P 0 ] SIIZI3G OPPICLAL OPIMING
SPEECH BY THE RIGHT HONUA SIR ROflRT KkNZIESS K. T. 4 Cd.. C. hP
Sir and Mrs. Bass wAn % entlemms
Would those who were present the last time I opened a building
near here please show their hwAmd? 1.11, thank heavens for that,
because I complained as we came up that I've fallen into the habit
of openirW buildings and each time I appear to see the same people
and each time I've tried to say something fresh, aud each time I ve
tried to get a laugh Am occasionally. And the next time I
can't remember what I said and I can only hope that they don't. But
today as far as you are concerned, you are all clean skins, because
only five or six people held their bonds up, so I'm free. I like
tkat reference that wae made to my previou. s enterpripes in this
a~ ea, becaLse during the last election a thing of which you may have
heard I was very interested to discover how many younger people
attended meetings and shoved interest in what went on and I always
try to keep up to date arA therefore I've become familiar with the
new language of the young and it appeare that I am a ' square'an
here I am today, the livirng proof of it the fourth corrierl
Talking atbcut elections, Sir, I don't want to make a political
Wspeech here, of course, but talking about the election, some of you
Will rememiber that when I decided to have one, quite a few of you
thought I ought to be examined. But now, of course, everybody knows
it was the right thing to do. But may I tell you that I used to say
to my colleaguaes, whom I'd plunged into this vortex of politics, at
an election,-' Don't worry, if I win all will be forgiven, if I lose
I'm goinrg to catch the earliest and slowest ship to the furthest
corners of the earth'. In fact I was prepared to nominate, if such
a thing had been available bere, a slow banana ship, becauzse I
understand that that kind of ship would suit so very well. Now, of
ccurs, thfs was a lighthearted remark in a sense for me to be making
tc them because 1 must say I didn't entertain many doubts about having
catch ai ban~ aa ship, but I stan here as a fellow wr~ o's opened the
, ar. tas buildinf, well of course Hudson ? ysh, ( is Hudson here today?)
Hudson owns kantas a" we pay for it, and therefore I bave a certain
SInterest and so have the members of the Government, In Qantas, and
Wwhenever I travel by air I go to great pains to travel ' by Qantas, for
the best reasons In the world. But my great ambition don't use this
against me my great ambition when I finally do get heaved out of
politics, is to retain eniough health and strength to travel thereafter
* bNy sea and in. no other fashion, and that's why I'm delighted at the
end, at tn-is fourth expedition in this area, to come back to the sea
but of course In Australia when we talk about travelling by sea we have
poor nemorles If we don't suddenly _ find ourselves reuem~ erinq P 0 and
Orient. I know there are other shipping lines down below I asked for
R~ booking on one of them to see wbat reaction I would get and it was
apuropriate! But travelling by sea I know that it's alwmys easy jo
say that the rotne goes out of travel it does In a sonse; I
* iareeay that when the men who sailed the seas under sail found smoky
steamers frequenting the sea lane they said ' This is a stop backwards,
this is terrible, this is monstrous' and, every stop forward that occuri
produces some reaction. But I was remembering today, ecoing down here,
that remarkable little poem of Kipling's, do you remember, in which he
is talking about this kind of thing and the dying away of romance and
then says sddenly ' komanoe brought up the 9.15'. Now this Is true
thie, business of travel can be a romantic thing in a prosaic life, it
can1 be Rt neesearv exerc~ se in a busy one. And, of course, we all wt-. c
ire c,) nr,-rned with affairs in this country, like to imagine that we are
extremely busy and that every minute counts and that's w~ w nowaidoys
they are always devising some means of travelling faster and. faster.
~ Y successor, Heaven help him, will have to fly supersonically; he'll
be in London before he leaves here, or worts to that effect, and if
mW experience counts for anything the faster you go, the more weary
you are at the end of the journey; but still, time, they say, is
m~ oney, and I understand this and I don't resist it, a" as a follow
who may have been carted around now about a million miles in the air,
I practice it. But the sea, the sea, when time doesn't matter all
that much and when you reall1y want to ame something of the world and
when you want realy to relax, when you want to be able to arrive at
your destination in fins shape for whaatev er it is that you want to do,
provided you're not in too much of a hurry, this is the way to travel;
this is the way to see foreign ports, this is the to have a glance
at foreign people, at now people, at now climates. ' ye found in
travel by sea the most exciting of all experiences and its exciting
for a* because it isn't exciting in the sense that so maq other
things one has to do are exciting. And therefore I'm a great man for
travelling by sea and one of these days as I said, I'm gon to gratify
myself, I'm going to glut my low tastes, I will be at sea all the time
I'll be at sea so much ( my opponents, of course, know that I have
been in one sense, for a long time) but I will physically be at mea so
much that I'll be able to go along to Donald Anderson and say ' Donald,
Wmy boy, I'm a very good customer, could I have a slight discount on My
next fare?' WAn whn that time comes you'll know that I have achieved
paradise. Now there's one other thing that I would like to say about this
Wfamous Company or Group of companies we talk about the Victorian
era, to a certain extent with disrespect. We're so much cleverer than
they were * in the 19th Century, we're so much wiser, we understand so
much better how to make war and causee trouble in the world we are
rather superi or to the 19th Centuzy. Very interestin that the
Peninsular Company began in the ver7 year that Queen Victori a came
to the throne, and terribly interesting to discover as I did when I
read the notes, that one of the two partners who projected this
enterprise wsa an Anderson. And then, of course, later on, the Orient
Line very interesting to realise that when the Orient Line first
Sbegan to see the possibilities of travel to the Bast, travpl to India,
V they not only went around the Cape, but they went through a phase that
preceded the Bues Canal, in which rasnweesr e disembarked at
Alexandria and went across to Bues by Camel tralla. Well, of course,
travelling on a Canel was all-right if you had boen travelling by sea
Sin those days no doubt passenger* hardly noticed any breach of
V continuity. But isn't It interestig that tod@ y there should be so
closely associated with us, so fanilar in the mouths of so mawy
hundreds of thousands of Australians, a Compaqy, which has in these,
various phases, been associated with, or at any rate, contemporary
with, very remarkable historic evests. thereto another aspect that
I realise~ tor the first tine when I was looking Into this matter, and
that is that after the war,-half of the fleet of each CompaxV had gon
they came out with I think Ion right In sowing " 0 in the cae
of the Orient, " 0 in the case of the P 0. Now this meant, of course,
in a sense, starting from scratch,. It must have presented a challenge,,.
it mast have produced in the first Instance a certain feeling of sorrowthat
such blows should have been struck. But in the result, the
opportunity was & aimed of making all things modern, and in the result
the great fleets of this Compam or Gru fCaniet. getfet
today are, if I may say so, the last woz. ' yve occasonally had the
satisfaction of going across the Atlantic in one of the Veat ships of
the world quite frankly, Sir Donald, without buttering you up in any
way, I would sooner travel aboard one of yours. We have an onorsous
service. Down below they have om the doors as you cam in the swring
glass doors a couple of symbls, did you notice themp instead of
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door handles, one that looks like throe penguins standing side by
side indicates the passenger ships it's symbolic; and the other
one which is all covered with squiares, oddly enough -it represents
the cargo aspect of the business. Wel# of oourset I was at great
pains to come through the passenger entrance beeause both as Prime
Minister mid asLR. l enzies I can speak In the highest possible
tors of the pasenger transport activities of this Company. But
when It comes to cargos I always have to speak subject to the
Department of Trade anid subject to the Department of Primary
Industry, you know what I mean; just as I'm about to become
enthusiastic they sq ' Now wait a moment old boy, we're trying to
got the freights down' and so we'll reserve judgement on that. But
Sir, we live in a time in which comuaications In the world have
developed out of all sight it's only the other day I was present
at the opening of the first conversations on the Compac the now
submarine cable for telephone purposes. We've had all thes
experiences I've said something about flying, television all
tlkene matters have opened up a now world of communications
tremendously important, provided that we use the instruments in
that world with wisdom. But shipping, travelling by sea, retains
one thing which none of these otboe can aspire to, because it gives
to a lot of people the opportunity of greater speed than their
grandfathers ever thought of, but at the same time of leisure,
happineess a sense of explorationg a ense of discovery after
exploration.
San AtWtohrenne yI-( Gfiernsetr alw, eonft aAt usthtrea lieax peton sea ttoefn dth ea ctaoxnpfearyeenrcs e, t o thEensgel anwde reas
wonderful days may I just mention them, quite nostagioally? We
wernt by sea, we travelled by an Orient ship, we took a long time
five and a half weeks. We sometimes in an exuberant moment, or at
one tiae A twice, I think got off at the South of France and
travelled up through Parts. We arrived in London, we were met by a
Minister, who didn't ask us any questions except whether we found
ourselves suitably arranged for at a hotel and we found It wasn't a
bad hotel some cheap dump'lik* the Savoy, or something of that type.
And then we were left alone for about throe days MAn then we were
. eagdievern a handsome lunoheon, where speeches were mode, but as only the
of the Delegation spoke I me on ' the free list. Az4 then
days later, we had the first comference and the Lasder of the
Australian delegation put a powerful case, ( I hope) end the President
O Tohf omtahse, Bhoea rdw ouolf d Trsaayd e ' oWer lwl htoheivse r iist v emriyg hti nhtaevree stbienegn aonrd thvea lulaatbel e, J imwmeie
would like to consider this. When would it be convenient for you to
resume?' And it finally appered that Tuesday week would be a suitable
time. ( I wouldn't want this to go beyond this room you know, but still
it's a long time ago all claims against me are now statute barred).
Then you went up to Scotland, or If you felt that way disposed you
went over to Ireland some reckless characters nipped over to Paris
and on Tuesday week you resumed and the other man made a powerful
speech and this was very good; it was leisurely at the end of
eight weeks we usually got an agreement by the simple process of
threateninpa to catch the next ship unless we got it, and we got it,
but it was a good agreement and. it was kept. Now what happens?
You catch the ' Plane, you put your head on one side, you put your head
on the other, you go uV9 you go down, seventeen hours flying time,
whatever it is and you re in London, you hop out, as well as you can
after a long period of time in which you really haven't slept. You're
ushered into the presence of all tbese camera boys and television
people and press reporters, where you have to give a celebrated
imitation of being extraordinarily intelligent and disposing of
international problems almost with a witty aid* you know, which is
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4.
usually quoted against you for the next twelve moaths. And then you
get into the hotel, you take a bath, you bhange your linen and the
conference begins at half past two the same day and then it goes on
every morning, every afternoon, every night with a reception, same
people, different place. And at the end of ten days you hurtle out
a& gain. Now you ask me to cast a single first past the post vote as
to which system I prefer and in my doddering old age I will tell you
that the earlier one had much to be said for it. And Sir, nobody
contributed more profoundly to this happy state of affairs than the
Orient sl. irpinr Company arid the P 0 shipping Company at that time.
T: is wae the beginning of my affection for them, an affection that
, ae never faded away. And therefore you can see that I have many
reasons, some of them public, many of them private and personal for
being delighted to be here and most honoured to be asked to declare
the building open. .* 7