THE AUS TRAL IAN ASSOCIATION OF BRITISH MAI\ 7[ TFCTERSI,
LTffHTFON HE7. LDfA T MEL1O~ TH FFBR1ARY%-
Speech by the PrIme Ministre th e Rt. Hon, R. G. Menzie s
I usually begin a speech by saying " Sir", but
today I am going right back to the grass-roots and therefore
I say, Mr. Chairman, my Lords we have a couple of them here
today Mr. High Commissioner, Mr. Ferguson and the rest of you
I was delighted to hear from my old friend, Mr. Hawker, about the
exhibit at the International Fair and to listen to his trailer
is that the expression? of those things that are to come.
And as a matter of fact, if I live so long and endure so long
and there is enough time available, I am going with my Lord
Simon afterwards to have a quick look at the British exhibit.
I think you will all agree that as an honest broker
I am placed in a somewhat difficult position today. I walked in
and the first man I met was an arrant free-trader. i refrain
from mentioning his name. And the next man I walked into was Tom
Ramsay the President of the Australian Chamber of Manufacturers.
And all my instincts, all my political instincts, said to me,
" Laddie, this is the time to got out". But I was blocked in my
retreat by two waiters, each of them oddly enough offering me a
drink. And so I remained,
But then I got a little comfort out of remembering
that I had been provided by somebody with a little piece of
paper about this Assotuiation and it recalled to my mind that one
of your objectives is " to encourage reciprocal trade." Now, this
is something frequently overlooked. i am sure that there were a
lot of people who, looking on at Tariff Board proceedings and
seeing over a long term of years the devoted and talented work of
Mr. Ferguson, would regard him superficially as the enemy of
Australian manufacturing. And of course that is quite wrong.
There may be a lot of people who think that Australian manufacturers,
who have so great and increasing a part to play in
national development are to be regarded as the opponents of all
imports of any kind Ircm other counmtries. Both of those conceptions
are grievously wrong. And it is all summed up in the
expression in your own objectives about encouragement of
reciprocal trade. Now Sir,~ you concern us when I say " you" I am
referring to the Issociation, bigoted fellows like yourself and
others somewhat mere broadminded whom I see around me but you
concern us I do not mean you alarm us, but you interest us
you are our concern in at last two ways. And perhaps I might
just state them almost categorically. First of all, without
growing exports of British manufacturers from Great Britain and
a correspondingly sound balance of trade and payments for Great
Britain, Great Britain, either in or out of the Common Market,
will have great difficulty in sustaining her economic and
financial strength and with them her enormolus significance in
the whole modern world. We all realise this, We rather thrive
on differences in Australia. I remember one time when Winston
Churchill said about us in a speech of his,," Ah, in Australia
they conduct their politics with a fine 18h century vigour." 1
And that is quite true; we thrive on differences. I do not
thinik I would have lived as long as I have without them.
But let us not so much enjoy our differences as to
forget all the things that we have in common. And one of the
things we all have in coramon hero today is that Great Britain
must be and remain and increasingly be a powerful community in
this world. / 2
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I know that some clever fellow in some English newspaper
will once more accuse me of being sentimental. All right,
I an, I an. But this is more than sentiment. Every consideration,
not only of sentiment, but of self-interest, requires
that we in Australia, the old Dominion, should believe, and
believe in our hearts and in our minds that is even more
important that Great Britain must continue to be strong for
the good of the world. And therefore Great Britain must manufacture
and she must export. We realise that. Indeed, we know
that in this modern and highly complex world, with challenges
around every corner, a new challenge almost every month, trade
with Groat Britain for us in Australia remains essential.
There aru a few people in Great Britain some of them highly
placed who have yet to learn the massive extent of the trade
between this country and Great Britain. Some of then, indeed,
have yet to remember or to be told that over a considerable
time of years now, when our own secondary industry had been
developing apace, Great Britain has had. in terms of commodities,
a highly favourable balance of trade with this country. And
we have found in Great Britain our greatest single market.
These things are not to be overlooked. New markets
yes, we need. Groat Britain is searching for themn The whole
strategic approach, as far as I understand it, of the Common
Market negotiations was to develop new and enlarged markets for
the products of British industry. And we ourselves cannot live
on old markets. Wo may improve then, we may nurse them with
jealous care, but we must develop new markets. Because this
is a challenging world, The one thing that I want to say
about that is that I hope that none of us will fail to remember
that new markets are best when they are added to old markets and
not when they are subtracted from them,
Now, Sir, there is another thing that I would like to
say to you. Is there as some people have thought, a necessary
conflict between the British manufacturer and the Australian
manufacturer? ( I apologies for my terminology because most
of my life I have been explaining to people that we are British,
but still these modern terms become very difficult. I remember
a very distinguished British Minister once in Australia saying,
" Would you think it wrong if we referred to ourselves as the
British Government? It is so tiresome to say we are the U. K,
Government, We will have to be calling ourselves the U. oK-ites
like the Hittites and the Malachites, and this really will not
do." I concede the point, this is purely for purposes of
argument that I refer to the Fritish and to the Australian.)
But is there a necessary conflict? And of course the answer
is obviously " no" o
Perhaps the answer needs a little elaboration. And
the first piece of elaboration is one at which I have already
hinted, All the history of modern times in Australia has shown
that the more we have become industrialised, the greater has
been our appetite for import; that the more we produce ourselves
and the more we raise our own standards of living in Australia,
the greater is our capacity for buying the products of other
countries. And, indeed, as I have said to you we have bought
more from Great Britain, talking in terms of commodities than
Groat Britain has found it possible to buy from us. But this
is not to be judged on a merely bilateral basis. This is to
be judged on a multilateral basis, when you consider the state
of affairs in the world. And whenever we feel a little
disturbed, if we do, about this kind of thing, the more we
have to remember that over the last decade, for example, when
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our manufactures have developed, when our imports have
increased, when we have had some imbalance in commodity
trade with Great Britain, wie have at the same time been
enjoying an enormous national growth. which is vital to us;
we have had massive immigration, much of it from the Old
Country; we have had growing employment and we have had an
investment of overseas capital in Australia which some people
appear to believe comes almost entirely from the United
States, but which in fact has come mostly from Great Britain.
I was looking over the figures which some industrious
member of my staff produced about our trade, because you know
at a solemn gathering like this they do not think much of you
unle-ss you quote a few figures and I am not, as a rule, very
much in favour of doing that. But I did notice that although
there has boen large importation into Australia, inevitably
because, among others, our own manufacturers need them of
commodities of metals, metal manufactures, machines and
machinery, I regretted to observe that over the last ten
years the percentage of these things coming to us from Great
Britain has fallen. Not our total imports of such mattersthey
have risen but the percentage from British sources
has fallen. And I found myself asking, impertinently you
may say, whether this argued some lack of enterprise in the
Old Country, because believe me we noed an awful lot of
enterprise here and Great Britain nee; ds an awful lot of
enterprise if, in this complex world, with all sorts of
doubtful things and uncertain factors, never more uncertain
than they are at present on the fringes of Europe, you need
and we need a tremendous development of enterprise and of
ingenuity. I suppose that we are all, except on polling day,
a little conservative. 1-can remember a time, not so very
long ago when, if I encountered a British motorcar mianufacturer
in England, ha took me on one side and lectured me' in
an almost fatherly mannor on the wickedness of the very idea
of Australia manufacturing a motor car. -tVhy don't you take
what we give you, they are the best in the world." This is
splendid, but it is no wray to conquer a world market. And,
of course, as the cvents have shown, thuy were wrong.
We are all a little disposed, are we not, to think
that what we have made in the past an~ d sold in the past ought
to be good enough for the future. We in Australia leok out
on the enormous potential of the Asian market, the market of
South West Pacific; but I suppose we are always tempted to
sa-y, " Well, what vio make is so and so; why cannot we sell
that?" Whereas the truth may be, and I am sure it is, that
in all tthe business of manufacturing, whether it is here or
in Great Britain, the constant search rm. ust be to see whether
we can't produce something that these people who are so odd
that they do not belong to our race or community would like to
buy. And this is not just market research, this is actual
research in productive techniques and in determining the
matters to be produced.
Look, we havo the job in front of us, a heavy job,
a marvellous job if we can achieve it, a productive job, a
job that will assure the powerful future of the Mother Country
and support Ia rate of national growth in Australia that will
be the wonder of our grandchildren. This is of tremendous
importance. We miust do what we can to develop our trade by
developing our idea-s and developing and diversifying our
products. 006000060/
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The day has gone by for saying, " Well, we stand for
this or this or this, come and get it and if you do not like
it well, all the worse luck for you," I am sure that this is
well in the minds of the members of this Association. I am
sure that it is well in the minds of the manufacturers of
Australia. Because if there are two things that are completely
obvious to anybody, they are these, that it would be quite
idle for British manufacturers to resist or resent the development
of efficient Australian manufacturing, because that is
essential to Australian growth. We can have no migration
program without ito We can have no developmental program for
the future without it. We cannot have full employment without
it. It is essential to Australian growth that we should
develop efficient Australian manufacturing. And I am sure
that every man who represents Great Britain realises that to
the full. Because of course unless Australia can grow and
become stronger an more populous and more powerful then our
contribution to the Commonwealth of which Great Britain is
the centre, will be correspondingly diminished. It is therefore
essential that we should grow and be strong.
But equally, it would be a great mistake for
Australian manufacturers to think in terms of a closed economy.
I have struck a few troglcdytes here and there who really
seem to me to believe in a closed economy, but not too many.
They are not represented here today, Because in reality, so
far from having ideas of a closed economy, or a mere prohibition
against the introduction into this country of the products of
others, the real vision of our industrial future must be one
in which our own manufacturers find their market, not only hore,
but abroad, and find their markets expanding, Because unless
Australia, strategically as she is placed in the world's
economy, can become a powerful supplier to other nations,
then her future is cribbed, cabined and confined.
And therefore we have a mutuality, do we not, of
interest here the British manufacturers saying, " Te recognise
the tremendous importance of the development of sound manufacturing
enterprise in Australia," and Australian manufacturing
on its side saying, " Yes, we recognise that but we also
rocognise that our ultimate responsibility to Australia is to
cater, not only for a protected market at home, but for a
highly competitive market abroad." , When all these things work
themselves out, we will find that, having begun by having
differences, we have ended by finding a magnificent unity,
I am, of course, as any of my critics could tell you,
getting a bit long in the tooth; I have been in office too
long; I quite agree with that, I do not want it to be used
against me, but I agree with anything you care to say on those
matters. But one thing I am quite sure about and that is that
I shall ultimately come to the end of my course much happier
if I feel that we have evolved relationships between us which
have assured, not only the growth and power of the greatest
country in the world, but the growth and power of what to most
of us here today is the dearest country in the world,
I I