OPE~ NING OF SPACE-TRACKING STATION AT
j. 9TH iKARCH, 3 196~
Speech by the Prime Ministeruth te rk~ o. RobertMenzies.
Sir, Your Excellencies and Ladies and Gentlemen:
You may imagine that my presence here calls for
some explanation and I concede that point, I am here for two
reasons. One is that as I am cA'llen Fairhall's Prime Minister,
he wasntt game not to ask me. ( Laughter) Now that is one very
good reason, The other very good reason is that he knew that I
would bring to this task a completely fresh and untrammelled
mind untrammelled by the faintest scientific kcnowledge. I
live in the Dark Ages in this sense. I drive in here this
morning and I see this great dish-looking object stickin out
and in some vague way I know it has something to do with
collecting information from outside, but how it is done I haven't
the faintest idea, This is unpardonable ignorance, I know.
I can see Sir Frederick . hite gazing at me with great contempt.
But it does give me an objective, and clearer, mind. I come
to this problem without any prejudices whatever, and therefore,
coming to it without prejudice, I just want to say I think this
is a very remarkable example of two things.
The first is the rapid progress that is made in
this scientific and technological age. I know that every now
and then something will crop up in Cabinet and my colleague
( Mr. Fairhall) here will be putting up a proposal of some kind
and in our ignorance we may question it and want to know what
the end result is and whether the end result is really wprth
all ttxt money and he constantly tells us and it is so rue
that it is not really the end result so much as the information
you gather as you go the improvement in techniques, th
stretching out of the borders of our own technological knowledge
that is so important, This is profoundly true,
Je, perhaps, direct too much attention to some
distant end result and too little to the fact that in this
century increasingly in this century the country that is
backward in these fields will be backwrard in a hundred ways
that may not appear to be closely connected with what is going
on. Therefore this is a great step forward, a notable event
in this technological period of our lives.
In the second place, it is one more example of the
kind of co-operation that is extended by the United States to
its friends; not always perhaps to its friends, but in double
measure to its friends.
I looked through the papers that were sent to me
to find out something about the budgetary aspects of these tracking
stations and I am bound to tell you, Mr. ILydman, though you
musn't use this against me in future, that I thought it was a
bit one-sided. You seem to be carrying the enormous bulk of
the expenditure. Well, this is, if I may say so, characteristic
of your great country. 4~ e, ourselves, have been capable of~
building up great resources in what may be called scientific
manpower and this station is manned, as I gather, by Australians. 2
-2
This is a great advantage to us because it increases our stock
of knowledge in these fields in Australia, It is also of
advantage to the United States because in suitable apeas, it
is able to get highly skilled and authentic information in the
course of tracking the satellites or other objects moving around
in space. There is a certain mutuality about this,
But beaind it all there is a tremendous friendship.
Any time, I am told, that some reports go in from one of the
tracking stations in Australia, there will be a friendly and
generous compliment passed from the United States end on the
skill with which the operation has been conducted.
Sometimes people think that a little country like
Australia, little in terms of numbers, maintains a very close
friendship with the United States purely for purposes of selfinterest,
Now, of course, I am not going to deny for one moment
welm've a tremendous lively interest in Australi'a in friendship,
in goodwill, with the United States. But in a way, there is
a mutuality about this because all great powers and history
has demonstrated this inspiro I on the whole, rather more
enmities than friendships jealousies, resistances. Arid they
need friends, Even though Australia is a relatively small
country, I know from my contacts in the United States that
the attitude of Australia on these matters is one of immense
satisfaction to the American administration and the American
people. Big friends, little friends, they are friends, and
friends on this occasion co-operating in one of the new miracles
of the twentieth century.
Sir, that is all I want to say. I notice that you
have discreetly placed around the audience little cartons or
tins or something of fly repellent. They sprayed me with it
on the way out and I am bound to say that so far I haven't
been struck by a fly and I don't think you have either, and
therefore the event is happier still, and adding all these
things together, I have the greatest pleasure in the world in
declaring this Deop Space Tracking Station open.