PJBLIC MEETING, t1HYALLA, SOUTH AUSTRALIA
24TH MAY3 1963
Speech by the Prime Minister, the Rt_ Hon_ Si. r Robert Menzies
Mr. Chairman Senator Laught, prospective Member for Grey,
Mr. President and Ladies and Gentlemen
I must say that that speech you just heard from
the candidate discloses him to me, and I hope to you, as one
of the best candidates I have supported on a platform. ( Applause)
Itve never heard a clearer statement of his beliefs, of his
point of view, of the qualifications that he has by experience
and residence. I had the great pleasure of speaking wita him
at Port Pirie at the opening of his campaign and I thought he
was good. Tonight I think he is very, very, very good, It goes
to show how a man trains on. In fact, by the time he has been
Member for Grey for three yJars for six years they'll be
talking about him as, you know, one of the coming men. He is
in the same position now as I was when I first went into
Parliament when, believe it or not, I used to be referred to as
a " very promising young man". ( Laughter) ( Interjector " What
about when you abdicated?") Thank you so much. I was so
disappointed, I've been waiting for somebody to have a go at
me because I was prepared to point the moral of it, that they
didn't have a go at him, and if you approve of him, I can put
up with a little bit of disapproval of myself. ( Laughter)
( Applause) In fact, if you don't mind, ladies and gent.-emen,
that reminds me of a little event that happened some years ago.
Every time there is an election, I go down to speak
for my friend and colleague, Hubert Opperman, in Geelong,
( Interjector " On a bike?") ( Laughter) Oh, no. I am asbhmed
to say I was in a car, but he meets me on a bike. ( Laugh-cer)
I will refrain from saying the make of it because you kno%;, of
course. But " Oppy" always arranges that I shall have a ieoting
at the Ford works and at the luncheon break I have two meetings,
because the shifts vary, and I stand on the tail end of a lorry
and, you know, give tongue and the boys look at me with a
sceptical eye and eat their lunch, occasionally making a
courteous remark ( Lauglhter). One day I had finished this
exercise of mine and got down off the lorry and a big chap
cane across and dug me in the ribs and said, " I hate the sight
of you you so-and-so,. o." I leave it to the Whyalla citizens
to fill in the gap....( Laughter) " I hate the sight of you., you
so-and-so but I'll vote for ' Oppy' any tick of the clock,"
( Laughter3 Now here it is. The perfect analogy. Do what you
care about me, Lut send Vern Dyason to the Federal Parliament
which, I assure you, will be improved and added to by his
presence. ( Interjector " He probably hasn't had his sins
on your head yet") ( Laughter) What do you think will happen
in this election, brother? Do you think he won't win? Well,
in the words of a famous statesman you wait and see. You wait
and see. If he is elected, the citizens of Grey will have good
reason to be thankful for it in the years to come.
Now, Sir, when I helped to open this campaign in
Port Pirie, I gathered there were one or two people who thought
I had made a speech to the nation and not to the electors of
Grey and that really I should have got down to other local
issues. Well, I don't mind tolling you that when I addreosed
the electors of Grey I regarded myself as addressing the
nation. I feel no obligation to treat Grey as something o
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inferior to the run of the nation because it isntt. The fact is
that in this electorate you have the most tremendous variety of
occupations and interests, from remote rural properties from
primary production of one kind or another to great smelter, at
Port Pirie to a railways junction town in Port Augusta, to the
industries in Whyalla about which I will have a word in a
noment down to the fisheries and all the intervening industries
at Port Lincoln. This electorate is, in fact, a superb example of an
electorate in which primary industries and secondary industries
live together and depend upon each other and therefore, this is
a good electorate in which to address the nation. Anyhow, being
Prime Minister, I have a duty to address the nation,
Now, Sir, I will just say something about Whyallao
This place has grown, of courseenormously, and it will continue
to grow. I think that it was when I am sure it was I was
Prime Minister for the first time, many years ago, in 1939, that
the. Premier of South Australia who, I dontt need to say was
then and is now and forever will be ( Laughter) Tom Playfo-d,
discussed with me this great proposition about the pipeline,
without which Whyalla couldnft exist. It was my privilege at
that time to do what he asked me to do and the Commonwealth to
do, in order to assist that project. In 1940 I was stil. Prime
Minister and had established the Department of Munitions and
had appointed to be its presiding man, Essington Lewis, one of
the great industrialists in the history of this country0 . It
was in that very year that the first orders were given some
craft to be built at Whyalla, so I can claim to have some
foundational interest in the water supply of this city and in
shipbuilding in this city. ( Interjection inaudible) Now, if
you don't mind would you just listen to this. You would. I am
sure, learn a lot, I am anxious, of course, that you shoui. dn't
prevent your friends from learning a lot on this matter ( Laughter)
because there is a lot to be learned.
Now, Sir, what is the position today. In ship-building,
many, many ships have been built here. This has become the
most effective and efficient shipbuilding centre in Australia,
and with wisdom and good sense, it will increasingly be a shipbuilding
centre but that will require good sense on the part of
a few people and I will refer to the arguments a little later on,
This afternoon, I went out to have a look at the development of
the steelworks. I had been there before, but today I was
astonished at the tremendous extent and quality of the work that
is being done there0 And this is the important thing from the
point of view of this town of Whyalla and of this electorate
in Australia. Here we have already established a blast furnace. We
have all the work going on and going on fast for the establishment
of a complete steel activity. In its first stages I gathered,
it will be geared to produce half a million tons ol steel and
then in due course with another blast furnace, another million
tons of steel and so on until it is a million and a half tons
of steel. Ladies and gentlemen, I seem to remember that hen
I was first interested in these matters and concerned abo,. t them
in government, that total production of steel in Australio wasnft
much more than a million and a quarter tons and you are going to
have that in this place alone.
This place, Whyalla is going to be a place rivalling
in its extent and its life and its expansion Port Kembla and
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Wollongong. This is a most exciting place from the point of
view of Australian development and, really, whatever party
I might belong to I would take immense pride in that fact
and feel some of the excitement and feel how good it was to be
living in a place whose future was so full of immense possibilities.
But, Sir, there are some people who are llknoc'Iiersll.
I suppose that if you elect the Labour candidate, whoever he
may be there seems to be a mixture of...,( Applause) I suppose
that il~ you elect him, he may turn out to be He will have
to go to Canberra and join in the anti-BH. P. chorus and learn
to denounce the Broken Hill Proprietary Company as if it were
the enemy of mankind and then come back to Whyalla and say to
the hundreds and hundreds of people and families engaged by
th'i. e Broken Hill Proprietary, " Well, don't misunderstand me of
course, I did that because it was the party line. I don't
mean it. I did it because the 36 chaps outside told me to do
it. Not because I befleve it." Well, this sounds funny and
it is funny but it is true. Is that what you are going to
do on June 1st?
Now, Sir, having said that, I repeat: This place
has the most exciting prospects of future development of any
place in Australia. It is bound to become, very rapidly, more
and more rapidly, the place of immense importance in the State
of South Australia, and as what it is doing is of immense
national importance to Australia itwill become one of the
great significant things in the life of the nation. Now
Sir, I say that to you because I believe that's true and
believe that everybody in Whyalla ought to recognise it and
be proud of it and be excited about it. But, of course, the
more it succeeds, the more it grows, the more steel that is
produced, the more peoplo who are employed in producing, the
more shipbuilding goes on Itll come back to that in a
minute,...( Interjector " Tell us why you bought those ships)
My dear boy, there is nothing hidden that shall not be ma~ de
known, You content yourself, ( Interjector " We couldi have
built them here") Well, are you one of the fellows who
doesn't want to have another tanker built here? Are you one
of those? ( Laughter) ( Applause) I'll come to that. I'm going
to tell a Whyalla audience the story of the P. J. Adams tanker
because it is high time that people realised a great matter
of political difference in this country. But I'll come t'Vo that
in a moment. I was at the moment addressing myself to the development
of Whyalla and to what is involved in it and, quite clearly,
this place can't develop whatever the position may be on steel
or shipbuilding, unless it has an assured water supply. And
it is therefore proper to point out to you that long before the
Grey by-election, I had convened a meeting with Sir Thomas
Playford and the Premier of Victoria and the Premier of New
South Wales, as a result of which, the Chowilla Dam is to be
built on the lower Murray which will added to the existing
facilities, absolutely ensure the water supply of South
Australia in general and of Whyalla in particular. ( Applause)
Now, Sirs there is an eager shipbuilder over there
who wants to know about it ( Laughter) and so I would like to
tell him. The " 1P. 5. Adams" the biggest tanker ever built in
Australia and I hope not the last the " 1P. J. Adams" was
built by the Broken Hill Proprietary Company at these yOards.
It meant an enormous development in the yards, it meant enormous
ezJ. bymentt and it was built when the Company said, " Well, 0 0 a 0
we would like to have it built in Australia, We would like
a Commonwealth subsidy." My Government has been subsidising
ship-building for coastal business at the rate of 33 per cent.
for the last seven years. Before that, it was 25 per cent.
They said: " We would like a subsidy. We know that you dont
subsidise the building of a ship except for the Australian
coastal service. Are you prepared to subsidise the building
of a ship for international trade, which will trade from
Australia to a place outside and back," 1 and so on. An0 we
said, " Well, whatts the proposition? This is terribly
important, It is tremendously important for ship-building
in Whyalla. It is tremendously important for ship-building in
Australia. We are prepared to have a look at it. On what
terms will you do this?" And they stipulated, and I quote
their precise words: that they would be prepared to have the
ship built here provided the Commonwealth Government agreed
that they could register tine ship as a British ship at the
Port of London. No. r that was their condition.
Now, to add to this we having said, " Yes, we will
accept this proposition" we Aidn't do this in a hurry
we had to balance the impact it might have on the employment
of seamen in Australia against the impact it would have on
the employment of hundreds and therefore the livelihood of
thousands of people in Whyalla. And therefore Sir, we
decided that we would play on these Lerms, ( Interjector
Z4+ million) Don't bemuse yourself with millions, You are
only imagining them. ( Laughter)
Now ladies and gentlemen, the company then
proceeded to find out at which price it could get this tanker
built overseas, It had quotations from Japan for a 1l,. wer
figure than the loca'l price minus our subsidy. In other
words, it would at that stage have paid them hundreds of
thousands of pounds to get it built outside Australia but
they said, " No we want to have it built in Australia?. it
was an Australian Company " we want to have it built 1ñ ere. ll
The price was a little over œ C4 million; we
subsidised to the extent of œ C1 million. The ship was launched-
I was here for the launching. It is the greatest sing'le
ship-building achievement in the history of Australia and
when it was launched all this had been known for years an
agitation began among the seamen, among the more intransigent
of the relevant union and they came to me at Canberra and
they said, " Look, won? t the Commonwealth compel the Company
to register in Australia?" Now, you know, I don't care for
this kind of thing. The Government had undertaken with the
Company that if the Company would build the ship here even
losing something on it, and we subsidised it, we woula agree
the company registering it in London because this was the
condition on which this job would be done here and I am not in
the habit of entering into obligations of that kind and then
tearing them up because somebody threatens to call a strike,
Really, what all the people here engaged in shipbuilding
have to consider is what side they are on in this
matter, what would they have liked us to do. I put this to
every man engaged in the ship-building business here, In our
Place, how would you have answered that question7 Would you
have said, " No, insist on the ship being registered in Australia
although you know that if you do so insist the ship won't be
built in Australia." Is that how you would have decided it?
Now, ladies and gentlemen, think about it. These are facts a 7*/
beyond the slightest chance of contradiction. These are wellknowm
facts. These have been discussed with the trade unions and
with the company, and the fact is that the question to be determined
was: Should the ship be built here at all or should it
have been built on terms that it should be registered in London?
Now, I just say this, I repeat this to any of you gentlemen here
tonight who are engaged in this activity. How would you have
decided that matter? We decided in your favour. Would you have
decided against yourselves, that the ship was not to be built
here on those terms? ( Interjector " No, Now, don't
say, " 1No, The only thing that interests me is that
you do say you can save all the " buts" ( Applause)
Now, the last thing I want to say about this matter,
ladies and gentlemen is this because I am told that the Labour
candidate or candidazes were actively concerned in challenging
this decision, It Is worth remembering. I wonder what tho
A. L. P. or what remains of it here I wonder what it re:.-lly
wants done about shipbuilding at Whyalla or, for that mattcr, in
Brisbane, or for that matter, in Newcastle, or wherever it may be
in Australia. Do they want to say to the world " Look, we are
not going to build a ship in an Australian shipyard for a foreign
owner who wants to get one built or for an owner who wants to
register his ship, being a foreign owner in a foreign port"
is that what we are to say? Is your ambition for this prospectively
marvellous place so small that you want to give notice that you
are only interested in building for the local coastal irade and
that you have no ambition to build large vessels for people who
are outside Australia? That's the question that has to be
answered and really it is not to be answered by getting excited
about it, It is to be answered in a cold, clear, rational fashion
by those who are engaged in this business, who depend on it and
who want it to expand. ( Interjector " 114hy didn't you think of
that before you bought these three new ships?) ( Laughter) My dear
air,, thatts a very happy excuse for you. I don't think you know
any ing about these three guided-missile destroyers that we are
building. There is only one place in the world that is producing
them and they are very little the most tiny fraction of them
is the hull. It is what goes into these ships, many mill11ions of
pounds worth of it not made here that's the thing that makes the
difference, A man who says that we could have produced one of
these guided missile destroyers in Australia in our present state
of engineering capacity knows nothing about it. That's all,
( Interjector " The other night you said you Lad
many shares in this company. It doesn't sound as if you've got
many shares in it now.") 5 ( Laughter) I said I had a lot of shares
in Australia Unlimited. That's right. Well I am glad to
acknowledge it, sir, and I hope you have because the more you
have by way of shares in Australia Unlimited the more likely
you are to become a warm-hearted supporter of mine in politics.
( Applause) Now, 7 Sir I don't w-nt to say any more about that
particular matter. All I say by ~ way of summary is that in this
very electorate of Grey, you have this tremendous conjunction
of the planets. You have this wonderful development proceeding
so rapidly in steel and in ship-building in Whyalla and you have
Port Pinie and Augusta no longer at the tail-end of a transcontinental
line now being worked on the West Australian section but on
a line that will go clear across the Continent from Perth to
Sydney to Brisbane and so on. Sir I think myself that this is
an exciting matter. I have no doult whatever that the improvement
by standardization and re-grading of the Port Pinie/ Broken Hill
line will serve to reduce the costs of transportation to the
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smelters and to the rest of the world and in these days we in
Aucztralia must preserve our export capacity and we must do it
by keeping our costs at a competitive level. Now, I am not
one of' these who says that we've got to keep costs down, that
you ought to slash wages. I am one of' those who have said,
and said rep eatedly, that in order to keep costs down, we must
increase our efficiency by every possible means and improving
the efficiency of' transport is one of' the ways of' doing that.
My colleague, the Minister for Trade, is overseas,
He's been working hard tremendously hard as he always (. oes
on these trade negotiahions. They are all intensely difficult.
We went through the whole argument last year about the
European Common Market there's been a hitch there and now
he's been over discussing the problems that followed on that
matter. He's discussing the initiative taken by the Pre'.) ident
of the United States of America and in all of these thirv~ s, I
undertake to say that he has been constantly keeping ina mind
how do we maintain a fair price for the things that we sell to
the rest of the world, and how do we maintain a fair costi of
production for that commodity in our country. This concerns
everybody engaged in the mining or metal industries; it concerns
everybody on the land and because it concerns them, it concerns
US* It concerns the solvency of' Australia in international trade
and without that solvency, we won't have much heal. th in our
economy at home. Therefore tte are great matters and
thnerefore a further step in the rendering more efficient of
our transportation system is not to be regarded just as some
election bid; it is to be regarded as a first-class step
for-ward in containing the cost of production in our own country.
Sir, we have spoken.... I have tonight and my friend
has about these four main centres, all of them tremendously
important, all of them very much in our minds, but we must
never forget, and he certainly doesn'tt that outside all these
places there are thousands of people in the electorate of Grey
who are living and working on the land in various forms of
primary industry. We must think about them. Some people never'
think about them at all, I find it part of my duty to *; hink'
about them constantly and for this reason we have going on in
Australia the most tremendous works of development.
I've been mentioning some tonight, but must also think
about what goes on in minerals in the north of Queenslar-12 in
the Northern Territory and in Western Australia, what goos on
in the export of coal from Australia what goes on at th e Snowy,
what goes on in water supply and reticulation all these are
tremendous things, tremendous works of development, and we need
them in Australia and we need them as fast as we can get them.
But they all put enormous pressures on our resources,
Tremendous pressures.
Immigration which we need so badly, and which goes
along so well, puts an enormous pressure on our resources in
tVie first place. In the long run it contributes immense power
to the country, but in the short run all these things mean that
there is a pressure on our resources of money, a pressure on our
resources of materials and manpower. Anybody who? like myself,
has been sitting in the middle of government for so long knows
these things well, You must watch them all the timze and unless
you watch them, those pressures can produce an inflationary
effect in Australia which will begin quite quickly to destroy
the value of whatever you are paid by way of income salary,
wages or whatever they may be. And if that happens what
happens to the man on the land? His costs of production go up.
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He cantt pass them on to a customer. The wheatgrower can't
pass on an increased cost of production to the customer because
apart from the home consumption price, he sells in the world's
markets, The woolgrower sells in the world's markets. His
wool goes to auction and it is what the world will pay for it
that he will get. herefore all increases in his costs by
inflation in Australia are a net loss to him.
This goes for all the major primary production
activities of Australia and therefore the enormously complex
business of government, which I am afraid some people dontt
begin to understand, is to try to keep a balance between pushing
on with development, getting that new job done, getting it
forward getting more people into the country, and at the same
time not striking a blow at the primary producer of Austr-alia
who is still responsible for over 85 per cent. of our export
income and is therefore primarily reponsible ( Interjector
" Did you realise that Yes, and I am happy to tell
you, my dear sir, obviously a thinker about these matters
( Laughter) I am happy to tell you that every deputation I
had from people representingbTrming interests in Australia
warmly approved of what we had done. Warmly approved of it
because they said, " Well, your Government at any rate has been
concerned about our costs of production," and we were and we are
and we will continue to be. Now this is a serious matter and
I address myself to it quite seriously. ( Interjector " You
weren't a cocky Bob") Sir, I was born in the " cocky country"
if you care to describe it as such and I' 11 undertake to say
at a quick guess I've done three times as much work in my life
as you will ever do. ( Applause)
Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is the great problem
of statesmanship on the economic front and it must be borne in
raind, and you must be represented in Parliament by soraeb~ dy who
understands that that is the problem and is prepared to address
himself seriously to it,
Now, Sir, I will just turn away from that because I
have been speaking for some time to say something about another
problem which concerns our external relations with other
countries. It has had a good deal of discussion of It
was my Government, if you will forgive me for reminding you,
which brought about the ANZTJS Treaty with the United States
and New Zealand. It was received in stony silence by the
Labour Party but we got it and it was written and it was
passed and it is today just about the sheet anchor of Australian
security the United States, Australia, New Zealand entering
into a mutual treaty to resist aggression against their
countries from outside. This was one of the great events in
Australian foreign policy history. We are also among the
promoters of the South East Asian Treaty which involves some
of the Asian countries as well as our own.
Now, Sir, that means that the United States is our
ally. We have, in the South East Asian Treaty an alliance
with the United Kingdom. I am happy to say we dontt need
formal treaties with the United Kingdom. When the day comes
that we are not an ally of the United Kingdom, I shall have
to resign in shame. I just take it for granted that we are
allies of the United Kingdom and I hope that nobody in this
hall will disagree with it but we have and this is quite
remarkable, this formal alliance with Ifhe United States which
before the war, was not willing to enter into alliances at all.
These were regarded as something against the tradition of the
United States and, therefore, Sir, the position is that we
00694CO00/ 8
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have our ally in America, That country is the greatest nuclear
power in the world thank heaven the greatest nuclear power
in the world, because if it were not, we might not be here
tonight. Say what you like about it, the one thing that has
kept the peace of the world, in spite of the most blatant
Communist aggression around the world ( Interjector " What
about Cuba?") Yes, that was a superb example of what American
strength can mean for us.
Now, Sir, does anybody here doubt that but for the
possession of the nuclear deterrent primarily by the United
States and7 to a smaller extent by 6reat Britain which hasn't
so much of it but for that, we would have been overrun by
aggressive Communism. Of course we would have. People say,
" lLook, wouldn't it be a wonderful thing if there were no nuclear
weapons." We all understand that. Nobody wants to see these
wretched things employed. We all have our own hopes and family
hopes for the future in our own country, but Mr. Chairman, if
there were no nuclear weapons today, the Soviet Union would
have more ordinary military strength than perhaps all the others
put together. If there were no nuclear deterrent in the hands
of our friends, there would be nothing to prevent the Soviet
Union from marching clear across Europe in a few weeks because
the strength of her conventional armaments is enormous.
Therefore the existence of this terrible weapon of reprisal has
been the thing that has kept the world at peace. So long as
that is the state of affairs, so long as we live under this
threat then I am sure you will agree with me, we must see to
it that whatever we do we will do in order to make the existence
of the deterrent effective.*
Certainly it is not for Australia to frustrate the
existence of the nuclear deterrent in the hands of the United
States of America. That would be a suicidal and a shocking
thing to do, and so the day comes when the United States says
to us and all this was announced within two or three days,
two or three years ago-it's been blown up lately, but it was
all public property a long time ago. They come to us and
they say, " Look, weld like to discuss with you putting up a
radio station in the North-West of Western Australia." 1
" What for?" " Well, we want to have means of communicating on
a very low frequ-, ncy with our Navy, primarily," which, of
course obviously means " with our surface ships, with our
submarines, with our aircraft carriers, because they are all
involved communicating with our Navy. This will make perfect
our means of communicating with our naval forces all round
the world, We have them in the Pacific, in the North Pacifia.
We have them in the Atlantic. We want one here if we can get
it because this will cover the Indian Ocean and the South West
Pa cif ic." 1 And being allies of the United States of America
and being profoundly dependent upon what they may do if we
are attacked, we said, " Yes, we are quite prepared to discuss
this and work out appropria e terms," and so we did and they
are about to build the place and spend a powar of money on itor
f-40 million. But they said, and I think they were dead
right, " Of course, we can't have joint control in a matter of
this kind. We want to be able to have communication with our
naval forces not subject to a veto by whatever government may
exist in Australia7 but in our own right," and we said, " That's
right. We would like you to consult with us on every conceivable
matter " 1 but we werentt going to put them in the position of
being told if they became involved in warlike activities out of
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the Indian Ocean which could only be against Communist attack
we were not going to put them in the position of being told by
us on that day not by me but by my successors " You can't use
this station. Get out." Think of how that would handicap them
in the deployment of their naval forces in the Indian Ocean.
Think of how that would handicap them in delivering a stroke of
retaliation against an attack made by the Communists, the Soviet
Union. Ladies and gentlemen, my opponents in ParliamentC are
out of date on this business. They are thinking in a lost world.
The Soviet Union, if it does decide upon the criminal folly of
attacking the free world is not going to send a courteous letter
and say, " Take notice that in a fortnight or three weeks, we are
going to do something." If they ever got into this bedlamite
condition of making an attack, the first thing that anybody would
know about it would be when the tracking stations picked up the
missile en route to the United States and that gives you what
five minutes, ten minutes, no more than fifteen minutes to give
orders to the people who have weapons of retaliation " We are
at war with these people. You go ahead." Because unless the
return blow followis swiftly after the blow of attack, it is
finished and finished unfavourably for us, for the free people
in the world, These are serious matters and they deserve not
hysterical consideration but serious consideration. I tell you
quite plainly I will not be held accountable for rendering the
deterrent power of the United States futile in the waters off tihe
Australian coast and if the people of Australia disagree they
know exactly what to do with me. But I think they will understand
this position very clearly. This is essential to our success,
Well now Sir, what does the Labour Party do about it9
I am sure some of the people sitting opposite me in Parliam~ ent
are all in favour of the establishment of this communications
station, all in favour of it, but they had a great hullabaloo,
you remember, and the y had a special conference of what we now
refer to respectfully as the " 36 men" and they decided by 19 to
17 that yes, they could go ahead on condition that there was
joint control. In other words, on condition that Australia
would have a veto over everything that was done in the station.
And so we got into Parliament. We introduced a bill, we
attached the agreement to it and the bill was a very simple bill
as a bill. It simply said, " The execution of the contract
contained in the schedule is hereby ratified" and so therefore
the matter of substance in the bill was the contract in the
schedule. Well they spoke on it. We have had the most
fascinating debate in the Parliament about it. ( Laughter) All
the boys who hate the idea of this station and who hato the
idea of the Americans and who aliays take an entirely different
line were disciplined into suitable silence. They spoke
softly. They cooed like doves, if I may coin a phrase. And
you've never heard anything so mild, mild as curdled milk.
( Interjector " Is that why you threw Eddie Ward out?) Oh no,
the House threw him out. ( Laughter) You forget that. Tha~' s
not without difficulty, but the House did. ( laughter)
Well, now, I just want to complete my narrative on
this m~ atter. One of the front-line spokesmen for the Opposition
said what they were going to do how they were going to vote on
this bill and it was explained that they would not vote against
the Second Reading, because they wanted to make it clear that
they were not in principle, opposed to the matter. They would
vote against the schedule because they wanted to make it clear
that they didn't like the particular agteement and that when they
came to the Third Reading, they would move an amendment that the
0
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Third Reading would be deferred for six months. Well they
were better than their word because they didn't have a division
on the Second Reading but they divided the House four times
before we got to the hird Reading, Really their friendship
for the bill was magnificently concealed. They kept on v: oting
against it in connection with this bill time after time and
then we got to the Third Reading and up got the Leader of the
Opposition and he made a powerful speech, very moving, that the
bill be deferred for three months and he gave his reasons and
I got up and gave my reasons.
And the Opposition found itself in such a state of
confusion that for the first time in my Parliamentary experience,
they forgot to vote for their own amendment. ( Laughter) This
is literally true. They forgot to vote for their own amendment.
It was rejected on the voices and when they gathered themselves
together because it is a bit difficult for them, you know,
they have a series of groups and caves and various different
views and they meet ea, 2h other distantly in the corridors
( Laughter) they got together a bit then and said, " Oh, dear.
Wie did make a mistake there." So they voted against the
Third Reading. No postponement. Nothing else. Just pointblank
against the Third Reading of the bill, In other words,
if peop , e are to be judged by their votes the Australian
Labour P arty in Canberra had voted against the ratification of
this agreement and therefore against the establishment of this
very important American radio communications station in the
North West of Australia.
Indeed, if I may quote myself, and that's a very
poor business for any man to engage in, I must tell you that
on my speech on their amendment to the Third Reading, the one
that died by the way, I pointed out to them that they need
not pretend that they were really in favour of this bill because
under Standing Orders of the Commonwealth Parliament, Standing
Order 237 it is expressly stated that a motion to defer the
Third Realing for six months, if carried finally disposes of
the bill and therefore I pointed out to them that it would be
the end of the bill and the end of the session because the
Americans were not going to dangle around for six months waiting
for something to happen. They are in a hurry. They regard
defence provi~ ns as urgent. I therefore asked honourable
members opposite to tell me did they really want to defeat this
bill under the Standing Ordur because if they did, they ought
to say so, they ought to vote against the Third Reading,
They just ought to come clean on this matter. But were they
putting the amendment up because they didn't want it to be
carried, because they knew that it wouldn't be carried but
they would have the kudos of having moved it with none of the
risks of carrying it.
What would happen to them if two of my members failed
to hear the division bells and failed to vote and they won
their amendment. Where would they be then. They would have
the shock of their lives. So I said they could take their
own choice, They were either demonstrating that they were
hostile to this installation which is favoured by the vast
majority of the Australian people or they could admit that
they were humbugs having put up an amendment of a fatal kind,
knowing and bolieving that it would be defeated, And of
course this choice, the only choice as I told you so disturbed
them that when it came to the point, they forgot tovote on it
at all, 0 0 00./ 11
11
Now, ladies and gentlemen, these again are tremendous
matters the security of this country, what we do for our own
defence about which I made an elaborate statement the other
day, hoa we co-operate with our friends, whether we realise
that the security of Australia depends, not only on our own
efforts which can never by themselves be adequate but on our
capacity to have co-operation with our allies. Ihese are the
things that wo have to understand and when you have allies
particularly a great ally like the United States, you can't say
to it " Look, you cantt use a point of land in our country for
signalling to your ships because somebody maightntt like it."
Do we want them on our side? Do we believe that we must have
them on our side? And if the answers to those questions are
" Yes", what's all this nonsense that the Opposition is engaging
in, the Opposition that wants you to give a recruit to its
strength or weakness in the Federal Parliament on June 1st.