THE C. B. ALEXANDER PRESBYTERIAN AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE
OFFICIAL OPENING
TOCAL, N. S. YJ. 6TH NOVEMBER. 1965
Speech by the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies
Sell, Sir and Ladies and Gentlemen
This is a rather terrifying sort of an occasion because it says in the book of the words....." the Prime Minister shall deliver an address" and I must say that sounds rather formidable. But before I proceed to deliver an address, I would like to add a supplementary note about the presence of the Moderator-General. You have been quite rightly informed that we are
the only country in the worId that runs to the luxury of a
Moderator-General. The Head of the Church of Scotland is the
Moderator and thereby, Sir, hangs a tale. I tell it because I
notice you are down to preach a sermon later on, and this little
story may improve you. Laughter)
One of the Moderators of the Church of Scotland,
4vatt Anderson, whom a number of you will remember told me
that he was preaching at Craithie church as part of his annual
duty to the late King George VI in this little church near
Balmoral, and cn the wa across afterwards to have lunch, the
King was very complimenary. He said. " Moderator, that is the
best sermon 1 have heard for years and years" and the Moderator,
somewhat pleased with this Royal approval said, " Vell, thank
you Sir, thank you very much. " Yes," said King George VI,
' I Aad the watch on you and it took twelve minutes onlyl
( Laughter) Now, Sir, I don't iknow whether there is any moral
in that, but I leave it toyou for what it is worth.
Although I m bound to say that I am no great
believer in the brevity of sermons, I think it depends on the
sermon, iyself. I remember one of the shortest sermons I listened
to in my life was delivered by the late celebrated and highly
contentious Larry Rentoul in Melbourne, and it took forty-five
minutes forty-Tive minutes and even at my young age, I
enjoyed it. Now this, I think is a wonderful occasion. ' Jhat
has been done here already just staggers me. The vision of the
great benefactor who brought this about has been matched by the
vision and imagination of those who designed this college who
have furnished it with buildings, who have laid down the lines for
its future. Now this is a wonderful hall that we are in. The
buildings themselves,( I have just Lad a quick glance at them, are
charming in design, and this is good because I am one of those who
believes that when generation after generation of boys goes to
a place of learning whether it is an agricultural college or a
university or whatever it may be it is a good thing for them
to have memories of beauty to take with them during their lives.
This is one of the civilising things in life, to see beauty and
to recollect beauty in years to come and that is why, Sir, I am
so delighted with the way in which this great task has been
attacked and so far accomplished.
Now this is an agricultural college. In one of the notes that was sent to me, a rather useful phrase, I thought, occurred, and that was that the idea was to bridge the gap between knowledge and application and this is something I want to talk
about for a little while, just in a conversational fashion, not by way of an address. We have lived or many of us have lived through a remarkable period of development in Australian rural industries, starting from a time when you just took what nature appeared to provide and made the most of it, and if it was poor country, well it was poor country. I was born in a place called the Mallee at a time when the Melbourne headlines regularly said, " Is the Mallee worth saving?" and it was understandable. It was a light sandy loam, had a very sketchy rainfall, sometimes a complete black-out in a drought sometimed 12, 14 inches of rain, and I can remember as a boy the first agricultural scientist coming up into the district and going out on to a property and having a ring of farmers around him and explaining to them about a strange thing called superphosphate. They had never heard of superphosphates, and I'm there like a small you know, ears pricked up listening to all
this. And he explained that on that soil in that sort of
climate, in that kind of rainfall he thou ght they would all do
better by going in for rotation of crops which was itself rather
a novelty in those days, and also using a dressing of superphosphate
which he put down at one hundredweight to the acre. Well,
even from the rear view that I had of the farmers present, you
could tell that they weren't very much impressed by this.
" We've never used this stuff before"... " What does it cost?"
( These were the days before the superphosphates
bounty.) ? Laughter) " What does it And
finally all of them ignored the advice except three three of
the best farmers in the area and even they were cautious enough
to say, " Well, we'll try hall a hundred weight" and when after
the next harvest it turned out that the ha got three bushels
to the acre more than any of their neighbours, the first round
of the battle for superphosphates had been won. You see, it
takes time doesn't it? Because we are tremendously conservative
by instinct about these things.
Now it is tremendously important, indeed it is
vital, that all those old conservative ideas should disappear in
the case of the rural industries and for a very good reason.
The international solvency of Australia, our balance of trade,
our balance of payments, aepends primarily on the volume of our
exports, and the volume and value of our exports depends primarily,
as to a vast percentage, on the products of the land whether in
cattle or sheep or cereals or watever the product may be. We
have done rather well in the last few years, remarkably well,
all things considered but we can't hope to avoid balance of
payments troubles, and I don't want to become too technical
about those, unless we can maintairn and steadily increase the
value of our exports from this country. The solvency of masses
of people who know nothing about the and will depend on it.
And in the second place, as time goes on, as we
have long since reached a period of full employment, you have
pressures on the economy you have pressures on resources
abour is not easy to get, labour may have to be paid more because
it is scarce all this is highly intelligible. It comes back
to the man on the land who, for the most part takes the price
that the world will give him but pays the cost that internal
affairs in Australia require him to meet, and his one hope of
meeting these thin-s and of growing and prospering is to increase
his own skill, technically, in terms of management, steadily year
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by year. Australia needs above all people today, highly
pteroapilnee dw hfoa rmtehrisn kapheo plea nwyhboo dayr ec ann otb e ofa tfhaartm erh aap py roiutp woerfe
a sort of fool's business, people who know the skills that
are required in animal husbandry, in cultivation, in whatever
it may be, because these will be the guarantee in the future
of the steady improvement of the skil s of the techniques
needed to meet these great problems, these two great problems
to which I have referred.
The matter perhaps could be put in another way.
.1e have in Australia some of the most remarkable research
institutes in the world. The CSIRO is deservedly world
famouL for the work that it does, and there is other work
being done in various places, including the universities
pure science, applied science. Now all of this, of course, is
tremendously important, but for years now, quite a number of
us have been troubled about the Tact that there is too big an
interval between the result of the research work and its
ap , lication on the farm. There has been a gap what is called
in another sense a deficiency of extension services, and
this is important because time counts. It's all very well
for somebody in CSIRO to make a great discovery which in the
field of animal husbandry for example, could have great
results and then find that it's a year or two years before
that filters through to the man who is actually conducting
the operations on the spot, and when I enquire why, why do
we have this delay, all too frequently the answer is that
you can't have an unskilled man interpreting the results of
research to a farmer. The interpreter himself must possess
skill, he must know what he is talking about, and the
wonderful thing to me is that in this place, when you get
fully going, you will have 120 young men coming through
here, acquiring skills which will make them the most effective
interpreters in the world of the results of scientific
research and applied scientific research to the problems on
the spot of the man on the farm, so that you are helping in
a very material way to supply a great national need.
Now all that, you see, is on the text that you
provided me with the gap between knowledge and application,
and it is because of the reasons that I have given by way of
elaborating that, that I regard it as a very great honour to
come here a great privilege to be here in the early days of
a place wAich will inevitably become not only great in
itself but famous over the country, and if I hadn't felt that
it was an honour I still would have had to come because my
colleague, Alan Pairhall told me to and if I may betray a
political secret to you if you want our Ministers to work
Tor you, you occasionally have to work for them. So here I
am, and ef course in particular if I may say so, delighted
to see my old friend, the Moderator Fred McKay. I always
remember with great interest that when my daughter was about
to be married, we said to her: " Now is there anybody you
would like to bring in addition to the local Minister? Is
there anybody you would like to have at your wedding?"
She said, " Yes I'd like Fred McKay" and down he came and has
a very honoured place in our house and in our minds.
Now Sir, I don't think that I want to say any more
than that. I've run well over the twelve minutes that I
mentioned in that exhilarating story of mine. I've told you
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why I'm glad to be here and I've tried to tell you in
a very few words why I think this is one of the most
important things that I would have looked at this year
of great present interest of great future importance
to the nation, and in particular, I hope and know, of
great importance to the individuals of whom at the moment
we see the first fifteen who will come through here, who
will be made good citizens as well as good farmers
good farmers as well as good students and good practical
people of a scientific bent. This is to the good of
Australia and it will do me a world of gcod to be able
to remember it.
I declare is this right? I'm never too sure
about this bit I declare this College open.
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