EMBARGO: 8 p. m. Monday, 31st July, 1967 Q. t~ 6
DEAKIN MEMORIAL__ LECTURE
Title :" ALFRED DEAKIN.-HIS LIFE AND OUR TIMES"
" The Liberal Tradition in Australia"
INAUGURAL LECTURE DELIVERED BY THE
PRIME MINISTER, THE RT. HON. HAROLD
HOLT, CH, MP, AT THE UNIVERSITY OF
MELBOUR NE 31ST JULY, 1967
When Alfred Deakin died, the Commonwealth of Australia was
not quite twenty years old. It was peopled, in Deakin's phrase, by a little
more than " five million Australian Britons" and had just emerged in the flush
of victory from the horror of World War 1. Six States, six former colonies,
united in a Federation by constitutional processes, had been fused by the
searing process of war and were beginning to reach out again in the forward
march as a nation. Deakin had watched the nation's ordeal from the wings. It
was the evening of his brilliant career, for his memory was failing in those
years and his intellectual powers were almost spent. Yet he saw the nation
he had done so much to create, and in whose service he had exhausted his
strength, face its first great test and emerge triumphant, with honours
written large on the banners of its short history. This was one measure of
his labours, and those of his fellow-founding fathers. He, and they, had
built well. What Alfred Deakin achieved in Victorian politics, in the union
of the States and in the first thirteen years of Commonwealth are well recorded.
The honour board is bright with his achievements, and in a nation not given
to loving, or even liking, its great men, his name Is revered and remembered.
He was a Liberal, with a little and a capital and it is of the man and
his work, and how, in the perspective of history, we see him against the
events of our time, that I speak to you tonight.
There was an age of Deakin and it embraced many things. The
spotlight fell first on Federation, and Protection as a policy for the nation.
These were our beginnings as a nation. Many laboured in those vineyards at
the beginning of the century and the credit must be shared. But Deakin was
the architect, the leader, the advocate three times Prime Minister in the
first thirteen years of Federation. His was the mind and his was the heart
that gave the new nation a course to steer.
We knowa good deal about him for he wrote as fluently as he
spoke and his letters and papers are voluminous. They are, however,
fragments of a whole, for in the six years that were left to him when he took
his leave of politics his wearied mind was not able to finish its task of giving
us his complete, personal story. His own book, now published as " The
Federal Story, is only part of the record.
He was born in Fitzroy in 1856, the only son of English migrants
who had made a honeymoon voyage to Australia and landed first in Adelaide,
where a daughter, Sarah, was born. Then the lure of gold brought the / 2
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family to Victoria. Young Deakin had the great boon of a happy home. He
was not born to riches, and had no castles to defend in later life. Nor was
he born to poverty. There was no bitterness in his heart.
His father made a modest living in the coaching business
between Melbourne and Bendigo, and with Cobb and Co. Alfred had a good
education, first at a small mixed school ( mainly for girls) in South Yarra and
later at Melbourne Grammar School where it is fair to assume he learnt the
art of eloquent speaking from the talented Dr Bromby, a Cambridge man who
was then headmaster. Deakin was a voracious reader. He devoured books
and poetry of every kind with a fever that consumed most of his leisure hours.
Some biographers have been tempted to give him a dual
personality#. a lively, larking schoolboy, casual with his studies and a
dreamer, a visionary beyond his years. I don't think he was two people.
We all have our dreams, but it so happened that Deakin made many of his
come true. He was, in my judgment, a normal, intelligent schoolboy,
showing early signs of scholarship and the questioning of an alert mind on
matters of religion, philosophy and the social problems of the day. His
Christian faith was real from an early age but was never neatly packaged and
his mind wandered in lively interest through spiritualism and along nonconformist
ways. He was a liberal but, in the tune and temper of the times,
he was also a radical.
He came to politics at the age of twenty-two. Behind him was the
law he had had a few briefs as a barrister, some teaching, including a
period voluntarily given to night classes for the street urchins who excited
his interest and compassion, and experience in journalism as a political
writer for " The Age". He won the seat of West Bourke in Victoria in 1879
and resigned on his first day in Parliament at the conclusion of his speech
moving the Address -in-Reply because of an irregularity in the poll caused by
a shortage of ballot papers.
" If I am the representative of the majority of electors of West
Bourke, I will be returned again. If I am not their representative, I have no
right here. He was returned again and for twenty years was a State Member
and a Minister for seven of those years.
In those turbulent days when the life of the colony was raw and
privilege rated high, the Liberal spoke for most of the people against the
entrenched representatives of the aristocracy of wealth and prcperty. There
was a force and a fever about Deakin, the State politician who, though always
a Liberal, began as a free-trader and was converted by David Syme, the
proprietor of " The Age", to be a foremost advocate of Protect ion. He
injected the basic elements of long-lastingiberalism into Victorian politics
and is remembered, not only for what he did to bring Vi ctoria to the
Federation but for his irrigation policies and factory legislation.
His writing was his highroad to politics and in politics he found
his life's work. The British historian F. S. Oliver has aptly described
politics as " the endless adventure of governing men". Deakin was quick to
catch the tide. For him it was a vocation as well as a great adventure.
He was, like Sir Robert Walpole in another century, a
conspicuous example of the man who came at the right time. W alpole, you
will recall, fathered the system of Cabinet Government in the British
Parliament. Deakin was the right man fcr the infant Federation and showed
his superb skill by achieving so much, despite the fact that he headed a
minority party In government during his three terms as Prime Minister. / 3
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He did, in his time, what Walpole did in another way in the eighteenth
century, an immemorial service to democracy by advancing the purpose
and authority of the Parliamentary system.
It was Walpole who governed Britain for a record term of
twenty years as chief minister and gave the House of Commons so much
of the strength once held exclusively by the Crown. It was Deakin who, on
the Australian scene, focussed the thinking of the States and State-minded
people on the institution of the Federal Parliament and on the national issues
that flowed through its corridors. The strength of the Australian
Constitution was there but it needed the eloquence and steadfastness of
Deakin to make it manifest and make a people one.
I find much in common between Walpole and Deakin though
the differences were there too. On V1 alpole I quote from Oliver
" He is the archetype of the normal politician who forces his way
into the highest positions. Hfe had a strong, clear, practical
judgment. He was valiant and steadfast. His crowning merit was
faithfulness to the King he served and his country. Neither fears
nor temptations could ever shake his fidelity.
Deakin was out of the same mould nearly two hundred years
later. Oliver goes on
" At the same time it would be senseless to deny that he ( Walpole)
was a self -seeker, an opportunist, a man without any tincture
of book-learning or philosophy."
Deakin was none of these. His scholarship was plain for all
to see and hear. He took nothing personal from politics and he commanded
respect on both sides of the House.
For all his magnificence as a speaker he seldom tipped his
shafts with venom. He was not ' vindictive. I think the sharpest tongue he
turned on a fellow member was when he once described the late W. M. Hughes
as " behaving like an ill-bred urchin whom one sees dragged from a tart
shop, kicking and screaming as he goes. It was a rare excursion and was not
his usual form. He later apologised for it.
The art of politics has not changed all that much since Walpole's
day or from Deakin's day. But the practice of politics has, and of course
the issues and causes have. The British blend of representative with party
government, from its beginnings, left a politician no choice but to usel~
best endeavours to defeat his opponents and, while that habit is still with us
today, we do it in a rather more sophisticated way. What we are concerned
with are the principles that guide us in power and which govern our conduct
in opposition. This is where we recognise the constancy of Liberalism. It
is a philosophy, with a translation in practical terms into a party platform,
and always matching the contemporary scene.
Gladstone asked and answered the question: " What do I
understand by Liberal principles? I understand in the main, THIS, by
Liberal principles: the principle of trust in the people, only relieved by
prudence. BUT, by the principles of thieir opponents I understand mistrust
ofth pople, only relieved by fear
am talking to an audience largely composed of Liberals
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tonight and it is worthwhile us all remembering that the Liberal idea is
permanent, though the forms of expression are shaped to the times in which
we live. We are in the words of our own party platform, " dedicated to
political liberty and the freedom and dignity of man
Deakin wrote " we are liberal always, radical often and
never reactionary". There has inevitably to be change in emphasis according
to the needs of the times. There are today issues of great importance to the
nation which occupy the attention of politicians but they are not of a nature that
attracts radicals or do they call for radical thinking in the terms of those early
years of Federation. There have been changes in our party and in the opposition
forces, and in the Parliament itself. New systems and methods of communication
between the politician and the public have changed our habits and the tasks
which fall on Ministers andi back-benchers alike. But the old values remain.
It is because of the very fact of our pledge to political liberty and indiv.' fAival
freedom that we can absorb change and maintain our identity. Some comparisons
are appropriate. Deakin stood for a two-party system in Parliament, but he
never secured it in his own right. So he sought it, first by negotiation, and then
by fusion. From the outset of Federation he also recognised that the Senate
would be a party house and not a States' House, though it came into being to
satisfy the anxieties of the States who had taken a half -century or more to come
to the point of Commonwealth. Things, then, really haven't changed all that
much. Let me recall the procession of events and the course the
Liberals followed in those early years which eventually gave us the Liberal
party as we know it today. In 1901 the non-Labor parties were largely identified by:
their attitudes to the national issue of Protection as a fiscal policy for the nation.
There were the Liberal Protectionists under Barton and Deakin, and the Free-
Traders under Reid. The Labor Party held the balance of power in the first
Parliament, but it gave sufficient support for the Liberals to govern, with
Reid and his supporters making up the official opposition.
Then, in 1909, with Protection a settled policy for the
nation, the non-Labor forces of Deakin and Reid came together officially as
one party called the Liberal or Fusion party. In 1916, when the Labor
Government split on the issue of conscription, the late W. M. Hughes and others
who supported conscription, were expelled from the party and after attempting
to maintain a shaky Government with the Parliamentary support of the Liberals
for a few weeks they merged officially with the Liberals to form the
Nationalist party. So briefly there was a clear-cut two party system, but in
1919 the Country Party was formed and that party has retained its identity
to this day. The Nationalists were reorganised in 1931 into the
United Australia Party under the late J. A. Lyons, who like Hughes, was a
Labor man who had broken with his party and the Scullin Government, in this
instance, on matters of economic policy during the depression. The U. A. P.
was with us till 1944. That was the year of the re-birth of the Liberal party,
the year when the Liberal Party re-established itself -An name and policy under
the leadership of Sir Robert Menzies. Its policy was broadened to meet the
needs of modern Australia and ; n response to the urge for reform and
rejuvenation from those who had become increasingly dissatisfied with the
limited horizons of the U. A. P. It was closer to the Deakin concept of a
party with a wide appeal, not limited by any of the divisions by wh! ich society
tends to stratify itself.
Deakin was a Prime Minister of minority governments there
were mostly " three, and sometimes four, elevens" in the House of
Representatives. But his skill as a negotiator, his affability, his patience
and the constructive nature of his policies enabled him to secure support,
substantially on his terms, to carry out effective and progressive government.
This gave us a permanent tariff policy, imperial preference, a defence
policy, a Federal legal system, an arbitration system, a basic wage and
age and invalid pensions.
In the Parliament today we have three parties in the House of
Representatives, and we are getting things done because of the way in
which, by our coalition with the Count ry Party, we are able to operate a
two-party system in terms of work and practical politics. The present
coalition has shown durability in the seventeen years of government since
its formation in 1940, although we have competed for votes and although the
role of the Country Party has been affected by the national need to promote
manufacturing industry and as urban growth outruns rural growth.
In the Senate, as you know, we are a long way from effective
two-party government having four parties and two independents or again
in terms of practical politics, three parties when we count the coalition as
one. There is no doubt that the advent of the Democratic Labor Party, as
yet another group, disillusioned in recent times, as others were in the past,
with Labor policy, has influenced attitudes in the electorates -and in the
Parliament, where the party is represented only in the Senate.
There has been little change In the principles the Liberal Party
applies to the conduct of its business and this if I may seem to speak in an
apparent contradiction is why we have been able to adjust smoothly to changes
in the political, economic and social worlds around us.
The party constitution says " Once an endorsed candidate is
elected by the people as a Member of Parliament he represents the whole of
the people in his electorate and is not subject to any directions from the
party's organisation. When he becomes a Member of the Parliamentary
Liberal Party he, with his colleagues, is expected to implement the party's
platform, but is favoured with complete freedom of action without any attempt
to coerce hiim This stands in remarkable contrast to the highly regimented,
sternly disciplined org-anisation of the Labor Party, where policy-makers
outside Parliament dictate what the elected representatives should do and,
furthermore, exclude parliamentary leaders from a vote on policy-making
decisions. In the Liberal formation, the party has policies through which
it expresses its Liberal philosophy. It recommends sometimes strongly
and advises the parliamentary party, but final decisions are in the hands of
the elected members, with Cabinet giving the lead.
To give an example of the freedoms the Liberal Party allows.
In the Parliament, while Senators meet with members of the House of
Representatives i n joint Party meetings, the Senators also hold their own
party meeting to determine their approach to issues in the Senate. And
again, of course, the same individual freedoms apply. Labor, on the other / 6
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hand, has a single Parliamentary Caucus which determines the actions of
both parties and all their members, In both Houses.
The Liberal Party has its rules, its platform, and a
wide-ranging organisation. You might call it a loosely-knit co-operative,
inside as well as outside the party room and Parliament. There was a
signal demonstration of the liberality of the system recently during the
discussion and debate on the " Voyager" disaster. This was a grave matter,
raised by a Liberal back-bencher and taken freely through the party room and
the Parliament, although the Government had long ago reached a considered
judgment on the issues that were then re-opened.
And while 1 am on this point I would remind you that,
despite criticism of the growth of Cabinet power and its apparent domination
of Parliament, here was an example that the end authority remains with
Parliament in all matters. It is true, however, that the increasing pace of
government, and the number and range of matters that now have to be dealt
with, require positive leadership from the Cabinet and also decisions by the
Cabinet which, in Deakin's day, would have been the subject of long and
exhaustive debate in the Parliament.
The individual parliamentarian has a duty to represent
his electorate, to watch the interests of its people and be responsive to their
needs. He can do that most effectively when his representation fits into the
pattern of stat and national policy. He must, figuratively, lift his sights
from the parish pump to the Snowy Mountains.
There is, to my mind, as clear an obligation on the
Cabinet, as there is on the individual member, to take the responsibility of
leading in matters where new ground has to be broken or where action has to
be taken that has not been the subject of a mandate from the electorate. A
government, in simple terms, is elected first of all to govern and the
greater Information available, by virtue of their office, to those charged with
this task should encourage them to be bold, imaginative and forward-looking.
This is vital for a Federal Government today which has
to give leadership in significant fields not strictly within the constitutional
division of its powers. There is an old judgment, and a true one, that power
tends to move to the centre. Certainly, political responsibility has flowed
that way, although the Federal Parliament is not much larger or its powers
substantially greater. In the first Parliament there were 75 members in the
House of Rperesentatives. There has only been one major increase to 122
in 1949 and a recent submission to referendum for another was rejected by
a large majority. Yet to the business of Federal Government and Parliament
now come the needs of near twelve million people and a weight of extra
responsibilities which include national development, immigration, social
services, education, health, aborigines, civil aviation and tourism.
To deal with the work~ the Ministry has trebled in size
in the last fifty years. Deakin's last Ministry in 1909 was nine strong, with
one Minister without portfolio. Today the Ministry has twenty-six members,
of whom twelve are senior ministers making up the Cabinet.
You might like to have some Budget comparisons not the
one just coming up, for that is the business of my colleague, the Treasurer
but the one produced by the first Deakin Ministry in 1905-6 and the one we
brought down in Canberra last year.
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Deakin's first Government raised $ 24 million, spent $ 9 million
and gave $ 15 million back to the States.-
Receipts towards our last Budget were 400 million, of
which me spent 600 million and gave 800 million back to the States.
! n Deakin's Budget, the States got 62 per cent of total receipts, . last year
they got 34 per cent giving substantial evidence of how the responsibilities
and commitments of the Federal Government have grown.
Defence has become a major itern in our Budget nowadays.
In 1938-39, the last year of peace before World War 11, the Federal Budget
was creeping up towards its first œ 100 million figure ($ 200 million) and the
defence provision was 800, 000.
The total Budget topped; 10O million in 1939/ 40 and included
a provision of œ 12 million for defence and war, which in the event grew to
million in the first year of the war. In our last Budget, the defence
provision reached the record level of 000 million.
In brief, spending on defence 30 years ago tock
around 8 per cent of the Budget. ( In Deakin's day it was much the same).
Today defence is taking close on 20 per cent of the Budget.
The first basic, or minimum, wage in 1907 was four dollars
twenty cents a week. Today the minimum wage is thirty-seven dollars
forty-five cents a week.
There are new issues to face today, totally different from the
battle-cry of the Deakin age, and in a different nation and society. We have
absorbed into the British stock from which we sprang, people of forty or
more different nationalities. We are an affluent society, we have full
employment, a total wage system and a prescribed working week.
The Labor Party today has not the industrial issues to support
that it had in other years and in seeking new footholds of power it is, of
necessity, moving towards the centre. The pull of Labor to the left has
lost its momentum and the party is now seeking to invade ground firmly
held by the Liberals, while at the same time being reluctant to jettison its
doctrinaire attachment to socialism, a borrowed philosophy that has not
had any significant revision since 1921 despite all that has happened in
the forty-six years since then!
The issues bef ore us are those of national growth, the welfare
of our people, national security and our place in the international community.
We are deeply committed to the orderly and energetic development of the
rich treasures of this continent, a better education for our young people,
improved health for the population, security for the aged and infirm, the
advance of our technological skills, aid for the under-developed nations,
a strong defence system, fulfilment of our obligations under treaties and
the continuing encouragement of a special relationship with Asia.
These things carry us forward, and others drop away into
the mists. The imperialism of Deakin's time has gone and the " White
Australia" cry from his first platforms does not have the same relevance,
and happily the term is no longer used by us. It is true that we have an
immigration policy with restrictive aspects as do all countries in one form
or another, but it is humanely shaped,
it takes special note of our geographical position in Asia and it has recently / S
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been liberalised. Today we have just on 40, 000 people of non-European
origin living in Australia, of whom almost half are now Australian citizens
by bi rth or naturalisation. We are proud of our British heritage, and proud to share it with
these new Australians. While some of the old forms have disappeared, ties
of kinship remain and the traditional institutions of Britain are mirrored in
much of our life today. We have added to this special relationship with
Britain a complementary friendship with America, which too has drawn heavily
on British stock and institutions in the beginnings of its growth to be a mighty
pow'er. Liberalism is not static it belongs to the old world and the
new. In all the movements that have taken place it has been flexible,
pragmatic if you like, and yet it has never lost sight of fundamental
principles. I said earlier that the art of politics had not changed but that the
practice had. One biographer has ifiiminded me that Deakin was the only
Prime Minister of Australia to be summonsed for riding a bicycle on a
footpath. I confess tkat, as Treasurer, I was fined for speeding on the road
from Portsea. Mention of. this makes a point that the pace of politics is faster
today. It is also tougher and more demanding althougH we have new services
at our command. The stresses that took their toll of Deakin have been
replaced by new stresses and no parliamentarian can insulate himself from
them. We live in a jet age and we move into the supersonic age of
flight In three or four years' time. We live in a space age and, when the
orbiting satellites of the two most powerful nations on earth wink overhead
in the night sky as they pass in their endless orbits, few of us spare them a
glance. We live in an age of instantaneous communications and of the
exposure by television of public figures to audiences of millions in almost
every corner of the globe at any one moment in time. We have a new intimacy
with the world. The death of Julius Caesar took two years to become known
throughout the Roman Empire. Today we can speak by telephone to the South
Pole, we can see the shape of the earth on which we live photographed from
outer space. We can see pictures transmitted from the cratered surface of
the moon. In Canada recently when I attended Australia's Day at EXPO 67 in
Montreal I was able to read a facsimile of that day's front page of " The Sun"
newspaper, published here in Melbourne.
These are some of the fascinations of our day and age, but with
their excitements come new pressures on public men. Today a Prime Minister
goes round the world, not " trailing clouds of glory", but trailing a comet's
tail of cablegrams which lengthens as he goes and which keeps him posted with
going ou at home and jui abx eirywhe -else. He flies the jet streams at
33, 000 feet and six hundred miles an hour and can girdle the globe in fifty
hours. He sleeps, if he is lucky, in catnaps. Mostly he is at work on
his papers in flight and at most stopovers he has to face tlepress, radio
and television. He is expected to know what happened at Khatmandu that
very day and " Would he like to comment on what the Leader of the
Opposition said last night". The critics are unforgiving if a loose phrase by
a tired traveller can be taken the wrong way.
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He has dinner when he should be having breakfast, and
lunch, perhaps, in a no-man's-land of time above the clouds. He breaks
every known rule for good digestion. It used not to be like that. It took fifty
days to London In a ten-thousand-tonner at the turn of the century and a
travelling pprllamentarian had time to rest, to study his subject, prepare his
brief and be on his mettle for his first engagements. He also had the perfect
excuse, if affairs of state abroad could best be handled by diplomatic absence,
of pleading he couldn't spare the time that would be taken in travelling. Now
it is a case of " Come over for a day or two.
In my foreign journeys, I have travelled many routes,
across the Pacific, through Asia, across the Atlantic, over the Polar ice-cap.
You measure your journey in hours, not weeks, and drive yourself just a
little dizzy by keeping up with the clock changes, especially when you find
yourself flying forward into yesterday! On my last journey I had two Sundays
going over and lost a Wednesday out of my life on the homeward run.
At the beginning of Federation there was really only one
popular route for parliamentarians bound overseas to London and back by
sea. Yet I note from the record that at one Imperial Conference Deakin
attended he was in London for six weeks and ave-Zaged only four hours' sleep
a night. So the pressures obviously were there though the forms were
different. The practice of politics at home was also different. There
was a sharper awareness among the voting public, they had things on their
mind and they wanted something done about them. The class divisions were
clear-cut and there were great causes around every corner. Apart from
organised meetings and street corner addresses, the press was the only
means of political communication. And the press of the day had " fire in its
belly". Newspapers took up opposite positions and saw little compromise.
" The Age" stood for protection and tariffs, " The Argus" stood for free trade.
Political speeches were reported at length and the
reporter, a fast, skilled and knowledgeable fellow, happily inserted his
comments, according to the policy of his paper.
A two-hour election speech of those days would rate ten
minutes on radio or five on TV today. It would rate half an hour on the
platform and half a column of main points in a daily paper. Speeches in the
Parliament of the new Federation were packed with immense detail. Many
ran longer than two hours and on one occasion Deakin spoke for three and one
quarter hours. I shudder to think what would happen to the business of the
House if Members claimed so much of their parliamentary colleagues' time
today. When Deakin made his first election policy speech as
Prime Minister at Ballarat it got six columns of solid type in the daily press.
And the type was smaller and the columns wider than they are today.
I liked the warm and friendly touch of one report of
Deakin's first Eastern States election campaign. He went by train to Sydney
and by carriage to the City Hall, where the " Town Clerk formally welcomed
him over a glass of wine, the Lord Mayor being absent in Melbourne for the
Cup. i Today news reporting of politics is not interlarded with
opinion and it is good that this is so. The opinion is supplied by editorials
and identified commentators. The cover is not as extensive, though major
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policy speeches and Budgets always get extended space. There is no
violent collisbn of newspaper policies as there was in the wilder, colonial
days. The general habit of the press, while broadly liberal or conservative
in its inclinations, is to keep its columns open to other opinions and the
presentation of policies opposed to its own. The press treatment of
politicians is much more an exercise in personal journalism and human
interest than it used to be.
Throughout his Federal political career, even as Prime
Minister, Deakin wrote anonymously for the London " Morning Post" and
for all his familiarity with the press, he remained sensitive to the
harsh light it shed on men in the posts of political power. In his " Federal
Story" he says
" Public life in Australia is impaired by the almost entire absence
of respect for the privacies of official life and for the persons
of those in power. The passion for equality which sways the
multitude contains a spice of envy which encourages the belittling
of even those whom they are delighting to honour. The crowd
always retains to itself the privilege of chastising its gods in
time of adversity while worshipping the m in days of prosperity."
Now it chastises them, even in, aiys of prosperity:
I like Oliver's comments. He says that a politician's critics
claim that " A politician lacks natural intelligence as well as education;
he has no foresight, no constancy of purpose beyond the pursuit
of his own advantage M oralists, idealists, humanitarians
are equally severe. They are shocked by his unveracity, by
the deadness of his soul to all the higher emotions.. he is never
more than a lip-servant of sacred causes and then only when they
happen to be in fashion.
" Soldiers, sailors and country gentlemen are convinced that no-one
who talks so much, and obviously knows so little, about the
conduct of war and the management of land can possibly understand
any department whatsoever of public affairs.
" The great army of company directors, and others of a certain age
whom newspapers describe as ' captains of industry' condemn
him for his lack of practical ability, initiative, push and go; they
suspect him of being a lazy fellow who likes to draw a salary for
doing next to nothing.
" Jingoes denounce him as a traitor if he is not forever plucking
foreign nations by the beard.... pacifists consider him to be the
chief cause of war
" The magnates of the popular press, secure behind their private
telephone entanglements, sneer at his want of courage; and the
man-of -the -world most ingenuous of dotterels takes up the
same tale from his club arm-chair
" What humbug, it is, for the most part, and what a welter should
we be in, if the politicians, taking these lectures to heart, were
to hand over the management of public affairs to their critics"'
11
Ours is a grudging democracy which holds politicians
in low esteem. In the United Kingdom, with its long political tradition,
there is more respect for the office-holder, and he is more likely to be
judged on his merits. In America, the political leader is built into something
larger than life-size and there is disenchantment when it becomes obvious
that the leader cannot live comfortably In the rarefied atmosphere that has
been created for him. In Australia there is a comparative apathy towards
political issues. For example, you do not see the same surge, the same
vitality of political interest in student bodies that you get in other countries.
This, I believe, is because we have moved along ordered lines under the
Constitution, and because we have become an aiflucnt society, with a clear
course ahead of us, comfortably situated in a congenial Pacific environment.
Most contemplate the dangers of our geographical location as casually as
they accept the promise and opportunity opening before us. There are real
dangers in this if we let complacency over-ride the satisfactions of a job
well done. I find great encouragement in the type of young men and
women who are now being attracted to the Liberal Party. There is no " fiery
cross of Federation" ( as Deakin put it) for them to hold aloft and make the
sky bright with its blazing, but they have a challenge to take up. I have
mentioned it earlier and I repeat it now
It is concerned directly with the continuity of good and
responsible government.
II t i s concerned wi th tie growth df Australia and the
development of our new external relationships.
* It is concerned with the preservation of free enterprise
and political liberty.
It is concerned with Australia today, strong and free,
going forward across new horizons.
Our critics have said " Where are the great memorials
to all the years of Liberal rule?" My answer simply is that the nation itself,
and the shape it is in, is the finest memorial of all. The orderly but rapid
national progress in qn environment of political, social and economic
stability; the preservation of liberty, personal freedom and incentive for the
individual; the continui-ty of em, 51lyment, improvement in living standards and
social welfare, the growth in international influence these are some of the
more notable achievements consistently sustained in the years of post-war
Liberal leadership. Australians would do well to recognise the good fortune
we enjoy in a world where so much wretchedness, turbulence and insecurity
persist. We do not wish to be remembered by solitary spectaculars,
but by what we have done to ensure the happiness, prosperity and security
of the people of Australia and to be respected abroad for our policies and
achievements. There are new excitements around us and adventures
to share. The skills of new Australians have been joined to our own. Things
are happening in the cities and on the plains, along the valleys and over the / 12
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mountains. From the gold and the wool and the wheat of Deakin's day, we
have spread our energies and our initiatives very widely indeed.
We can make most things that others can make; we
have found oil and we are taking gas from the sea. The immensity of our
recently discovered mineral resources and the rapid start with their
development is helping to shape a new order of growth.
We can travel through the old kingdoms and former
colonies of Asia and we number among them more friends than most European
nations can count. This is the wider world in which we have to live now, and
we take our place in it with confidence, secure in the knowledge that the
Federation, the Commonwealth of Australia that Deakin did so much to
establish, has strength and that its people are proud of their great inheritance.
There is one final matter I want to put before you
because it will be of critical importance to all of us in the years ahead. I
refer to defence and the British Government's historic decision to make a
total military withdrawal from the mainland of ' South-East Asia by the
We are facing fundamental changes in our defence
strategy and in our foreign policy. For some time now we have had under
active examination the alternatives for Australia in the event that Britain
should decide upon the course its Government has now declared. In o~ ur
planning we take account of the interests and capabilities of our friends in
this area and elsewhere. It is appropriate to remind you that our defence and
our security are covered by two parallel defence lines in the Pacific and
South-East Asia. The first line is one of friendships, trade and aid
over the whole area. Our trade has increased by loseon f pr cenwflth
Asia in recent years but much of it has been with Japan. We must diversify
this effort so that we can help the economy of Asian nations to become viable
and so assist them to develop their own defences.
We are giving 0. 7 per cent, of our national income to
external aid and in this we rank second in percentage terms after France,
among the aid-giving nations of the world. At this time, the average level
of world aid for the needy nations is declining and nations like America and
Britain are reducing the relative percentage they give. Australia on the other
hand is still increasing her level of aid.
Already we are associated with every established
international aid-giving organisation of any substance and we are giving our
aid without strings. Our traffic in friendship is also increasing. As your
Prime Minister, I have been to Asia three times in 20 months and my Ministers
have been in the aggregate many more times than that. A cultural exchange
programme with South-East Asia in due course will, also, I hope add to
goodwill and understanding. All these things are elements in the first line of
defence. The second line of defence is one covered by treaties / 13
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with friendly powers and includes currently a military capability in South-
East Asia. We have been associated with Britain for many years past in the
Commonwealth area of Malaysia and Singapore. Yet this is not the only
forward post we are manning or where our only interests lie and I need not
tell you how vital it is to us that the cause for which we are fighting in support
of the United States and other allies in Vietnam should be sustained until an
honourable peace is won. It would be wrong for me at this stage to attempt
to indicate to you what the new shape of our military defence line will be,
but I want to say this. The two defence lines that we have are of vital
importance to us. Their strength is a responsibility that a Government has
to assume for the people who have placed it in power. It is a responsibility
falling sqtnrely on a sovereign, independent nation
In the first days of Federation, Alfred Deakin fought
stoutly for an Australian Navy. He urged the formation of a permanent
Australian military force and for compulsory national service to support
those forces. He foresaw the tasks that one day must come to a young nation
in the Pacific and Asian areas. We face them now. There is no turning
aside from our geography nor must there be any turning aside from what we
Liberals conceive to be Australia's national destiny.