AU0) r. IVAL3* A. U, P?. IMART PRODUCEiS UI\ IION
fCN 2~ R ,-) rZf T r 1L 6
e iePieM~ itr the~ RJ. hon. R Me: n zicoe-
, Li d ies and. Gentlemcn
I thin~ lk 1 will foVollow my u lprdn; course and
decla-re th e Confcrence open, Anything, I have to say thlen is
9but TeConfirence Is now Oran,
1 i. ave recollections of teA P.? 0 th. at go back,.
a long ti. me., They are rnot all goode, I have forgo: ten hovw
long ago i-t was tbhe belvtr parit of twenity years ei; en
perac -bu Iremember going to 1Wrrnahibooil ' Jere any of
y%: ou there that night9 It ias a very wet., & dxaughity n: gh&, t, just
a very dra-ughty day, Th-je blew fr-Loi behind
the olatfOrm at th~ e Town Ha1 nd( iv(-wore overcoalts a t tne
top table; masses of food and drink.. z st.-i.. nngely ernougi, but
no tiimle to apply ours'ilves to anny of tlhe;. j3, becau-: e theare wo(-re
tweTntynirie speechaes ( Laughter) and mqy good ftrieiid, tihe Dote
A1I. En McDonaid, v. who had -oersuaded me % to go, taci ! lecl me again
a yeor or t-vo jate; r and cd " You must, cor." e. 0110!, 11 1 Said,
711 don't think I can go ; rug tetnn speeches a gain.,"~
Ihad to I.-sten to twerntyeighit, you s ee,. ( Laughte,). So,
-1) yr. ow? 1 didnit go Yei d reporteu atrad ta hr a
been a ; narked. improveiaeAu-you hnad oii. Ly twen tvthlre a ( Laughter)
Lt tiI-U-he Ii: iliara t Con fererloc,
But ith. o:. se we-?-e conja: atively early days. wore. nit
thle y' And i muist seoy, p.:, rKcuay i1-the State of Victoria 9
M17olt. Mta n d morng oSrinoOoutli A-ustralia and intLo
thie hiverina and nrew vrith ver y clo: se tissociat. I-ons with Tasmania,
th") e AO + PC La s b e. cmrce ra a and highJ. y-respecte'. bod~ y
Ce1rbracing, of ccursef, myMany aspeets of rural liffe. I -3M
always delig~ ted: 1 to fnd. bodiLes + iho are-actvivoe in this sense,
becai1sSC unt ,4.1 we hav , e reached that sta-cge of perfect wbsdo. T inl
which~-1 edtoha1': aet-h --J s. Ldo ~ ga it'sa a -very oodI
-LifLrtg to htear botI sides of thie quesin. An I av e
pa! rti-cuiariy consoicLus of in -hrntt + ies
have Lad an L.+ L tca.--ñ aCL. p: b m and weLave no--vjr
OX, coutroae2 an exter.-nal erobLom-develo. ping fairly quickly., Ja ch
of thI-ese problems ' concerns pncd11-h -nd ustries that you
s p eak f o r The i1nternal probleri is t! he problem of rnaintai:.-Ing
a high rate of irnigralk-ion. encoiaragirng the davelop: aent; of-L
secondarry and. tertCiary industry, as the industriLes whi. cl can
give employment to a rapidly-g-owing poato -tee are
Vep' 1m,, otalnt niatters, We nlever must consider thIem I nevrer
do myselIf witUhout :-omembering that each. of' those matters can
put OreSS'Ures on tLhe co st level i~ n Au!. stralia whI+ ich will ultimAtely
come back to the primaily produicer0And I hope you irill allow
moe sy tat as tI-e hec-ad of the Goverrnment, I take some
pleasure out of the thiought thiat for a long time no-, w, the, better
part of two years, there ' has bee.,, as viewed thI-rough-the consumer
price index, stab+ Llity0
Now what you want i-s stability of costs. lfh a t y ou
wrould like oven more to see iw-oulIid be a edconoff cos-Ls0And
( 3 0 00 06 b / 2
ou2r great Jinternai -rob" -, T; is to See tha" t whatevor pressures we
put on tal-e ccriomy, Jhcnwevc'r much -ee encoura go. th'Ie grCWt. h of the-,
economy and. . Lin, nI 3; t17emc-ndously 1a oarat the grcwth of
A'ist~~~' haO rwh or0pap uj.& Lato it should all, be done
on termis which enable the11-o or*. i. m-aryr industrie7, teget xot
Lflg -Indutri~ es, not only to survive, but to be proofitable arid
tIJo ex-oand as A astralia expands~, On the whole, we haven't been
e,: ntirely withaout success in that field, but this last year Or
eighteen months, several of -as as yeu Know have been iir-mersed
in thne problems of the Common Markct.
I thought I might just tell you a litt-le about that
this afternoon. I dontt want to detain you too lon, But these
are great problems end a Prime Ministers' Conference is in a
sense not a very suitable piece of machinery for dealing with
them. A lot of us, particularly old-fashioned fellows like
myself, look back cn the Comrnonwealth and think of a few
countries Gireu-t Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand
what you the " old Corimonweicalth" where we hlad a greet
deal of commrunity of inte~ rest, and you could really have a
Conference and discuss most of your poroblems prett'-. y affoct,. ively.
But -the Commonwalthi today has growna enorm'u sly, This last
time in London, we had sixteen Pri. mo Ministers, orL their
representatives, sitting at a long table, each accompanied by
a Minister or two., a coip-le of ot'ficials, so that in the rjsult,
we had in this Conference room not less th-An * 100 people. And
thr-m becomes rather like a public meetLing, Itts not very easy
to got intimate and matey with 10C, people at a Conferexnce, as
you no doubt have discove-, ed., ( Lauighter)
But more than that, we haave i* Lnterests wh1ich are
diverse, We are greatly concernod, Ourselves, nbout our exports
of whaeat, of mutton and lamb,, of beef and, 1 voci and dairy products,
sugar, of metals i~ n various forms matters o) f this kind
greatly concern and they conicern Canada, or some of them. do3
they concern New Zealand, or seme of themr do; but thney don t
greatly-concern an Asian country, except perhaps in some romrote
s po ts f or s ugear0 T'hey donlt gr. eatly concern a West Indian
countr;-excep.! for sugari: and the result is thlat we rapidly found
-that we had a series 01' diverse-interests0 The Asian members
of the ComrInnwa. thl Co) u-. d freelIy discuss the prrrticular problems
that they had Like textiles arid matters of that sort, and tea.
The Arancountries were greatlyv concornod about a vairiety of-Ltropi
-cal r)-oductS, some of whiclh, of course, affect us in
New Gluinea, and the Wes-st Z-ndies ,, ereagreatly concerned, of
couse aoutsur as we ara. and othier tropical pr&. oct~ cts,
i~ n th e long run, the-1refore, we came to realise th--at the future
of Aistralia Is inter-ests depeDndod upon a concentra tion of affort
by oursolvcs end Canada and 11ew Zoaland upon -the matters which
primarily co-icern us,
On those topics the fact was, when the Conference
met, that the negotiations botweon reat Britain and the SI~ X had
not gone very far, There had been considerable discussion about
cornmmdity agreements. li ll say sometiiing about that in a
m-. oment, But on ail the other commodities thuft 1 have referred
tthere had been no no-gotiat-ion3 There had been a great
deal of to and fro between ourselves and Great Britain, for
example, through offficials and Ministers, including myself, but
no actual neg-otiation. 3 iA1l thatl is going on now, and until
It is concluded, we won kno the nature of the bargai0 W
do know that if', being con-stantly informed as we will be ais to
hor it is going on, getting near-the ond of thne period, we want
to have a farther conference za that we may, on the spot withl
Grreat Britain, ompha13sise Our views, we can have it. That being
so, I dont at all exclude the possibility that somebody will
have to pack his bag-s and engage inthis kind of discussion again,
Tt s ea-y. The Six tool; years to cre-ate theo
Treaty of Pome ye;; rs o-f di fl~ aic-ne go tiation, n hrfr
you can hardly wondc-r a t it if The-ir attituda is~ " 1VIl1 it
took us a long time to get t-eTrnoaty of Rome. You dori t think
ar going to r'eopen tic waol~ e busi1necs ag-ain, do youcev
1. s h: lghiy anderstandab-le,, But, of course, it is not theono.
of the argumant, J-ust as Great Britain atahsL mu
political importance -this is undoubtedlyr true to going j-n-to
Europe, so I have a pretty shrewd idea,, that most of the European
nations also attachi importance to Great, Britain. going in because,
this will create a stronger Wstern Europe and that's wha-t theyi/
alI want, 0 They Xnow that it can~ t be as strong as it otherwise
wboeu l f Geat ritin is standing aslde from it.
Therefore I think we ought to assxae one of the
facts of life, that the British Government wants to go in for
-Doli-tical reasonis and that the European nations, with one
posibl exepton9also want Great Britain to go inl for
political reasons. Well that's thieir judgment, not ours. We
dontthave to determiine Zhat question, But it doesma I
thiink, that one shouldn't despair too quickly abou-t something
reasonable being hammered out en thce economic side as the price
of entry,, Mind you I hiaven't yct seen any symptoms of it,,
vl,, v read a 8reat I3ca! so far about Phasing out all the old
preferences by 1970,. -whicha is moromTy postponing the evil hours
not avoiding i-t0 B-L't We kncw whlat we want and the Britishi
Government knows wvhat we want on theAnse matters aInd I've no doubt
-that Mr. Heath as the chief negotiator will. do h1is best to
achnieve the rfesults -that we are after.
But there.. was one aspect1 of tUhe Conference in w'. ich
I felt that we had made somec headway0You will all remcmbor
itts years now sin1ce we first began, part. Lcula(-, rly through Mr,
4o1E1A(.. n at vnrious ConforenCes, tdirect at-tention to the ,-jnde--
l. ying fact of international, trade, a asLeaittdxe. heo
sInce the war, and thiat Is that thie primary exporting countries
like ; Iustvalia have ha7_ d theo terms of ty, ade move against triem
steadily, year by year,. ' The price of what we buy has risen out
of proportilon -to tii price of what we.. rE ell, anrd the te-rms of
i-rade for a priinrary-pivoduciLng and. exporting country have fallen
steadJ1. ly, lnde& d IF th-irk they cre 4+ 0 per cent0 worse now thian
they were eight or ten years ago,,
We've boon directing at-tention to this and sa ying,
in ef-fect5 to theo nations of th-e old wol-ld, the rich, industr!., aliZed
nations, " There is not muchi point in your hLar.& ing out mlin
and mill1ions of eolI ars or pounds to help developing countries if,
having ihelped them to develop thoir productlion, you refu~ se to buy
their product on reasciiable torms0 1This is crazy, anld we have
been saying so for years. T-Ihea ve pointed out that an increase
of P trifling porcentago In the prices of-: primary products b-oughtJ
by these industrialized countrics from overseas, an increase of'
trifling percentage would mere tha-n compensate for the loss of
financinl aid that has been gi-ven0
It is oractical and sensible and. therefore we have
constituted ourselves thlie great advocato for international
coimodity agreements de~ s-Lined to produce payable prices for these
conuiodities -and some stability of'th price level and some stable
assurance of marketS for th", ese conmoditi--s0 Now this is
tremendously importar-, n,, It, of cours-c. doesn't cover the w-, hole
field., You ca' solvo 113' these pr-oblems by commocdity ag. ese
but it is not difficutlt to thllin 0of a few in whiich the existence
Of commodity agreernents subs cribe-d to by all the relevant countries,
bothi sellers and buyers, would be of tromendous value to a country
like our own. * 0 0 a a 0 // 4
lWell., they have had a good deal of discussion about
thatt t Brussels, They had particularly been decling with
cereals and in Uarticular, in that bracket, with. whato Now,
we have had a rather fluctuating experience of international
wheat agreements and one of our principal buyers over a term
cf years, Great Britain, has quite frankly never been very
keen on commodity agreements. For a long time, she didn't
associate herself with the International Wheat Agreement.
She was never very keen on it, and that, of course, is something
you can understand. There was what was called, in the early
part of the century as part of the policy
in Great Britain, " the cheap breakfast table". This is an
intelligible doctrine. ' If we in Britain can buy our foodstuffs
cheaply," the argument ran, " and sell our industrial commodities
at a good price, well, we overcome our balance of payments
problem and we are able to do things for other people in the
world," Now that's very admirable, but the people who grow
the commodities and who sell them and see them bei. ng destroyed
in price by a temporary glut or messed around because of some
loss of market or some particular treatment in another country,
don't get much comfort out of knowing that people are buying
these goods cheaply in some other country.
Therefore, we were very anxious this time to see
whether these negotiating countries were at last prepared to
go seriously into the business of negotiating international
commodity agreements, And the best thing that we came out
of the Prime Ministers' Conference with was the communique
which indicated that every Commonwealth country, includin!
Great Britain, wanted to secure commnodity agreements of this
kind, providing for a proper access to the market and a
remunerative price level and that the countries of the Six
were in agreement, in broad principle, that commodity agreements
ought to be made,
Now this is a good step forward. It won't be worth
a thing if, having been written down, it is forgotten about,
but I can assure you that we are ourselves, keeping up the
pressure and, happily, keeping it up with the assistance of
the United States of America, with the President of which
had some most useful discussions earlier this yearo
The United States is now armed with the Reciprocal
Trade Act which gives the Administration of the United States
great power to negotiate international arrangements and I think
between one thing and another, if we can keep up the pressure,
and we certainly will, we may very well expect to see, in the
next year, effective steps in the direction of practical,
determined negotiation, genuine negotiation for some commodity
agreements. If we could start with wheat and get one est, blished
there with the relevant countries involved in it, this
would be a trial balloon' this would be something that would
have great value in itself and by demonstrating that such
agreements to preserve access and stabilize prices and keep
them at an effective level can be achieved,
All I want to say to you, ladies and gentlemen,
is that I have been in a lot of these discussions this year
over there twice, in America twice to have talks there and
you need to have a lot of patience, I remember when I was a
small boy in the country, somebody told me that the seed that
would grow most quickly in the garden ( I was very young then;
I wasn't in politics; I was about eight)( Laughter) was a
radish. I'd plant them today and then at the end of the week
pull one up to see how it was going. Well, we can't do that
on this business. We will, I undertake to you, be unremitting COO& o/
iTh oil those Lratters., VIc will. righ. t ;: lrn ,.--. rnugh
t-ie rert. ianing ngotia tions ' be in conston; and pec-l-Ps daily
associaticn with thp . Er Llis-i negotiators on the cfficiz. l level
ei weWl9a altm reserve to ourelves the right to
say bofo: e finality is reached9 that we w; a nt Once more -to be
her:;) d at; the topo leve'l in order that before they make the
co., ncJ~ vded bargain, our interests will have been considered and,
so far as we can b~ ring it about, reasonably proteocted,
Now I am sorry to talkh so long about t;. iat, Sir
It's all very old hat to you but I thought that spoalking
directly to you 1lke -this you might be interested in one o~ o
two of the aspects of a Cornforence tiic high paint of a series
Of Conferences the most impartan-for -as, ever, in time of
pea Ce, But -the whole objective must beg and. is, to improve
our terms of trade, to give to ti-is exporting industries a pro per
chance of risiLng-markets9 increasing access to thle buying
comamunities of tbhe world and some price assurance which will
moan that'k they can go along and produce witha thae-i cost level
reasonabl. y held and therefore withi ev-ery possibility of expanded
production. That's may' policy, as you rnigiat -sayq in a few
sentences and having expounded it to you very briefly, I'll
probably now go back anda get into some other argLunonts in
t~ trhter place, burt I remind you that before I began, I declared
-this Conference opon,
1 conclude by sayinig that I wish you and your
organisation tfte g.-eatest possible success.