61
NO. I TV RECORDING: " TALK TO ' THE NATION"
BY THE PRIME MINISTEli THE RiT. HON. R. G. MENZIES
NOVEMBER. 19o.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Before this election campaign is finished you will
listen, if you have the patience to many arguments on many
matters; some arguments on grea issues and some arguments, no
doubt, on side issues.
But 1 t:. ought I would like to take a fairly early
opportuni'., 7 of putting this to you. Th~ re is one great issue in
this election and that is the issue of what kind of government
you want. You have had a Government headed by myself now for a
long time you may think rather too long. But that doesn't
matter, WhA-. t has happened in our time of government will, I
think, have a profound influence on what you -think on Polling
Day. Because if the truth is and I think it is that we
have enjoyed in Austra-ia 12 years of remarkable -rowth and
remarkable prosperity, with a remarkably high lc~ vel of
employment, notwithstanding small occasions, if these things
have happened and the nation is stronger, and the people
themselvos are better off, happier, freer, then I would doubt
very much whether you would want to change the goverrnent and
hand it over to whom? Hand it over to a collection of
people -and about those people I want to say this with great
respect -a collection of people wrio haven't been able to live
together, politically, haven't been able to yovern themselves,
politically? And now they are asking you to put us out and to
let themn goverr~ this country for you. That seems to me o be
the very great issue in this election.
Now having said that I just want to mention to you
because I can't mention everything a few matters by which I
invite you to test the position. b
First of all whatever may be said about-us and I
know we have our critics, I read them every day, I hear them
quite frequently, and no doubt there is a lot to be said for
them but whatever may be said by our critics we have been for
the whole of this time, although we have consisted of two
parties, the Liberal Party and the Country Party, we have been
completely united. .1e have never had any discord in my
government; we have had nothing but loyalty, one to the other;
and we have had nothing but loyalty from those who sit behind
us in Parliament. Now that is a tremendously important thing.
You can't really run the business of the country well if the
Board of Directors is engaging in wrangling and disputing.
waec t. e don't wrangle, and dispute. ge argue, we agrez. e,
And in these last 12 years, while it would be silly
for any government to pretend we did everything, the truth is
that a good government a loyally composed government, a
government that co-operates, one member with another, a
government that has ideas and has ambition for the future of
Australia, can produce and, we believe, has produced an
economic climate, a political climate, in which the country can I
go on getting stronger and stronger. That is the great task
of a government: not ? o try to run all the buSiness in the
community, but to make it possible for the community itself,
to grow and to develop. There: fore we have had stability of
government.
You are being asked to change it for what I would
imagine would be the most unstable 8overnment representing the
most unstable Party that Australia has seen for a long time.
Then there is another tiiing that perhaps you might
recall. The public credit of this country is very high. Now
that is not just " high finance" talk. This is not intended to
say something that is a little mysterious and shows how
superior wae are. There is something quite simple about high
public credit if you can establishwitiiand maintain it.
Because it means that people will be willing to invest in
Australia, not only Australians themselves,' who are investing
in this country ma-, nificently, but people outside Australia
people who ' nave, over these recent years been investing hunareds
of millions, and an immense amount of accumulated skill in the
development of industry in Australia. I know that my opponents
say they don't like it. Presumably they will cut it off. IL
will be a s.-d ' lay for Australia if they do, because without the
investment of capital in this country our progress would be
slowed down almost im.-measurably. But there it is: high
public credit establisled and maintained over this last decade.
There is a third thing. I believe that even our
opponents regard us as having a decent sense of fair play. And
fair play the sense of fair play, translated into the
industrial world, means an enormous amount because it brings
about a sense of justice, and therefore continuity of work; in
short, industrial peace.
Do you know that thne days of work lost under my
Government have never been as great as the lowest number lost
under the preceding Labour Government? That's a very
remarkable thing. And all the moro remarkable because some of
you will remenbe:. i being told by our opponents, or by my
opponent, " Oh, of course they will never be able to ret on withi
the Unions, they'll never be able to get on with organised
labour",. But we have thie greatest record of industrial peace
that this country can point to. Now that is a good thing. 1
want it to continue, because it is only when people have the
opportunity of continuity of work and production that
Australia can develop more and more as it has developed over
the last 10 years.
Then, Sir you know I say " Sir" ~ because I'm rather
in the habit of that in the H-ouse, but I'll address you sir, as
" Sir" then Sir, think of what has g-one on in national
development, I will probably have more to say about this
before the campaign finishes, but really when you look north,
South, east and west in Australia at the enormous works of
development that have occurred, employing thousands and scores
of thousands of people, producing water for irrigation,
producing power for factory development, producing ports,
better ports for coal export, producing minerals, producing an
increased outturn of beef for export look I needn't dwell on
all thes~ e things because I hope you will hear a lot about them
before Polling Day. But when I look back over them I want to
tell you that whatever you do with me on Polling Day I shall
always be proud to have had some association with a process
which so far from having finished is only getting going, The
last 12 years will be really small compared to what can be
done in the next 12 if you have stable , overrb-ent, sensible
government, responsible g5overnment; and government that has
some imagination about the future.
4 3.
Then finally, the only other thing that I have time to
mention to you is perhaps this: This country is more secure
than it ever has been before. That is a big thing to say. You
may say to me " Well, no country is secure". That is true
enough. None of us can feel entirely secure with Khrushchev and
the Communists beating the big drum, setting out to frighten us,
and to frighten other people by these crude demonstrations of
power. Nobody can feel utterly secure about these things, It
is a pretty good thing for this country of ours to have this
measure of security that its government has, in all these
years, set about making close, abiding friendships, not only
with Great Britain, not only with the mother country, and the
other British counruries, but also with the United States of
America, wl. h powerful allies in the South-East Asian Treaty
Organisation, with the United States and with New Zealand in
the ANZUS ' Treaty. These are all things that we have taken a
great hand in creating.
Our stocks, our personal stocks abroad are, as I
happen to know, very high. -de hal~ e powerful friends And in a
world in which trie threat and terror of force are to be
observed day by day, the most important thing for a small
country is to have powerful friends who stand by it, and by whom
it stCands. And of course we couldn't stand by our friends, even
in a small way, if it were not for the fact that our defence
preparation at this moment, is at the greatest pitch of
efficiency it has ever reached in time of peace. Even our
critics in Australia have ceased to criticise what has gOne on
in the Army, in the Navy and the Air Force, in research and
development, in the long range guided missile department, in
i'oomera. This has been a remarkable effort. At least I did
think that the Labour Party would say, " Well ve won't touch
that; we'll keep that; we do want to have that measure of
capacity to defend ourselves". But the only statement, so far,
made by the Labour Party, and of course one never knows what
will come along, has been to the effect that the defence vote is
too great, and ought to be reduced.
Now I come back to -,. here I began:. there are all
sorts of side issues, but the central matter in this election,
from the time it began until Polling Day, is " Do you want to
change your present government in favour of the kind of
government that is offered to you by our opponents?"
If we had a poor record of performance I could well
imagine you saying, " Well they've had their chance they haven't
done well, this is the time for experiment, let's try somebody
else".* But nobody really can honestly say that this country
hasn't been prospering, that this country hasn't been going
through a period of wonderful 5, rowth, that ordinary standards of
living haven't been rising, that we haven't enjoyed the
confidence and goodwill of the world, Nobody can honestly tell
you that. Therefore what you are really being invited to do by
our opponents is to take a wild experiment, a sort of excitable
act arising from the very prosperity of the country, " Well
we're pretty well off, let's see what we can do with the people
who now sit on the front Opposition bench at Canberra"
quarrelling with each other, mostly disliking each other, with
hardly an ounce of mautual loyalty.
Ladies and gentlemen, quite frankly, I can't see you
doing it, I profoundly hope you won't even think of doing it.