succeeded, these measures would be
relaxed. That is exactly what has happened.
Take the motor car industry, a very important
industry. We started off in November by doing two things: first
there was the general credit policy which involved through the
Central Bank, the Reserve Bank, a tight control of advances
policy; and second, we increased sales tax on motor vehicles by
By early this year it became clear, on the evidence,
that this was having a double effect. A lot of people were
saying " Well we won't buy a car yet, the Government can't keep
on the extra sales tax in election year when it is producing a
Budget, let's wait four or five months and we'll get it without
the 10% tax". It was therefore quite clear that there was an
undue sag in the demand for cars and motor vehicles. When this
was established we didn't sit there pig-headedly saying " No, we
said what we were going to do in November and nothing can
change it". We said " That's right, the effect is too great". So
we got rid of the added Sales Tax. Somebody says that's a
bewildering change of direction. I would have thought it was
the obvious logical result of the broad policy that we had
announced. You company men, you take the great problem of whether
you can deduct for income tax purposes the interest that you pay
on money borrowed, sometimes on very short term, interest
deductible before the profit is struck. Quite frankly we thought
that this was leading to an abnormal expansion of credit so we
said " We're going to limit the extent to which it can be
deducted". WJe brought in a measure that was, I agree, a bit
rough and ready, the best that could be worked out at the time;
and by the time it operated it had a great deal of effect. Then
we had to consider whether that measure which was to peter out
at the end of June ought to be replaced by a permanent measure.
Quite frankly you couldn't work out a permanent measure that
wouldn't produce the most tremendous uncertainty in the business
community. Therefore we said " We'll drop it; we won't go on
with it after the end of June". Was this a bewildering change
of front? I would have thought that every man in this hall
tonight who has anything to do with companies, or their management,
would have found it a very agreeable decision on the part
of the Government; and a very sensible application of its broad
policy. Therefore don't let us be too upset about the
allegation that we change our minds.
I give you a third example, a very important one.
That there were boon conditions in the building industry last
year, as I've said to you, is unquestionable, and something had
to be done about it. We applied our rules. It became apparent,
not in a hurry but by about April of this year, that there was
an undue fall in the rate of house construction. We didn't
leave it alone. Ue at once got to work to see what could be
done; and uhat have we done?
I would just like to toll you this because it is
perhaps overlooked. In order to restore the level of home
building, not to an exorbitant rate, but to a proper and healthy
rate, we, the Government of the Commonwealth, were in touch with
the Reserve Bank and the Reserve Bank was in touch with trading
banks. The trading banks themselves much to their credit, not
being banks that usually lend money to a great extent on housing
because it is not a normal banking transaction, have in fact boon
laying out more money, substantially more money, in the housing
field. The savings banks? Why we made an arrangement only a
month or six weeks ago which involved the Commonwealth Savings
Bank in finding another œ 5m. on housing ovor the last three
months, or two months. At the last Loan Council meeting last
year's State works programme, a substantial percentage of which
is paid for out of the Commonwealth Budget, and therefore out of
Commonwealth taxes, was maintained and was added to by œ lOm. of
which œ 6m. in the cut-up is an addition to last year's housing
vote. These are large sums of money. You can hardly say that a
Government is unconscious of the housing problem if by those
direct means it succeeds in putting into circulation œ 6m. and
and another œ 3m. on the other item that I mentioned. This
is a large sum of money to be going into added operation at this
time of the year.
We did that because we weren't particularly afraid of
being told that we had changed our minds. We hadn't changed our
minds. We were giving effect to our policy, which was to pull
the boom down to normal and relax the severity of -i= easures as
opportunity offered, and as occasion required.
There is just one other matter that I want to put to
you. I had almost forgotten this but my friend, the Chairman,
told me last night that this was something I ought to say
something about. Not long ago my colleague Mr. Holt, the Treasurer,
made a statement to the House about a drawing that we had made
from the International Monetary Fund. Now I ari not going to bore
you stiff by talking about these intricacies of international
finance, but Australia happens to belong to the International
Monetary Fund, we are a subscribing member, we've put a bit of
money into it in our day, just as other countries that belong to
it have, and we have certain drawing rights. Not a bad idea.
If you put a bit of money in the Bank it's rather useful to know
that you might be able to take it out when you want it. It's as
simple as that. We had drawing rights in the International
Monetary Fund, and we made a drawing. Not because we were
desperate about our international reserves, but because it is a
very good second line of defence if your imports remain high.
This was done before imports began to fall, quite recently.
In the course of making our drawing we submitted a
document to the Intornational Monetary Fund. I may say that that
fund, which is managed by some of the shrewdest and ablest
banking minds in the world, were good en. ugh to say that our
policy in Australia was, to then, a classical example of the
right policy to pursue in dealing with an inflationary boom. So
you see of course they don't have votes in Australia so they
can't help me at the next election it's rather nice to think
that they thought that way. But when you make a drawing you put
a document in; and when this document was published in the
House, tabled in the House there was no secret about it one
or two newspapers, I regret to say, or perhaps I should be more
particular7 one or two rather hurried sub-editors in newspapers,
put a flaring headline on the report " Credit Squeeze until June,
1962". Probably some of you saw it. It must have had a very
depressing effect on a lot of people. It was quite untrue. The
document didn't say that at all. So that there may be no
risunderstanding I would like to read to you the two material
paragraphs from the document that we presented to the fund. I
don't think you will quarrel with a word of them. Tho first is
this " Economic conditions in Australia are subject to rapid
change"
as indeed they are in this country of drought and fluctuating
wool prices, and what have you
" and are influenced by a number of external factors outside
the Government's control. Policy has therefore frequently
to be adapted to meet a shift in conditions. The
declarations of policy made here must therefore be understood
as applying only to conditions as they now appear.
Should any major shift in the direction, or emphasis of
policy become necessary during the currency of the arrangement
the Australian Government would be ready to consult
with the Fund, and, if necessary, reach new understandings
before any further request is made".
There's nothing in that, is there, that indicates that we have
padlocked ourselves until June, 1962? It's too silly, because
since that headline you have seen two or three of these
relaxations that I have talked about. Those of you who read the
paper and cast a wintry look on the financial columns of the
press will have noticed only two days ago the Commonwealth Bank
has just made a substantial release, another C17-2. to the trading
banks out of the special reserve deposits. This headline was
always what they call, in homely terms, " a furphy", and was
based, I suppose, on the next pararaph:
" Seasonal needs apart, the monetary authorities"
that's in Australia
" intend to keep a firm control over the liquidity position
of the banks"
that's quite right, the Banks would want that, and they do it
themselves " with a view to limiting during the year ending June, 1962
the amount of outstanding bank advances to a total that would be
consistent with the maintenance of financial stability".
Now if that isn't a perfectly , ood, cold, hard-headed,
accurate description of the business of a central bank, then I'm
a Dutchman. There it is. It's as plain and as simple as it can
be. It's a sound statement of a sound policy. If any final
proof were needed of the inaccuracy of this rather depressing
headline it would be found in the fact, the undoubted fact, that
bank advances, notwithstanding the squeeze that we've heard so
much about, are today highr than they were a year ago.
All that, ladies and gentlerien, cones to this. I do
ask you to believe, as I know you do that we don't act
impetuously. We do an imiense amount of work on those matters.
We do know what we are talking about on these matters. Many of
us have had years and years of experience, working in the middle
of all these problens, year after year. We are not newcomers,
we are not novices, we are not theoretical people such as some
of those I occasionally hear on the other side. What we have
done we have done, I believe, quite rightly. I believe the
results are justifying what was done. I know there are aspects
of it which gives us all concern. There's rather too much
unemployment under the circumstances that now exist. There had
to be, no doubt, some transfer of people from one kind of
employment to another if you were dealing with a boom.
This is not a permanent state of affairs. This is a
temporary phase that we are going through. I venture to say,
whatever the result of the next election may be, that not long
after the next election, most of us, most of you, most of the
people you know, will be looking back and saying, " Well, it was
temporary. Ill that's over. I-e're back into the stream of
normal prosperity. We have a wonderful future in our country,
of course we have". I'm not afraid of depression in 1962. I
would be afraid of an inflationary boom in 1962 if we hadn't
taken the steps that we have taken. But having taken those
steps I will go on record, tonight, as saying to you that I
believe that 1962, next year, is going to be one of the happiest,
most productive, most profitable years, that this country has
ever known.