2-TV RECORLDI: ~ LU~ PR~ k~ E 23RD ANOVE1v1BER0 196-1 ñ L~~ E'Z
Ladies and gentlemen,
I'm going to talk to you for a few minutes about the
development of Australia. I'm sorry if, standing here, I appear
to be rather of a school master about to give you a lecture--I
even have a sort of cane in my hand but there is a map and I
;;! ant to point a few things out to you on tile map.
But bernre I do that I just want to say this: the
business a Commonwealth Government is overwhelmingly to do
what it cal. to develop the country. If there is one thing that
we look back on with some satisfaction over the last ten years,
twelve years, it is the enormous growth of Australia, the
development of its resources. If there is one thing that we
put before you as our policy, it is to continue that
development to the greatest possible degree.
And in order to do that you don't want. to have a
Government that says " let it be done". You must have a
Commonwealth Government that knows that it wants to help to get
certain great things done; you want State Governments willi~ ng
and able to co-operate in the getting of them done and some
enormous work has been done in 0the States and in the thira
place you want to have a proper co-operation with large private
enterprise. I'll point that out to you in a moment on the map
when I refer to the railways project in Wiestern Australia, or
the Mount Isa railway project in Queensland. All three parties
must work together. They must have a co-operative spirit, and
they must have a clear idea in their minds of what it is they
want to do. Now we've been in office, as you know, for 12 ypars,
and in the course of that time tremendous things have been going
on in Australia. I'm going to mention one or two of them to
you by pointing them out or pointing their location out on
the map. And in particular I want to refer to a few of them to
which we have directed attention quite in the last few months.
Now let me just look at the map and point out one or
two things to you. I'm not going to pretend to exhaust the
list because time would not permit that, but there are a few
things here that weren't here a few years ago.
Down here in Victoria for example you see the railway
line running down to Melbourne. The unification of the'railway
line from Wodonga to Melbourne is a work of tremendous
importance: it means that you will have a standard gauge
railway available for great traffic from Sydney to Melbourne.
And of course there is already a standard gauge one that runs
up to Brisbane. Down here in this corner is Tasmania. Tasmania always
had a tremendous problem of shipping, because of course, it
depends on shipping. It has no land transport, obviously, to
the mainland: it needs shipping. And f~ or many years it relied
on a subsidised ship, plus rather uncertain shipping services
from other sources. dJe have, ourselves, in the last few years,
had built and put on to the run to Tasmania the Princess of-
Tasmania, a tremendous boon particularly to the Tasmanian
tourist traffic; the Bass ñ 1rader the roll-on roll-off ship
which greatly facilitates the handling of cargo; and we have
already had, in the last few months, a little to do with
roviding a new cattle ship for King Island. So that the
transport problem of Tasmania has been, in a large measure,
solve a, in the last few years.
Another great problem that confronted us was the
problem of developing our exports, This is vital to Australia.
And we have looked at all these proposals that come up from the
States, largely in the light of whethtr they will develop export
business and improve our international, and therefore our local,
financial position. And so, in the last few months, we have
made arrangements with the Government of New South W4ales under
which we make available substantial financial assistance for
improving the coal ports in Newcastle, Sydney in Balmain in
fact and in Port Kembla; and also an arrangement with the
Government of Queensland in relation to the port of Gladstone.
Now all of these ports, the new facilities that will exist in
them, will give an increasing export trade in coal and how
important that is you will perhaps remember when I tell you, or
remind you, that when we came into office Australia was
importing coal. Today we are exporting it in large and growring
quantities. ) ii search has gone on, of course, and those engaged
in it are optimistic about ultimate results, here, and over in
the dest and around he-. e. And, well all I need say is that we
have some hope on this matter. But a great deal. of work haq
been done, and great financial encouragement has been given by
the Government of the Commonwealth.
Up here in Queenslanud is the major wfork the
reconstruction of the railway line from Mount Isa down to
Townsville arid Collinsville. Now that is a veizy big undertaking.
My Government has agreed by a contract signed only a
few months ago, to find œ C20m. of the initial cost of this line
for the Government of Queensland. The effect of the line will
be to make it possible indeed to make it certain that the
Mount Isa mine will become probably the greatest copper mine in
the world! The Company itself will spend scores of millions of
pounds; and the result will be to add, I believe scores of
millions of pounds to the export income of Australia.
Now I won't take time about Weipa and bauxite because
they go back a few years, although they are now in the process
of development. But up here we have, in the last few months, provided
money for the Government of Queensland to encourage the building
of beef roads, that is to say roads that will enable beef cattle
to come off in better condtion, and thereby add to our export
income. The same is true in the Northern Territory, where, of
course, in addition, as you know, we have these great deposits
of bauxite and the already substantially worked deposits of
uranium in Rum Jungle.
In the '. est up in the north we have found millions
ourselves for the development of the Kimberleys; and quite
recently more money for beef roads to take cattle into Wyndham,
Down here, the great scheme, a scheme that will cost
Governments œ C+ 2m. and the steel company at least as much the
great scheme of unifying the gauge from Kalgoorlie doi-mL
Kwinana, enabling iron ore deposits of great magnitude to be
worked in Koolyanobbing, and a new iron and steel industry in
Western Australia, something that will revolutionise that State.
These things have been discussed, and agreed upon, and put into
motion in the last few months.
In South Australia you may see, perhaps, the line of
the Murray the great problem, I believe, in South Australia is
the problem of water. And although the Snowy Scheme on which un
spend so much every year has, I believe assisted the supply of
water in the Murray, we now have under Aiscussion with New
South ' 4ales, Victoria and South Australia a new dam about here1
at a place called Chowilla. And in relahoh to that which il
it goes on, and I believe it will, will be the biggest water
storage in Australia we, the Commonwealth Government, have
found, or will promise to find, a quarter of the estimated cost
just as we found a quarter of the cost in the case of the
H-ume dam and other works on the Murray.
Now that just gives you a sort of broad conspectus of
it. But there is a vary interesting aspect of it that I want tc
point out to you. My opponent, Mr. Calwell who, I must say has
an admirable faculty for coining a phrase every now and then,
likes to refer to-my Government and I suppose to me as
" tired an'. lazy". d~ ell I think that one is entitled occasionall~ y
to be tireu, but laziness is not something that I am accustomed
to being accused o. L,
Anyhow he says this is a tired and lazy governmlent
and it's t~ me you had a change. And here is the point that
want to make: In the last three months of this Parliament this
" tired and lazy" Govcr~ ment, instad of deferring works so that
it could promise them in a Policy Speech, got vith the job
negotiated with Queensland, negotiated with New South -dales,
negotiated with South Australia, negotiated with -Jestern
Australia. And the result is that in these last few months of
this Parliament we have put in hand, so that they will go
roaring along for the next three years at leas the works on
the coal ports, the Mount Isa Railway scheme the great iron r. nd
steel and railway and iron ore scheme in destern Australia the
dieselisation of certain railway lines in the State of South
Australia, the preliminary discussions on the technical level
for the great new dam at Chowilla, let's see, yes, the beef
roads up here, the beef roads in Queensland. I could, perhaps,
if I had time talk about half a dozen matters which, literally,
have been brought to their final stage of preparation, to the
stage of agreement, to a stage where the financial arrangemen+ s
are made and the work can be put in hand, all in the last three
or four months. I hope you will allow me to say that even a Government
that wasn't " tired and lazy" might be hard put to it to be
brisker than that, or to achieve so much as that in so limited a
time. But the work must go on that's the great point. And I
don't believe, do you, that it can go on unless you have a
feeling of co-operation, a feeling of confidence between the
Commonwealth and State authorities, between the 6ommonwealth and
the local authorities and the great private enterprises which
have so much to contribute to the development of Australia,
It is co-operation, stability of Government,
certainty of purpose, a willingness in a Government to go
straight forward with these jobs these are the thin,. s that
matter, these are the things that will be determined by your
vote on Polling Day.
Therefore having given you this very trifling survey
of some of the thVi ngs that are going on I leave it to you to
instruct the Parliament of the Commonwealth, through us, that
this work is to on and that Australia is to be bigger and
better; in other woras that we shall, as you may see on the
corner of the map, be buildingr for tomorrow.