A SUMMING UP BY THE PRIME MINISTER. MR. HAROLD HOLT
Most of you no doubt have already made up your minds about this election. But, with the campaign nearly at an end, I put quite briefly and simply what I see as the great issues on which your decision and support should be given.
In my Policy Speech I said that how we are to carry forward the
development of this continent and how best we can make the nation
secure forms the very core of this campaign.
As the campaign has proceeded this has emerged, even more
strongly. You will not only be electing a Government on November 26.
One way or another you will be writing a new chapter in our history.
I say this because so much is at stake. This, like the election of
1949, is truly a crossroads election. The choice we Australians make
will be a critical and decisive choice. There is no common meeting
ground between us and the Labor Party on profoundly important matters
affecting the safety of this country and its people.
Today we have a shield behind which we can press on with the
task of building the nation to a bigger future a future with exciting
opportunities for yourselves and for your children.
Our alliance with the United States is the centre piece of this
shield. It strengthens our close defensive association with Great
Britain and other allies.
With this shield, it has been, and is, our purpose to keep far from our own shores the sinsiter aggression that has made a battleground of South Vietnam.
That is why I say you will be writing a new chapter of Australian history on Saturday.
The Labor Party would pull down this shield of security. Defence
and foreign policies if they can be described as policies announced
in the Labor Party's Policy Speech would not only abandon our allies
and South Vietnam; they would undermine our whole system of alliances,
they would gravely imperil American friendship, they would wreck our
home-front plans and our defence arrangements.
Our reputation abroad would be damaged, perhaps beyond repair.
Indeed, the Labor Party has not only reaffirmed its disastrous
isolationism; it would now destroy almost everything we have so
painstakingly built up over our years of office.
And what would they put in its place? They are hopelessly
vague on this and divided in their views. They would leave us with
virtually nothing~. Our alliances would lie in ruins our defence
arrangements would be gravely weakened. On all that Mr. Calwell has
told us, a Labor Government would wait for an aggressor to strike at
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this country and then-call on Australians to go it alone.
To-. propose such a course is an insult to the good sense of
the Australian electorate.
I now ask you to look closely at the programme outlined in
the Labor Party's Policy Speech.
In recent months, Mr. Calwell has been very vocal about
our external policies. He has said many times that his Party would
sink or swim on the question of Vietnam. But when he came to putting
all this on the line in a Policy Speech, Vietnam, National Service,
defence and foreign policy were brushed off in a few sentences.
He persists in declaring that what is happening in South
Vietnam is a civil war. There are certainly South Vietnamese amongst
the Viet Cong, but he Ignores the fact that the Viet Cong do not control
or administer any one of the many cities or towns. By processes of
terror, plunder and harassment, they are able to exercise influence
over some of the thousands of villages and hamlets. He ignores the
participation of some eighty per cent of South Vietnamese voters in
the recent election for those who are to draft the creation of a
constituent assembly. He ignores the evidence accepted by detached
observers from other free countries that it was aggression from North
Vietnam directed by the Communist Government of Hanoi under Ho Chi
Minh which touched off the current hostilities. He ignores the growing
infiltration by regular North Vietnamese forces recently estimated by
General Westmoreland to be proceeding at a rate of up to 7,000 a month.
He ignores the continuing supply of arms, munitions, food and equipment
from the North. He sees no connection between what is happening in
South Vietnam and the declared philosophy of Communist expansion
through South East Asia and, indeed, Asia generally so clearly and
repeatedly expressed by the present Communist leaders of China.
To him all this is just a civil war. Three American Presidents
and the governments of free countries in South East Asia, including
Australia and New Zealand, have taken a very different view of what
is occur-ring in South Vietnam. When you turn to his Policy Speech
proposals there is the same evident lack of realism. He criticises
our Government for spending and I cruote him " Too much money on
expensive, sophisticated defence equipment purchased overseas"
He clearly has in mind such items as the FlllI Bombers and the guided
missile destroyers, purchased from the United States of America. P Orhaps
also the submarines purchased from Great Britain. But Australia, wVith
comparatively small regular forces, must see that they are thoroughly
trained, mobile and as well equipped as we can assure. His policy
would not only be ye ry much more costly. It would involve intolerable
delays. It would leave our forces inadequately equippad for several
years. The effect of Mr. Calwell's proposals for the army need to be
clearly understood. He claims there is no difficulty in sprtn
conscripts from members of the regular army. This is nonsense' If
National Servicemen were withdrawn from integrated units in Vietnam
the fighting capability of the task force would be destroyed. If you
take a substantial number of men out of a battalion, it would not remain
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a fighting unit. You can't put two bits of two battalions together and
immediately have a fighting unit capable of engaging the enemy. It is
necessary for-: the me-n to work together and to exercise together to bring
the unit to battle efficiency. Mr. Caiwell's proposal would leave the
task force inoperative and ineffective. It could leave it incapable of
defending itself within the airea of its responsibility.
He has stated his Party's intention of consulting with the
United States before bringing out the rest of the force. This could well
become a plea for United Stated protection for our force pending full
withdrawal. But even on this matter of consultation he is out of sorts
with Mr. Whitlam his Deputy Leader.
The end of National Service would reduce the regular army
strength to something between twenty-four thousand and twenty-five
thousand. We would not be able with this number to fulfil our agreements
with our allies nor our commitments. Our capacity to contribute
towards the security of South East Asia would be graively weakened both
in terms of the numbers available for this purpose and our standing with
our allies and friends.
One effect of the National Service scheme has been to increase
the strength of the Citizen Military Forces from tho addition of those
young men who have chosen service with the C. M. F. as an alternative
to the possibility of call-up into National Service. If the National
Service scheme was abandoned then the incentive to join the C. M. F. goes
with it. Yet Mr. Calwell is relying on a large militia force to safeguard
Australia. He says he will rely entirely upon volunteers.
In 1964 the pay and conditions of service of an Australian private
were so improved that he is more highly paid in his early years of service
than his counterparts in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United
States. How is Mr. Calwell going to get volunteers of the numbers and
desired standard when our best efforts did not succeed.
The Labor Party's policy would destroy the unity and the morale
of the army. Australia has great hopes of making a significant place for itself
in the future of the free countries of Asia. For us now to run out on our
allies in Vietnam would be to destroy, at one stroke, much of the
goodwill we now possess. It is doubtful if we would ever regain their
trust in us and respect for us.
Mr. Caiwell is the first Australian political loader I can recall
to advocate desertion of our allies as a national policy. I refuse to
believe he will find support in Australia for such a course.
When he turned to domestic policy, like a salesman at the Show,
the Leader of the Labor Party opened a bag full of promises that were
really right out of this world.
I am sure all of you who heard him quickly lost count of the
millions upon millions of dollar q he proclaimed himself ready to spend.
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He talked about money as if it were confetti Apparently It didn't
cross his minc-thathe was talking to people who have to pay taxes.
I am sure that as you listened you began instinctively to estimate
what all this was likely to cost you.
Your instinct was right. On top of a Budget deficit this year
of 270 million dollars, the Labor Party would impose a programme
which could cost up to another 1,000 million dollars. What fantasy'.
If a Labor Government went about doing what it has promised to do,
taxation and charges would go sky-high. Our economic stability
would be wrecked.
So it is fair to say that the Labor Party offers Australia a
destructive deal on the two fronts that are vital to us our foreign
relations and our home affairs.
If, as I've said, Australia's growth and development, and its
security, make up the core of this campaign, the Labor Party has
failed the nation. On both counts it must be rejected by responsible
opinion. We shall, with your support, put into effect a realistic,
forward-looking domestic programme. We have always regarded our
broad policies as continuing policies and we have always done more
than we have undertaken to do.
We shall hold fast to our alliances and our defence arrangements.
We shall make stronger the shield of our security. We are determined
to pursue with our friends the Goals of Freedom we proclaimed together
at the Manila Conference only a few weeks ago.
Here are those goals:
* To be free from aggression
* To conquer hunger, illiteracy and disease
To build a region of security, o-rder and
progress To seek reconciliation and peace throughout
Asia and the Pacific
We are determined to grow strong ourselves and we want to see
free Asia grow strong also.
Here is a partnership in a common de&) nce of freedom. Here is
a common aspiration for progress. Here is a prospect for that better
world order that lies within man's grasp. The alternative offered to
you is isolationism and a walkout on our friends.
My Government is accused by the Labor Party Leader of
so * uandering the lives of Australia's sons. Who is it would squander
them? My answer is it would be the Government which first allowed
our alliances to be reduced to pieces of paper by falling to give
substance to them: the Government which stood passively by while
one after another of our neighbours was conquered by aggressive
communism: the Government that would leave us standing alone:
the Government which would fail to provide our armed forces with the
most effective arms and equipment available in the world today. Such
a Government would truly be putting the lives of young Australians
at risk and at risk also the way of life and liberties of all
Australians.
SurelyAustralia will reject this alternative. As your Prime
Minister, I ask you to support my Government and my Party. We offer
you strength, unity and purpose. We offer this as opposed to disunity
and confusion. Your support for us on Saturday will promote your own
well-being, will sustain Australia's national interest and will preserve
our high standing throughout the world.
( Text of broadcast and telecast over A. B. C. National Network 7.30 Wednesday, 23rd November, 1966)