FEDERAL~~~ COUNCI OFTELBEA AT
OF AUSTALI
HoeCaner CabraACT
DlgHtoeCla imCnab ra: aberA . T
It is in some ways a very awesome thing to stand here in
front of you at a place where two great leaders have previously stood and
to address a Party which for so long has kept in power a government which
has enabled Australia to be transformed. I think that most of you will
understand the humility with which anybody must, for the first time, appear
before you in a place where those other leaders have for so long appeared.
I don't propose to talk to you for very long tonight, but there are some
matters I think we must regard, as a party, as new matters for Australia
to consider, as new matters for the members of this Party to solve.
Some of them, of course, are not entirely new but they are
new in the degree to which they impinge upon us, and one of those is the matter
of defending our country. it has been since the last Federal Conferencq Of
this Party that the final decision has been taken for the accelerated withdrawal,
and what appears virtually a complete withdrawal, of the United Kingdom from
the countries to our North and from East of Suez. And though for a lor~ g time
we have been talking, all of us, of the need for more defence for Australia,
of the need to look more to ourselves for our own security, yet this has only
recently been brought home in the starkest terms.
It may be traversing ground which ought not to be traversed,
but yet we should have it in our mind that for nearly two centuries we lived
under the protection of Great Britain. It was her Navy that kept us safe,
and it was only when crises arose that young men and women flocked from all
corners of this Cornonwealth and made sacrifices, at whatever level was
required, during the time of conflict. In between little attention was devoted
to defence. Now that has changed and must be accepted as a new situation
facing Australia. So we find that we have had, as a government, to raise a
vote for our own defences which was running at some $ 400 million a year
to a vote which is running at 250 million and which in terms of money,
I think, will over the years ahead need to Ire raised still more ( though not, if
I can help it in terms of our gross national product).
Not only has this new situation forced this vast diversion
of resources upon us but it has exacerbated the solution of the other new
problems to which as a nation and as a party we are pledged. And yet
some of these problems cannot just be put aside. I hate, and I believe most
of the peop le in this room would hate the thought of all those resources
devoted to defence. When we think of the number of schools, of the number
of hospitals, of the new freeways, of all the things for which the people of
Australia are calling which could be provided with that sum of money, we
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must regret that it is necessary for that sum to go to defence. However,
schools, freeways, hospitals and all these other things are of little use
unless they can be safely held and defended by the country which has them.
But there are matters which cannot, in a modern nation
with a modern conscience, be put aside or denied. Here, too, though these
are not new matters yet, Sir, I think there needs to be a new approach, a
new examination. You have all heard me speak from time to time of the
essential need to care for the old, the ill, the handicapped in our population,
But up until very recently we, as a Liberal Party, took the view that our
contribution towards such people should be just that, a contribution, and
that we would expect them to receive from other sources, from their
family or from some charity, or from another source somewhere,
additional assistance to enable them to live in reasonable self-respect.
I don't believe that is an approach that can any longer be accepted by the
Liberal Party. I believe that the new and necessary approach and the one
which my Government will take must be to see that a contribution made to
such people is sufficient for them to live in frugal comfort and with
reasonable self-respect, so that there is no need for appeals to be made
for blankets to keep them warm or for fuel for their houses in the winter
or for additional food because they do not have enough. This, in a sense,
is a new approach but it is an approach, Sir, that we must make.
In its application it is not simple. Again, always in the past
in seeking to help people of this kind, we have dealt with a broad buh. we
have said, " Let us raise this pension or that pension by so much across the
board. This approach, I think, is wrong and wasteful in that it on occasions
leads to the provision of more than is required for the standards of which
I have spoken to be attained, and on occasions leads to less. For that.
reason we have, as a government, a Welfare Committee researching and
searching into the requirements of people of this kind so that the aid ca * n be
given where the need is greatest and so that there will be, from the resources
available, sufficient to meet those areas where the need is great.
This Committee, which has already resulted in your
Government removing one great fear that was in the hearts of the Australian
people and that is the fear of a long-continued illness being unable to be
paid for by the community, is bringing down recommendations to us which
will seek to attain the ends and ideals I have been putting before you. And
while they are seeking to do that, they will also, as I believe from the ' work
they have already done, ensure that in doing what I have suggested shoul d
be done, they will not remove the incentive, will not remove the rewaroi for
those who have saved to assist themselves over and above what the com~ munity
may give them when they retire.
We have, you have, all this period of time since 1949,
created a climate in which, gradually at first, then with ever-increasing
speed, Australia has become transformed. All that time ago, you rejected
a concept which I believe was inherent in the philosophy of our opponents,
and that concept was that the individual existed to serve the state and that
the state did not exist to serve the individual. And from that grew an
insistence on controls, unnecessary controls, and from that grew a .9/ 3
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stagnation which became so impossible to bear, which resulted in a rate
of unemployment of five per cent which was said to be all that a developed
country could expect to attain, that you revolted against it and changed it
and changed the philosophy. As a result, you brought about that climate of
development, that Possibility for the individual to take his risks and reqp
his rewards if he were successful and to take the consequences if he wasn'tt,
according to his own efforts and according to his own ability and energy.
So in that period of time, this country grew to the stage of incipient gr~ atness
in which it now finds itself.
It finds itself now in a position it has never been inbefore.
This again is something new which faces the nation and which faces
us as a Liberal Party. You all know of the enormous developments now
taking place in the North of Western Australia, in the seas off the coast
of Victoria, in Queensland, and of the immense material benefits which will
flow and are flowing from them nickel, iron ore, oil, minerals of all
kinds, requiring not millions, but billions of capital for their full and
proper -development; another call upon the national resources which is
new, a requirement as I believe, Sir, for this Party to accept that it is
necessary, with these possibilities before us, with the capital required for
their full development being hard to get, that priorities of development for
the good of the nation need to be examined and need to be decided.
Then we come to another matter, on upon which, Sir,
we touched this morning, one which will be the subject of future discussion
by the Party, and that is, in your own. words: What sort of a Federal
system do w want, and how can we best make a Federal system work?
Is it right and proper that nearly a quarter of a century after a general
philosophical programme was adopted in a country which was then different
from the position in which it now finds itself, in a country which had
problems not measurable against those now to be faced, that we should look
again to see whether the philosophy then adopted meets the requirement of
a nation a quarter of a century later.
This is new. It is good that it is new. It is good that
it is going to be discussed. WV ith one of the points so long ago adopted', Sir,
I believe there can be absolutely no question, and with that all here would
agree, and that is enshrined in the words.. " the development to the fullest
extent of a national spirit in Australia". It has been growing. I am su* re
it will grow, and I am certainly going to do all that is within my power, as
a leader of the Liberal Party to see that this national spirit is fostered and
is developed and that everybody in Australia now, or in thirty years' ti me
wnen we will be twenty-eight million people, will feel some kind of fire in
the heart when they say, " I am an Australian" first, foremost and all the
time. Then the next point which will be the subject of discussion
is this phrase... " the maintenance unimpaired of a Federal system of
government with appropriate divisions of power". We will need to examine
what is meant by " unimpaired" because quite clearly it doesn't mean
" unchanged'" or else we would not, as a Liberal Party, have changed as
we have in such things as passing a referendum on aborigines and in other
ways. What we need to work out in our philosophy is not the question of
divisions of funds. This of course comes later. This of course is importart,
but this of course is different from what I am now talking about. / A
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What we need is to consider let me put it rather not
in terms of what we need, but the kind of approach which I have in mind and
with which some may agree, others may notj but which it is time for this
Party to thoroughly examine.
In my view, Sir, it would be unthinkable for an
Australian Government not to have the overriding power over the maintenance
of the Australian economy as a whole. It would be unthinkable to have a
nation where an Australian Government could not assess the resources and
materials available throughout the nation and could not, if necessary, let
credit run so that all materials and all resources were used, and if necessary,
restrict credit so that cost inflation because of an over-demand on materials
and resources availabledid not occur. I don't really * think this is a subject
of dispute, but it is the starting point from which I begin.
I think that it is necessary for an Australian Government
to be able to effec t the division of resources in the nation betweL:. 1 the public
and the private sector according to its requirements of private development
or of public development, and I know of no other way in which this can be
done but by an Australian Government.
I think that it is necessary, if these tenets I have put
forward are accepted, that the major fields of taxation in Australia should
be, as they are now under the Constitution, the responsibility of an
Australian Government, both as to their use and as to the rates of taxation apphed
within them. It would seem to me to be silly, if to meet some particular
economic situation for the good of the nation, the Treasurer for example,
lowered the rate of income tax in order to enable more to be available to be
spent by the private sector and private people, and burdens to be taken
off those who are now so heavily burdened, the middle range, and were to
do this for economic reasons, and those taxes were to be arranged again
by some other source. These are all matters o f overall economic management.
These are all matters which now, under the Constitution, are the responsibility
of an Australian Government. There are, of course, other fields in which much
discussion can take place. I will deal with only one of them. I would ike
the conference to feel, as I hope they do feel, that what I am saying to jhem
is what I feel is for the good of Australia as a whole and a necessity if:
Australia is to progress in the way it should. They are not just light or
random thoughts. There is a need for an Australian Government to be ' able
to move to a field of special assistance somewhere in Australia if that field
of special assistance is going to be of benefit to this nation, and it cannot,
without an Australian Government, be exp loited.
if, for example, there is to be a requirement for cheap
power to be provided somewhere in Queensland and it is known that if
that cheap power is provided then there will be twenty other industries
established to use it and a port will grow into a city as a result, but it
will cost $ 200 million, then there would be a requirement for an Australian
Government to be able to assist in that way. If there is to be a requirement
for a pipeline to bring natural gas from somewhere in Australia to Adelaide
and it cannot be achieved without assistance from a national government, then
a national government needs to be able to have the right and the capacity to
assist in that way.
I don't think I need to expand this list, but I would ask the
conference to put this question in their minds. But for the use of grants
such as Section 96, Sir, do you believe that we would now have a uniform
system of rail gauges throughout Australia? You answer it in your own
minds. I don't believe we would. ^ o there is a need, too, for this kind of
assistance, and this kind of capacity for an Australian Government.
Let me refer to another matter, another aspect of the same
matter because these are all things that this Party must look at and malke
up its mind about and they are important and they need not be the subject
of snap judgments. I think that there is a demand from the people of
Australia as a whole, and I think it is a just and a proper and a necessary
demand that after general purpose grants have been provided to State
Governments as they have been and will be in increasing amounts, there is
a need on behalf of an Australian Government that certain responsibilities
to the nation are met. There is a need, for example, to see that the
facilities for the education of a child are roughly the same, no matter in
what part of Australia that child may be born and grow up. There is a
need and a requirement to see that the facilities for the care of the ill are
roughly the same in Australia, no matter where it may be that a citizen
falls ill. These, if they are demands and I believe they are and
if they are proper demands and I think they are are again matters in which
an Australian Government must concern itself.
If it is true and I believe it is true, that in the world of
today we must grow, not only economically but technologically, if it is true
we must develop our own technology and train people in methods of operation
and methods of building and methods of application of time, if this is
true, then it is a national requirement that proper technical and technclogical
education is applied throughout the whole of Australia. If that is a national
requirement, then no national government can sit baclk and wash its hands
of that responsibility and say, " Oh, but general purpose grants have been
made and there is nothing further for us to do, even if this requirement
isn't met. So I am glad that amongst the other new things that I have
mentioned and the other problems which we face and the other calls upon
us which prevent us from being able, because of a shortage of manpower and
material to do all we want to do, that this other matter is to be a subject of
discussion. I have sought merely tonight, because I thought it was my
duty, to give an insight into some of my thinking to those of you who are here.
I don't believe it would be true or right or proper to describe that thinking
as the thinking of a centralist or a unificationist. It is the thinking of somebody
who believsthat national requirements do exist, there is a responsibility on a
national government to see they are met, but that after that, then the
general grants made and made in increasing quantities are used and
administered by those governments nearest to the people.
So it will be an interesting discussion, a necessary discussion,
a new approach. I think in any case that on the record of what we have done
we ought to be able to solve the problems still before us With you, I
look forward to that day I spoke of when we are not twelve but twenty-eight
million and growing more rapidly to forty million and becoming a great
material power, a power with a social conscience, applying those principles
we are now working out and will begin to apply again in the next Budget, and
giving to our people the feeling not only of material greatness but a capacity
and an opportunity to develop themselves and their own individuality which
after all was one of the reasons, if not the most important reason for the
foundation of this Liberal Party. I think, Sir, we will be able to achieve these
things together.