INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL
" OMN'S BOARD MEETING HELD AT CANBERRA ON
APRIL. 1964
Speech by the Prime Minni: te. r L Rt, Hon, Sir Robert Menzies
Madam President, Mr. Byrne, Your Excellencies and Ladies
I feel completely unnerved ( Laughter) by two circumstances.
The first is that when I was cajoled into coming here
I use the word " cajoled" though I might have said " ordered" or
" compelled" ( Laughter) I was under the slight misapprehension
that this was a board meeting. Well, it is the biggest board of
directors I have ever looked at in my life. ( Laughter)
And the second unnerving circumstance is that today
was, I think, one of the very few occasions that I can recall when
I was marched into a roomful of women in complete and respectful
silence, ( Applause) Those are two special circumstances but,
of course, there is the overriding circumstance that for a man to
stand up I exclude the idl. e members of the Diplomatic Corps
( Laughter) before an audience of 40C women is a very great
ordeal, believe me, because opinions differ as to whether men
understand women or don't. I am one of the few fallows honest
enough Uo admit that I don't and, therefore, I will just have to
say something on my own account,
" The decade of opportunity" this is a splendid topic,
It would have been even better if I hadn't been reminded in the
lobby outside that in 1951, I had made a profound obsorvation on
this very matter an obvorsation that I had long since forgotten,
but still, "' the decade of opportunity" that is a good title and
more than a good title, a very good theme because it is
constructive. It means that you are not here to ventilate the
grievances of the past but to envisage the opportunities of the
future. This, I think, is a thing equally valid for you as it
would be for a corresponding number of men gathered together
here. " The decade of opportunity".
Now, I had a look at your objects and if I may quote
a rather abbreviated snippet from them, I saw that one of the
purposes is to provide information and assistance to achieve equal
status for women in political life. Now, of course, countries
vary, In Australia I believe that there is, for all practical
purposes, an equality of status in political life. This varies,
of course, from place to place, but in my own State of Victoria,
and in the case of my own Party, the selection of candidates for
Parliament is made by a convention of people representing equally
men and women. The fact that they almost invariably select a
man for a candidate is not my responsibility ( Laughter). I think
there is, in substance, equality of status for women in political
life but we can't end there, can we? Equality of status, I suppose,
means equality of opportunity. We all, man or woman, have our
chance, politically, by vote, by influence, by represenation in
Parliament and so on. How far we take advantage of that opportunity
is really a matter for us and not for other people,
I want to say something to you about this question of
politics, because although I am not quite as long in the tooth
as a Prime Minister as you might suppose, I have still had some
experience of it and I suppose I might be regarded as having some
expert views in the political field, Quite true. I needed to be
reminded that it is twentyfive years since I first became Prime
Minister but I think that in justice to the people of Australia,
it should be pointed out that two years and four months later I
was relieved of the burden of office. ( Laughter) And that it / 2
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took another eight years for me to purge my offences and be once
more admitted to this office, If_ you want to see a genuine
quarter-century head of government, you want to go to South
Australia and insist on them showing you Sir Thomas Playford who
has been Premier of that State well, I think he was Premier
before I first became Prime Minister of Australia and he has
been Premier ever since and, so far as I can judge, only the Grim
Reaper will remove him from office, ( Laughter)
Howeverg even in my limited experience, something is
learned and I thought I would like to say this to you that you
are an international body, as we have been reminded that you
have come here from a variety of countries some of them old
in government and some of them new in independence and selfgovernment;
it is just as well I think, for us to ask the
question: What is involved in taking a hand in politics? And
in particular, for a woman to take a hand in politics.
I hope you will not think me offensive when I say
that it is not sufficient for any woman just to stand up and
say, " I am a woman. Parliament ought to have the women's point
of view and therefore elect me to Parliament", because I would
be most astonished to discover that there is any more unanimity
of view among ten women than there is among ten men. ( Laughter)
I don't undertake to say at any time what the man's point of view
is but I know what my own is, mostly, but I don't undertake to
generalise and I think it is a mistake to generalise,
The first thing to do about politics is to understand
quite soon that this is a business of the utmost seriousness,
It lends itself to fun occasionally, to a little genial abuse
occasionally, but it is a matter of the utmost seriousness. It
is the business of the nation and if the business of the nation
is to be conducted with skill, with understanding, with humanity,
then there are some things that must be learned about ito
Not at all sufficient for any one of us to go into Parliament and
say, " I don't need to know any of the basic elements of p. olitics
I come here to argue for so-and-so and this I will continue to
argue for until I achieve it. It may be right; it may be
wrong, but that's my theme."
Now I believe, in my own old-fashioned way, that you
can't begin to understand the politics of a country and therefore
to participate in politics of that country unless you know the
true structure of government in that country until you really
know what is the machinery by which that particular nation has
chosen to get itself a government and to get itself law3s This
is where all the variety is met.
Here we are in Australia. We are a Federation. We
have six States who were, until 1901, self-governing colonies
completely attending to their own affairs and then we had a
Federal Parliament and a Federal Goverinent which has some
specific powers of a national kind entrusted to it, all the other
powers remaining with the States. Now this is a complex system
of government, Highly complex. It is a highly legalistic
system of government because as somebody says that the Conmonwealth
Parliament has part of the law which it had no power to
pass, it is liable to find itself in the High Court of Australia,
corresponding to the Supreme Court of the United States of
America and having its law declared invalid. You can't separate
a good deal of logalism from federalism, but you can't begin to
understand the political problems of Australia without first
understanding that it is a country with a federal system and
that powers are divided between the national Parliament and the
State Parliaments. You don't solve problems as people very 00 / 3
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freauent. ly try to in Australia by taking then all to Canberra,
( Laughter) because most of the problens that people want to take
to Canberra ought never to cono he,. e a t c: ll; they belong to the
State Parliament or the State Govorn( mnt or the municipal council
or municipal governmrent. Even in our oe. n countryvhere we have now
sixty-odd years of experience, there are far too many people who
undertake to talk about politics who just dontt understand the
structure of government, the division of power, the division of
authority and therefore the division of responsibility in a
federal system. Those who come from the United States know a
great deal more about this because the United States has a federal
system. I will say something nore about that in a moment because
there again, there are plenty of opportunities for error and
nisunderstanding, Now, our great neighbour, New Zealand, intimately
associated with Australia, has two advantages, if I might put
it that way, and I think they would put it that way from their
point of view, One is that they have none of this problem of
legalism because they do not have a federal system. They have a
unitary government, Rightly or wrongly, they have one government
over one people. That is a very great advantage to then from the
point of view of simplicity, of understanding the political scene.
I am not saying that the sane system would apply to Australia
because I don't think it would. And of course there are other
great advantages that we, being fairly near and somewhat larger,
they are able to tell us their opinion of us with complete
friendliness and with great effect, ( Laughter)
Now I said that if you take the United States, you
have another federal system of government with a division of
powers between Washington and the various American States. If
you go further afield into other countries, other countries in
the British Commonwealth, you will find an almost infinite variety
of systems of government, some of them with a high centralisation
of power in the executive, some of them not, but I defy anybody
to identify the system of government in almost any one of them
with the system of government in any other and that of course is
right. That is as it should be because you don't make people
independent in order to compel thoe to adopt your system of
government; that is a denial of independence and when people
become independent, they have a perfect right to choose their
own system of marrging their affairs and they nay choose to do it
by a concentration of power in the central executive that would
be intolerable to us in Australia or they may find some middle
course, but whatever it is, it is theirs.
There is a good deal of false optimism in the world
about this matter, People are very tempted to think particularly
in some of the great Western countries that all you have to do
with a former colony now to become an independent nation is to
endow it with a parliament, or whatever it might be called and all
is well you have established a new system of government. Of
course you haven't because all systems of government proceed from
the ground up. They grow; they are not built from the roof
down; they are not imposed on people. They have to be, in the
long run, the choice of the people themselves. Therefore there
is an infinite variety of ways and means of a country governing
itself. Having said that, I just want to turn back very
briefly to what I was saying about the United States of America,
a country held in great respect and affection in Australia, a
country to whom we are bound by many -agnificent ties, but we
are quite capable of misunderstanding Americans and American
administratlion just in the same way as in London there is always
adanger that ww-: 1: e. 1 be a gravoe nii.-, s-,-, dcrstanding of American
policy and in Washington-a gralic i-in21sndrstanding of British
policy. This used to trouble me a great deal wondering how this
came about, how could there be any instinctive opposition between
people so close, so identified in their ultimate ideals and in
a great deal of their history. How could there be this, as an
instinctive matter; why did this irritation arise; why was it
that every few years you would find such an uproar going on in
London and'in Washington that you would ' think the two countries
were going to become inveterate enemies., We have all seen this
happen, haven't we. And I have a theory about it.
My theory is that people have neglected the first
lesson to be learned in politics and that is to understand the
structure of government to understand h~ ow policies are evolved
and how they a. 3' e pi~ t inio ' operation, because if you do that, you
will at once realise that the American procedure and the British
procedure are utterly unlike and until people on my side understand
the differences, they will tend to misunderstand the results and
misunderstand the circumstarnces. Just let me explain what I mean
and in this respect, what I say about the United Kingdom is
equally true about my own country because we derive our governmental
Pystem from the Old Country. All right.
How does a policy become evolved, a public policy
on some informational matter particularly? How does that become
evolved in London? By a Cabinet, they have a Cabinet meeting.
The Foreign Minister circulates papers about his particular
problems, about nation X Y or Z. They all have an opportunity
of reading them. The red boxes go round and the hav their
keys and they read them. Then they arrive at the Cabinet meeting,
and then they discuss what the policy ought to be, and at the end
of the Cabinet meeting, that has been determined, It is no
longer the policy of an individual, it is the policy of the
Government of the United Kingdom, delibera-tely, carefully worked
out and therefore when it is announced, people may accept it,
sub3ect to the inf rmi-ty of politicians who do occasionally
change their minds, I know, but people will accept that as the
policy on this problem of Great Britain,
If some private Member of Parliament makes an
extravagant speech, either on the extreme right wing or the extreme
left wings and, you know, these wings are projected in all
parliaments6, nobody need assume that what he says is the policy
of Great Britain indeedton the contrary everybody in Groat
Britain knows that it isnt the policy of Lhe Government because
if it wore the policy of the Government, he wouldn't bother to
make the speech. He has made his speech to exhibit his difference
not his agreement, and the result is nobody really assumes that
because this type of extravaganza is engaged in, one way or the
other? that that has anything to do with the poiicy of Great
Britain. That is true in Australia,
Now7in the United States, their system of evolving
policy is quite different. They evolve policy far more through
the process of public debate than we do in British countries.
Take an examplo. The Secretary of State, the Foreign Minister
of the United States, a great functionary, he is, in the eye of
the world, the man who expresses and is responsible for the
foreign policy of the United States but very frequently before
he has time or opportunity to come Lo a conclusion the matter is
taken up before a Committee of Congress -Foreign Affairs
Committee, Foreign Relations Committee -and he is there crossexamined,
very frequently publicly, about how his mind is running,
how it works. Then somebody else comes along who is the majority
leader in the Senate or who is a very prominent Memaber of the House
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of' Representatives, and he is called before the Committee and all
this is thrashed out, you see, day aftcr day, day after day, in
public, so that the policy on -this matter perhaps begins to emerge
as a result of public discussion, because this is public discussion
if the press people are there and not uncommonly the television
people. Now in Great Britain, where they are accustomed to
the habit of pronouncement, they read this. They say, " O0h,
well, did you see what so-and-so said? He is the majority leader
in the Senato and this is what they are going to And when
the following day it turns out that somebody equally authoritative
has said to the same Committee that exactly the opposite is what
they want to do, a feeling arises I have seen this happen
that there is too much fluctuation in policy. " All this variation,
why don't they make up their minds," wlhereas the truth is, of'
course, that this is part of the process of making up the mind and
nobody ought ever to get excited about it until the end result,
The late John Foster Dulles was a friend of mine and
he was a man of great character; very contrcversiai, I agree,
but a man of great character and of high patriotism, I knew him
well, but Foster Dulles liked to have public conferences and
public discussion, Well, each man to his choice; he liked this,
but he used to think aloud at these conferences, I have twitted
him at this in the past. He used to think aloud, He used to
say, " 1Well, now, ask a question. Look, one thing we could do
about this would be so-and-so" and he would explain that with
great clarity arnd the gentleman from the Indianapolis Gazette
or whatever ii might be if that line suited his papers, would
rush out and put it on Lo the wires. Perhaps before two minutes
had gone, Foster Dulles, still thinking aloud, would say, " Well,
on the other hand...." 1 and he would give the benefit of his
views to the conference, discussing three or four alternative
possibilities. ' dell, now, this I concede at once, was very good, if
all reported from a public educational point of view. It would
help people Lo understand what the possibilities were on th . s
matter, but of course in the result, view No. 1 would be in the
afternoon newspapers somewhere and view No. 2 in the morning
papers some-where and view No. 3 in the following afternoon's
papers because these are the rules of life. And the result was,
a lot of people used to say, " Why doesntt he stick to one
policy? Why doesn't he keep his mind clear? Why all this
wavering around?" And I would frequently have to explain to
people that it wasn'ft that at all, that when he reached his
conclusions, he reached a firm concliusion and his technique,
though well understood in the United States, wasn't understood
at all in Great Britain or in Australia.
Now, I dontt want to convert this into a series of
historical reminiscences but I just want to establish the one
point that I wanted to make to you that if you want to lead up to
a more complete approach to politics and political activity for
women, then to begin with you must understand something about
the system of government In your own country and, if possible,
something of the comparative systems of government in the world,
because if we all understood them, clearly, we would be saved a
great deal of misunderstanding and occasionally a certain amount
of ill temper. In short, this business of politics is not just
a matter of making speeches about some current or casual problem.
The business of politics is the business of government and it
can't be conducted with skill or with safety unless the people
who are engaged in it understand the foundations of their science / 6
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and their art as well as its particular app] icauions at any given
momento Now hcat all nay seen very dull but I remember
many years ago reading a book by, I think, Stephen Leacock.
It night well be because it was a very wise and cnusing book.
He pointed out that in one part of the United States of America
where he lived once, he encountered a judge who, whenever there
was any family occasion a wedding, a funeral, a christening,
a jolly get-together always arranged to have himself called on
to speak and always gave a short but powerfil talk on the American
Constitution. ( Laughter) There is a lot tr-be said for that old
judge. I hope not to be so tedious as that but I thought the
opportunity should not pass without ny suggesting that there are
basic elements in all these things which should not be neglected,
And having said that at undue length, I now I
was going to say have great pleasure in declaring the conference
open, but I have great pleasure in declaring the Board open.