COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA.
' SPEECH : BY
Rt. Hon. Sir ROBERT MENZIES, M. P.
. ON
ADDRESS-IN-REPLY TO THE
GOVERNOR-GENERAL'S SPEECH
[ From the " Parliamentary Debates," 5th March, 1964.]
Sir ROBERT MENZIES .( Kooyong-
Prime Minister) am grateful to
the House for giving , me 40 minutes. ' I
hope I will notneed to employ it all. However,
there are some things : that I would
like . to say in the -course . of this debate on
Im otion for the adoption. of the Addresseply
to the . Governor* General's
Speech. In particular, I want to refer to
a few observations made by the Leader . of
the Qpposition ( Mr. Calwell) and by some
, f his supporters. I will come to them in
. time.
, Imust say,. if I. may do so without. giving
offence,. that nothing. that the Leader of the
Opposition said in this debate varied . from
what he had said many times in the course
of the election campaign. In other words,
he gave us a'brief retrospective resume of
his election speeches. The one thing ' that
went . wrong : about them . was . that they did
not succeed. : I understand the : position ! of
the honorable gentleman; -I have been
through these experiences myself. He has
been through deep waters and shallow
waters. Most of us who ' have had long
service in politics ' have : had the experience
of defeat and of victory. I was very
interested to learn how the'honorable gentleman
would -feel after two or three months
of reflection. ' But there is no doubt about
2057/ 64. him. I take off my hat to him. He does
not bother to learn much from painful
experiences. He came up with all the old
cliches. He even permitted himself to say
that I secured an election prematurely,
which I did, in. a panic. This is a fascinating
observation. ' He suggests that I was in a
panic. -I suppose that is why I entered
upon an election. This is quite a curious
form of reasoning.
Mr. Kelly.-Jt is a curious form of panic.
, Sir > ROBERT ' MENZIES.-I , thank . my
friend for his observation. It ! is a curious
form of panic. The suggestion . of . the
Leader of theOpposition that I secured . the
election prematurely in . a panic really,
astonishes me. JI say this for the: record;
it. is no. longer of very much public interest.
The -honorable , gentleman had on three or
four occasions challenged me to have an
election. xUnless his performances on
behalf of , the , Opposition were arrant
humbug-that, of course, would be an
unparliamentary . expression-he . must have
thought that, the Government having a
majority of one, he might defeat us in . a
chance melee in. the House and produce an
election. " I am bound to say that the only
panic ever exhibited was. his when I finally
accepted the invitation. That was when
the panic began. Of course, his present
panic arises from the fact that the people
supported us at the ' election.
Up to the last week of the election campaign,
the Leader of the Opposition had
persuaded himself-he is not without talents
in self-persuasion-that bhe would win.
Indeed, he did what inexperienced fellows
like me never do; he named the seats that
he would win. Up to the last week of the
campaign, we were pitiable objects. We
had tumbled by sheer stupidity into an
election. But in the last week we had the
panic. Let honorable members recall it.
The panic was in the last week. It was
then that the Leader of the Opposition
began to make the most astonishing series
of extravagant and offensive allegations I
have ever heard in a political campaign.
I am not sure that he did not accuse me of
obscenity-I have forgotten-but he certainly
accused me of all the most remarkable
things. This was at a time when I
was saying to myself in the still watches of
the night-if there are any still watches of
the night for a politician or a prime
minister-that my own boys were a little
worried because I was, as an old colleague
of ours used to say, rather too much of a
little Lord Fauntleroy. In the last week it
was really fabulous to be able to open the
newspaper in the morning and read of the
things that I had never said but which I
was accused of saying..
The honorable gentleman is responsible
for his own tactics. He cannot blame us
for those, unless he admits that in some way
we applied pressure and forced him into
these tactical errors. The honorable gentleman
had begun his campaign with the most
luscious collection of promises a week or
eight days before I delivered my policy
speech. He was going around the country
talking about an Army group at Grafton,
which was very important, and about the
abolition of preferental voting. I must say
that in almost 30 years in this Parliament I
had never heard any member of the Australian
Labour Party advocate the abolition
of preferential voting, but, of course, I am
open to correction. Will anybody correct
me? No? In 30 years not a hint of this
has ' been given but in the last week of the
election campaign the honorable gentleman, being himself in a state of panic and
apparently a little worried about the state
of the parties in the electorates, said, " We
will abolish preferential voting He did
not say it in his policy speech, but he said
it then. Happily his statement received
wide publicity.
All this time in the last week he was, if I
may use the expression with the great conversatism
so characteristic of me, screeching
abuse about his opponents. Of course,
when all this happened in the last week of
the campaign, I, who had always believthat
we would win, became completely coAiV
fident of success, because these were the
marks of panic and the marks of defeat.
The honorable gentleman wants a little
history and I am giving it to him. Thwe
the gallup poll, that sacred thing, was pu
lished on the Friday before the election.
This revived his hopes, but they were
dashed within 36 hours. By the following
Monday he had revealed -himself-I say
this to him as a old friend and an old
political opponent-as the worst loser in the
-history of Commonwealth politics. I am
not engaging in a post mortem; I am engaging
in a post vitam-a very different matter.
I leave the post mortems to my opponents.
ourI dop onliocty , r ealtlhye feeilm cmaleldedia teolny to orpeehreaatris2e?-.
aspects of which are referred to in thed
Governor-General's Speech, because the
simple truth is that the people have
approved of our policy and we are putting
it into operation. Therefore, I will dej.
very lightly with matters that have exerciso> J
the Opposition in this new session of Parliament.
I will refer to just a few matters.
I would need not 40 minutes but three
hours to expose all the weaknesses in the
Opposition's position so I will deal with
just a few of them.
The Leader of the Opposition spoke about
Malaysia. That was a bold exercise on his
part. I quote these words from his speechwe
support the creation of Malaysia to
the extent that it will promote the welfare of its
people and the stability of South-East Asia and
will strengthen the area-that is, our area-against
Chinese aggression or Communist imperialism.
Honorable members-at least those on this
side of the House-will realize that that is
a statement that we might have welcomed
very much at the time when Malaysia was
under discussion. But the honorable gentleman
then went on to say-
But Indonesia's policy of confrontation cuts
across those objectives and raises new and
important issues. We need an anti-Communist
Malaysia, but we also need an anti-Communist
Indonesia. That was the end of the statement of
policy. What does it mean? Does Indonesia's
policy of confrontation cut across
our support for Malaysia? We do not think
so. When we made our statement in this
', puse, we were not unaware of the Indo-
,, sian tendency to confront, to threaten
and to raise issues. Indonesia's policy of
confrontation does not cut across our support
for Malaysia.
But the honorable gentleman, in effect,
._ hts this question to himself: Does this cut
across our support for Malaysia or does it
strengthen our support for Malaysia? If
the honorable gentleman was asking, " Does
this policy of confrontation, which is being
conducted by a country with which we all
want to live in a state of peace and harmony
and which is directed at a country
which we are pledged to support and whose
political integrity we are pledged to support,
introduce new problems? he should have
told us what those problems were. I
1" Nonder how Malaysia-at this moment the
jreatened country, the country across
whose borders forays and infiltrations are
occurring-would regard these Australian
Labour Party ambiguities. There is no
ambiguity about our position. We have
ated it; we have repeated it; we will
d-' dhere to it.
The Leader of the Opposition described
my statement about Malaysia on behalf of
this Government and on behalf of this
country-a statement now completely
reinforced by the electoral decision of the
people-as vague and unsatisfactory. From
the master of ambiguity, that is indeed a
tremendous charge.
When the honorable gentleman had said
what he wanted to say on that matter, he
took a side swipe at me-I believe that is
the expression. I seem to be rather
a disagreeable person, not enjoying as much
favour with my opponents as I should. The
honorable gentleman permitted himself, as
he not infrequently does, to rewrite modem history. Let me occupy the time of the
House for a few minutes on these matters.
He said-
When President Nasser nationalized the Suez
Canal the Prime Minister, with his limited
imagination-I admit that part; I have never had enough
imagination to imagine what members of the
Opposition would do about any mattertried
to adjust the facts to fit his
favourite formula. It was all a Communist plot
as far as he was concerned.
I did not know that such a question had
ever been raised over the Suez Canal matter
and my association with it. The Leader of
the Opposition went on to say-
Of course, he failed to get his view accepted
because the United States itself saw the folly and
danger of the course being pursued by the British
Conservative Government.
This is becoming the stock-in-trade of a
number-I except some-of honorable
gentlemen opposite: That I rushed in; that
I was wrong; that in some mysterious
fashion I persuaded eighteen large nations
and small nations to agree with me-in an
aside sort of way, rather a compliment. I
was the actor in the drama.
The honorable gentleman knows, or
ought to know if he reads anything other
than propaganda, that when President
Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal I was
on my way back to Austraila and that when
I was in the United States I was told about
it and was told that a conference of 22
nations was to be convened at once in
London. I telephoned my Acting Prime
Minister in Australia and said: " What do
you think? Perhaps I ought to go back,"
because we in Australia have a lively interest
in the Suez Canal and its future. I was
told, " Yes, you ought to go back". I
went to the conference. I do not need to
elaborate this matter. All I can tell you,
Mr. Speaker, is that after two or three days
in that conference a scheme of proposals
was produced and those proposals were put
up to President Nasser. They were drafted
by Mr. John Foster Dulles, the Secretary
of State of the United States. They were
American proposals. I thought they were
very good ones, and so did the representatives
of seventeen other nations. A resolution
was carried that those proposalseminently
reasonable, sensible and fair proposals-
should be presented to President
Nasser, although not with very much hope
of their being, accepted. But intrinsically
they were pretty good.
One night I was telephoned at my hotel
just as I was about to come back to Australia,
and I was invited to go up to the
American Embassy. This is very interesting,
having regard to this falsification of
history. I arrived at the embassy at about
2 o'clock in the morning, and there people
were discussing this business. There had
been a proposal that a committee should be
appointed to present and explain these resolutions
to President Nasser. There and then
these people who, according to the Leader
of the Opposition, regarded me with complete
contempt, urged me to become chairman
of the committee and to go to Cairo
to put these matters to President Nasser.
I did not want to go. I had been a long
way from home for a long time. I had
problems to attend to in Australia. But
when. the Prime Minister of Australia is
invited by representatives of eighteen
nations, including the major nations in the
non-Communist world, to do a job, however
difficult and hopeless it may seem, I
-do not believe it is any part of his responsibilities
-to say, " No, thank you; I would
sooner go home So I went and' put the
-case and, of course, we did not succeed.
I am free to admit that I did not ever think
we would succeed; but we argued our case.
I was the spokesman. Having received
what I. rather thought was something in the
nature of a compliment from eighteen
nations, I returned home to, find that the
-Labour Party in Australia regarded : this as
a ridiculous exercise. Very well. Time
does not . permit me to re-write history for
the Leader of -the -Opposition, but if he
wants to know whether I look back on that
painful and. difficult exercise with. shame I
say at once that I do not; I look back on it
with. a certain amount of self-respect.
Having fired a few shots on that matter
-not for the ' first time; and indeed this
ist. h e first time I have -ever bothered about
them-the honorable gentleman went to
1960. He has never got over 1960.
Neither have I. It was the only time . I
ever went to the General Assembly of the
United Nations. A number of honorable
members have been there, and I went there
in October,. 1960. I had some discussions and moved an amendment to a, resolution.
The amendment was-defeated. My. speech
was never reported in. this country. Other
speeches were. The honorable gentleman,
who prefers second-hand sources of
information, said the other night-
In 1960 President Eisenhower and Mr.
Macmillan, being shrewd judges of men, saw that
the Prime Ministerthat
is mewould
risk almost anything for the sake of an
hour or two of international limelight.
This is it. What the honorable gentleman
does not know-if he does know it, he
suppressed it-is that at that meeting ) 1
the United Nations a motion was submitted
by some nations the effect of which was
for President Eisenhower to have a conference
with Chairman Khrushchev-not with
the United Kingdom and not with Fran",
a sort of half-summit meeting. What t.-
honorable gentleman has forgotten is that
President Eisenhower had already made it
clear that he would not have a bi-lateral
talk. Honorable members will remember,
I hope, that in that year everything was
lined up for a summit conference in Paris,
, and then the incident of the U2 occurred
and the summit conference was abandoned.
I do not know whether the U2 incident was
-the sole cause of the collapse of . the summit
meeting or whether there was some other
, cause. The people concerned in the sumr
conference and therefore in the peace
: the world--our . peace-were the Soviet
Union, Great Britain, the United States of
-America and France: At this meeting of
* the United N'ations it was moved, seconded
and went on. the record that there sho:
be a conference between . the two, one-o1
whom-President Eisenhower-had already
, made -clear that he would not have a bilateral
conference. Therefore it seemed to
me--and I hope honorable members will
not . think this ' is stupid-that to carry a
resolution that there ' be a meeting between
the two when. at least one of them had said
he would not attend was rather -beating the
air. So far from me homing in on this matter,
which is : the legend on the part of the
Opposition and -its academic advisers, I was
invited by President Eisenhower-I do not
boast about this--to come to Washington
to discuss this matter. He also invited Mr.
Macmillan to go to Washington to discuss
the matter. I went. Dean Rusk was there
as well as various other people connected
with the American Administration. We
had a discussion about this matter at the
White House later in the afternoon. I had
suggested that it would not be a bad thing,
instead of having a blank negative, to have
an amendment moved which called on all
four parties to have a summit conference,
' to get back to the one thing that represented
some hope for the world. These
gentlemen whom I am supposed to have
og-rolled in some way are not insignificant
9_ eople. When I put my submission they
said, " This has great merit They asked
me to draft an amendment. I drafted an
amendment. We discussed it that afternoon
and I submitted it at the United
ations. I am happy to say that although
. he amendment was defeated, to the intense
joy of Her Majesty's Opposition in Australia,
it was supported by Great Britain,
the United States, the Republic of France,
Australia and Canada. The Soviet Union
did not vote against the amendment; it
abstained. Was that an unhappy event?
I must tell honorable members opposite
what. was in my amendment because they
are badly in need. of instruction on this
matter. I wonder whether anybody on the
other side of the House will disagree with
-x single' word of this amendment,. putting
l; flim-flam, of a-political kind on one side.
* My amendment recalled that there had been
an arrangement for a meeting, ' that the
meeting. did not begin its work and.. that the
President of -the United States, -the President
f the French Republic and the Prime
-/ Minister of the United Kingdom, had made
; public statements, saying that they would
welcome such a meeting in order to reduce
world . tension. -I went on-
* Believing that much. benefit'for the world'could
arise from a cooperative ' meeting of the ' Heads
of government of these, four nations in relation
to those problems which ' particularly concern
them, Is this disagreeable -to the Opposition? The
amendment -continued-
Believing further that progress, towards the solution
of those problems would be a material contribution
to the general work for peace of the United
Nations, Urges that such a meeting should occur at the
earliest practicable date.
I have heard Labour members,.. former
Labour ' Ministers and. Labour -candidates time after time stand on platforms and say
, that those are-their views. But when a
Prime Minister drawn from a party other
than their own expressed those views, and,
if I" may say so, with some vigour, and
secured the support of the great powers
which, alone, if they act in concert, can
reduce tension in the world, the result is
the kind of jibe-the kind of sneering
remark-that we have heard on this
occasion. Sir, I will not occupy any more time on
that matter. I do not want to re-write
history for my opponent. I am too busy
for that. So I will go on to a few contemporary
issues-very few. In the course
of his speech he once more returned to
King Charles' head-the TFX bomber.
The honorable gentleman became frightfully
mixed up about this during the election
campaign. At one stage I thought that
he would repudiate the contract to buy the
TFX. I am not sure that was not his
intention. At another stage he said to the
electors, Elect us to office and we will buy
a replacement for the Canberra", as if you
could buy it in a pawnshop. There was no
appreciation of the fact that if you are to
replace a magnificent vehicle like the
Canberra bomber, which only the other day
was the last word, then you must ensure
that you will get . the latest word and, if
possible, something which will be operative
and effective for a reasonable time to come.
The whole case about the TFX was
stated. But, of course, there are people in
various countries who do. not like orders
being placed for aircraft other than their
own, so the other day some scribbler wrote
an article-my distinguished friend the
Minister for Air ( Mr. Fairbairn) who knows
about these things referred to it in the
course of his speech yesterday-in which he
said, " The TFX is. encountering enormous
diffictilties My distinguished' opponent,
always willing to snatch at even the slightest
straw in. the torrent, said: " There you are.
You woh't get the TFX until 1970." In
' fact, nothing is known either from the
United States, which has a vast interest in
the . performance of this aircraft, or from
the . people who are building the aircraft,
that lends the slightest colour to these
, arguments. I do -wish that the honorable
: gentleman would not continue repeating
, false figures. The . position is ' that the
American Government has undertaken to
deliver the TFX order beginning in 1967.
The Australian Government has accepted
this estimate. We believe it is a sincere
estimate, and nothing has occurred to cause
the American Government to indicate that
it will not be able to meet the delivery
dates. Therefore, to use the old Australian
phrase, this is another furphy. I say that,
with great regard to the honorable member
whose electorate includes Shepparton.
I should like to refer to two other
matters. I seem to remember that during
the election campaign and during last year
-I am open to be corrected-the Opposition
devoted a great deal of its forensic
talent to explaining that we were ruining
the economy, that we were introducing a
period of massive unemployment. Indeed,
a little before then the Opposition was explaining,
in the most learned fashionbecause
I am sure its adviser was in a
technical sense a learned man-that the
loan market had been ruined. We were
told what the Labour Party would do to
restore it. Unfortunately for the Labour
Party, this is all in the past now. The
economy has not been ruined; on the contrary.
The loan,' market has not been
ruined; on the contrary, it is almost ' embarrassingly
lush and fruitful. So what does the
Opposition do? My friends on the other
side of the House-I do not blame themday
after day have been asking, " Will the
Minister for Labour and National Service,
through his counsel before the arbitration
commission, tell the commission how
tremendously prosperous this country is,
how lush the loan market is, how marvellous
is the state of the economy, how much
productivity has increased? Having been
through this kind of thing for some time
I cannot find it in my heart to blame
honorable members opposite. I suppose
you try one thing and if it does not succeed
you try another. If the solution turns out
ultimately to be the opposite of the one
you tried first, well, you know, life is full
of mutations, so one can understand and
forgive..-I shall refer to one other matter because
I see that my time, so generously extended,
is running out. During the last four sitting
days I have been fascinated to discover an
almost concerted plan by Opposition members,
egged on a little, if I may say so to
my old friend, by a speech from this side of the House, to talk about gerrymandering
the electorate. " Gerrymander" is a
beautiful word. It hails from America and
it has a resonance in it. It is intelligible
in English, so it is used. The Opposition
claims that what we propose to do about
the Commonwealth Electoral Act represents
a gerrymander. I would have ignored
this had it been just a passing exercise on
the part of one honorable member but I
suppose about ten honorable members
opposite have claimed that we are proposing
to gerrymander the electorate. Fortunately
for us, and fortunately for Austral. Y
most of them have explained what they)
mean by the word. As I understand it-
I speak subject to correction, because I am
always willing to be corrected-they mean
one vote, one value. They claim that tb~ -F
must be no discrimination between a larn1,
widespread rural electorate like Kalgoorlie
or a compact metropolitan electorate like
my own. There must be no discrimination
because the moment you depart from the
principle of one vote, one value, this is
a gerrymander. I know that my friend
the honorable member for Leichhardt ( Mr.
Fulton) treats the statements of his colleagues
with a certain amount of congenial
contempt, but this apparently is the new
Labour doctrine. The Labour Party has
been in office in the Commonwealth for.
seventeen years altogether, perhaps n,
long enough from its own point of view.-
The Electoral Act of the Commonwealth
of Australia first became law 62 years ago
in 1902--62 years ago! I was so cut to
the quick by all this talk about gerrymandering
that I put myself to a little troub;
and said to my officer, Bring me the 1961
Commonwealth Electoral Act Here it
is. It is 62 years old, give or take a month
or two. Section 16 of the act states-
In making any distribution of States into Divisions
the Commissioner-
There was one commissioner in those daysshall
give due consideration to--
Community or diversity of interest,
Means of communication,
Physical features,
Existing boundaries of Divisions;
and subject thereto-
I hope honorable members opposite will hold
their breath so that they will not die of
shock nowthe
qluota of electors shall be the basis for the
distribution, and the Commissioner may adopt a
margin of allowance, to be used whenever necessary,
but in no case shall such quota be departed
from to a greater extent than one-fifth more or
one-fifth less.
That was t-he position in 1902 and for many
years thereafter. The current legislation is
almost indistinguishable from the original
except that the number of the section is
different. It is now section 19, which is in
these terms-
In making any proposed distribution of a State
into Divisions the distribution Commissioners-
The plural, Commissioners is used now.
ope that is not fatal-
'-dall give due consideration to-
Community or diversity of interest,
Means of. communication,
Physical features,
Existing boundaries of Divisions and
S Subdivisions,
State Electoral boundaries;
fhen follows the provisions about a tolerance
of one-fifth up or one-fifth down. So,
if honorable members will trouble themselves
to read what appears in the policy
speech on this matter, and what appears in
the Governor-General's Speech, they will
discover one or two points. I attach great
importance to one of them and that is the
trend of population in various areas. This
was mentioned even by some honorable
members opposite to-day.' These are important factors. We modernize them. There
is no compulsion to make a quota difference,
but there is the same permissive authority
to the commissioners to go up or down by
one-fifth. Yet I have lived long enoughtoo
long, some may think-to find that what
has been completely accepted in this Commonwealth,
what has produced, by and
large, sensible, honest recommendations,
what has been left untouched and untouchable
by every Labour government that has
sat in the Commonwealth Parliament, is
now to be described by honorable members
opposite as a gerrymander. All I can say
is that it is ludicrous; it is out of proportion;
it is unreal. But I welcome it, if I may
say so, because it shows after their defeat
and after the failure of their ambitions, how
barren members of the Opposition have
become. This is all that they can find to
come up with-an allegation which has
only to be examined by a boy reading acts
of Parliament to be exposed as utter
humbug. Mr. Cyde Cameron.-Wind up. Your
time is up.
Sir ROBERT MENZIES.-I have wound
up. I thought it was a very good ending,
and I hope you will remember, it.
By Authority: A. J. ARTHUR, Commonwealth Government Printer, Canberra.