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PRIME MINISTER
MACQUARIr NETWORK
W! E KLY BROADCAST
BY THE PRI ? M. 1INiSTER, TH-E RT. 1,1N. WILLI7M !" cMATJON
Cli, M P JULY 1972
NcRUmERN DEVELOPMENT
Good Evening I thought on this occasiorn I would vary the diet a
little and talk about sonic of the things that make Australia such
a great and wonderful country to live in.
Some time ago, I received an invitation to go up
to the North that is the Far W. est, ' East and West Kimberley,
Cove and Darwin. And t-he matters that excited my interest were
t%-hese. Australia is a country that needs a tremendous amount of
1w. ater conservation. W~ need oxrnorts in orier to permit our
dcve lopment to go on a-nd our standards of living to imnrovr..
We also have -the nroblems of the environme-nt, anal
I also wanted to make anquirles, if I could, about the Crown of
Thorns Starfish and the Groat Barrior Roef.
First of all, then about iwater conservation. I was
invited up to ovnen a dcm in Darw; in that will cqiva water suplyl
there for many years to comei. A~ nd Darwoin is, I believe, thet
fastest-growing capital if I might uri that word in Australia.
T was alba invitod to go across to the Ord Damp.
And to give you an impression of what it is ] ike, the Ord will
zervice an area t-wi ce as big as Victoria and will have nine times
as mnuch wate-r as Sydney Harbour.
i. n tim~ e there is no douht tha-t this water conservation
will pay big dividends for us.
Up th." ere 7hen talking about tie Ord scheme, -they
talk about " Sydharl. s" ( Sydney HWarboui). And they mea-ure -the
water flow bv the amount of: water in the Sydnfey Hlarbour that
would pass through the gateways in the course of half an hour,
and believe me, it is a tremendous amount of water.
2
I then moved on to the second place that I had to
open, and that is the works in Gove, right up in the far North-
East of the Northern Territory. About $ 300-$ 350 million has been
spent here in order to establish bauxite and alumina works. There
is a difference between the two.
And in the not too distant future, we will be exporting
overseas approximately $ 60 million worth of bauxite and alumina per
annum. There is a large Australian holding in the Corporation
and the Australian holding can be increased should they wish to do
so in the future. I then went on to a place called Mission Beach, just
south of Cairns. My main reason for going was that it was on the way
home but I also wanted to have a look at the Crown of Thorns Starfish
and see to what extent this could be controlled so as to ensure that
the Reef could be maintained.
The Reef will be in the future as it is now a great
attraction throughout the world. CSIRO is working on the problem and
we have had a commission that has reported to us about it. I now know
a lot more about this and I will be taking a bigger interest in it
when I return home. These were the reasons for my visit. And then I realised
during the time I have been here what a tremendous potential the
whole of the North has, not only for Australians because I hope
they will be able to enjoy it to the full but also for overseas
people as well. The North is a wonderful area. It is part of the greatness
of this country. It gives a tremendous amount of enjoyment to everyone
who has the opportunity to travel up here. And I believe Australians
will be able to travel here much more in the future.
Goodnight.