E&OE.................
Thank you very much David for those very warm words of introduction. To
Alan Gregory who has provided magnificent leadership to the Menzies Trust
over so many years, and particularly do I welcome Denis Napthine, the newly
elected Leader of the Opposition here in Victoria.
The predecessor of mine as Prime Minister and Leader of the Liberal Party,
Sir Robert Menzies, and I shared a number of common experiences separated
by many years and one of them, of course, was a long period in opposition.
I hope that that is not your lot in life but there will be a period in Opposition.
It's a period which is immensely challenging. It's a period that comes the
way of most people who spend any length of time in public life. I mean,
you could be lucky like somebody say Graham Richardson, for example, who
was never in opposition. You can waltz into parliament and be there for
a short period of time and then go out having never experienced the challenges
of opposition. But if you are to have a full political existence your predecessor
had challenging years in opposition and came to be, in my view, one of the
great Premiers that Australia has seen, certainly in the period after World
War II.
So to you, Denis, I wish you well. You will have the total cooperation and
understanding of your federal parliamentary colleagues. We will work together
with you to provide a strong alternative to the new Government here in Victoria.
I want to welcome so many of you as old friends, as supporters, as fellow
Liberals, as members of the National Party, and I am delighted to acknowledge
the presence of my old Cabinet colleague, Peter Nixon. We shared many experiences
together in the Fraser/Anthony Government between 1975 and 1983. And I also
acknowledge with gratitude the presence of so many members of the Menzies
family.
This is quite a pleasure for me because I remember the first experience
I had I delivering a Menzies lecture in the circumstances described by Alan
Gregory back in 1980 when I was Treasurer in the Fraser Government. And
again I had the privilege in 1996 not long after our victory in that year
as Prime Minister to again deliver the lecture.
This Trust, of course, has its genesis at Monash University when in 1976
members of the Monash University Liberal Club under the leadership of Michael
Kroger resolved that they would create the Menzies Trust in the image of
the Deakin Trust of the Melbourne University Club.
Heather Henderson recalls how her father was approached to lend his name
to the Trust which he so readily did. And so it was established and it had
great names in the Victorian Liberal cause - Alan Gregory, Stan Guilfoyle,
Andrew Peacock and Sir Billy Snedden. The meeting was set up with Sir Robert
to meet members of the club executive. It was to have been held in June
in 1978 but unfortunately Sir Robert died several months before then and
the meeting could not take place.
Alan Gregory records the intense interest of Dame Pattie while she was alive
and of Heather Henderson in the activities of the Trust and I remember being
honoured by Heather's presence when I delivered the lecture in 1996. And
as patron of the Australian Liberal Students Federation it's always a special
pleasure for me to be associated with any event that brings into focus the
contribution of Liberal students to political thought and political debate
in Australia. And I am very pleased that the Government I lead, and David
Kemp in particular as Education Minister, has pushed for fulfilment, so
far frustrated by the Senate I might say, of our commitment for genuine
Liberal freedom in relation to membership of student unions. And it was
from the activities of the members of the Monash University Liberal club
and many other Liberal clubs around Australia that our policy on those issues
was devised.
The lectures presented in this book are a kaleidoscope of Liberal and conservative
thought over the years. I use those two words very deliberately because
one of the special characteristics of the Liberal Party of Australia is
that it has, unlike some other centre right parties around the world, it
has been the trustee of both the Liberal and the conservative traditions
in Australia. And the pluralism of the Liberal Party on many things reflects
that joint trusteeship. We are not an exclusively conservative party nor
are we an exclusively small "l" Liberal Party, we are a combination
of the two. And it's an important obligation of any Liberal Party leader
to reflect and to respect that tradition.
There are many favourite stories, of course, recounted of Sir Robert in
this book of lectures. There is the one attributed to Geoffrey Blainey,
who after Menzies had won the federal election in 1949 Sir Robert was approached
by a young journalist who said "please sir, now that you have won will
you be answerable to the vested interest that supports you?" To which
Sir Robert gave the classic reply "Young man, please leave my wife
out of this debate."
Alan Gregory quotes those wonderful words of the late Sir Paul Hasluck which
many of us heard at that magnificent function he organised at the Southern
Cross Hotel in 1989 to honour the 90th birthday of Dame Pattie
Menzies. And Sir Paul said "the Menzies post-war years stand as a great
period in Australian history. Australia had stability. Australia had a sound
base for reorganisation. There was regularity, high standards and the utmost
probity in all aspects of government. Australia stood with dignity and growing
respect in a reconstructed world. Our economy was managed with care. To
use a phrase of the period, we walked the knife-edge of inflation without
losing balance. We kept a high level of employment. We guarded the overseas
balances. Great care was taken over all appointments to public office and
scrupulous control of government expenditures. In Menzies' years in Australia
tradition was respected and progress was soundly based."
In his 1985 lecture David Kemp recorded that when Sir Robert left office
unemployment was under two per cent, inflation was almost non-existent and
a person on average earnings paid about 16 per cent of his income in tax
at a top marginal rate of 27.
I reflected on my own impression of Menzies in my 1996 lecture when I said
"Menzies political genius lay in that basic affinity with the aspirations
of the Australian people. He understood the priority they placed on jobs,
on raising living standards, on home ownership, on high economic growth,
on a sense of national unity and on opportunities for their children that
were greater than they themselves had experienced. And he developed priorities
in national policy making and a role for national government that enabled
those aspirations to be achieved."
It is appropriate, as Alan said, that we should gather here in this beautiful
Parliament building in Melbourne to launch this book because it was here
in this building in this Parliament that RG Menzies began his political
career. And it will be appropriately in this building that the Commonwealth
Parliament will return in May of 2001 as one of the great events of the
Centenary of Federation to sit after having re-enacted as best we can the
inauguration of the Commonwealth Parliament in the Exhibition building to
then sit here in ordinary session and to honour the magnificent achievement
of 100 years of the Australian Federation in an event that I believe will
in a very symbolic way unite all of the Australian people across the political
divide and irrespective of their beliefs and attitudes on other issues.
At Prahran Town Hall Menzies delivered his first political speech in 1926.
He was accompanied by his uncle Sydney Sampson and he turned to his uncle
after the speech and asked how he went to which the reply was "My dear
boy, as an argument to the High Court of Australia it was admirable; as
an address to the electors, it was hopeless. The art of political advocacy
is the art of judicious and varied repetition." I have never heard
that suggested before. "Until you learn to repeat yourself with skill
you will never make a good politician." I will not make any comment
on that.
But the lecturers over the last twenty years have represented, as I said,
a tremendous kaleidoscope not only of thought but of personalities that
have richly contributed to the intellectual and the intellectual leadership
of Australia.
Great defenders of our institutions and our systems that have made us strong.
They have included Sir Garfield Barwick, Sir Harry Gibbs, Dame Leonie Kramer,
Sir Paul Hasluck, Geoffrey Blainey, Sir Zelman Cowen, Allan Martin, Don
Argus, Hugh Morgan, Peter Costello, David Kemp, Jeff Kennett as well as
successive Liberal Party leaders.
The speech, of course, that stands out in the minds of many was that delivered
by Margaret Thatcher in 1981. I might say it was delivered where it
was always meant to be delivered at the university in circumstances of great
difficulty. The university administration, as Ron Wilson describes, was
less than enthusiastic about the visit and on a number of occasions urged
the Trust and the Club to hold the lecture off the campus. The Hall committee
refused to accommodate requests for a large lecture hall as a venue. The
matter was only resolved when the Vice Chancellor rang the club president
at home to advise that due to the intervention of Malcolm Fraser as Prime
Minister the Blackwood Hall had suddenly become available. A sad footnote
to that particular visit was that a letter of thanks delivered on behalf
of Margaret Thatcher by her then parliamentary secretary, Ian Gow, proceeded
by only a few days his murder by the Irish Republican Army.
Ladies and gentlemen, today is an occasion to honour the contribution, not
only of Sir Robert Menzies to the life of our nation but also to honour
the importance within our community of keeping alive the spirit of ideas
and the spirit of political debate. It has to be said that we on our side
of politics, if I can use the broad collective, have not always been as
successful as we might have been in defending and postulating the intellectual
and philosophical basis of our beliefs. It is not only important to win
elections, it is also important to win arguments and if you can win both
elections and arguments then you have been truly successful.
Menzies was the greatest election winner that Australia has ever seen. He
was also of course a great winner of arguments and a great advocate in his
cause. You were never in any doubt as to where he stood on an issue. He
was not one for temperising, he was not one for mincing words, he was not
one for deferring to fashionable views of what ought to occur if those views
coincided with what he perceived to be the national interest. He was a man,
in my view, who quite correctly believed that on some issues you should
be willing to argue for fundamental change and on other issues you should
be willing to stand by something that continued to work and continued to
work in the national interest. It is an approach that guides and instructs
me in my attitude to public issues in Australia at present. I respect the
plural tradition of the Liberal Party. I respect the fact that the Liberal
Party has always regarded itself as a defender of free thought and individual
conscience.
For that reason and because this is essentially a gathering of people who
could loosely be described as being broadly supportive of the Liberal Party
in the Australian political milieu I have refrained from making any explicit
reference to matters that are the subject of political debate in Australia
at the present time because the Liberal Party, quite correctly in my view,
is affording to its parliamentary members the privilege of a free or open
vote on that issue and I think that is the right and correct thing for us
to do. Can I say two other things. And that is that in Sir Paul's great
address to Dame Pattie's 90th anniversary.90th birthday
party celebration 10 years ago he spoke of the stability and strength of
Australia during the Menzies years and he spoke of the regard in which Australia
was held at that time.
Although the circumstances now are very different and Australia is a very
different country now from what it was in those days and to draw slavish
comparisons between the two would be an immense error, there is nonetheless
a resonance in those words when you look at the condition of Australia at
the present time. We have not had such strong economic conditions in this
country at any time, in my belief, than we have now since World War II.
It is also fair to say that in recent times Australia has demonstrated to
the rest of the world with a clarity and speed, her capacity to display
strong leadership on foreign affairs and defence issues within the Asian
Pacific region. The regard in which Australia is held not only in the region
but around the world because of the action we took in relation to East Timor,
an action that respected the long term importance of a close relationship
between Australia and Indonesia but nonetheless also respected the importance
of standing up for what was right and what was in the Australian national
interest.
And that action has won for Australia enormous respect. It has demonstrated
our capacity to act strongly and independently and with a sense of not only
the national interest but also a sense of what is right within the Australian
community and within the region and I believe that Australia's standing
as a consequence of that is immeasurably greater than would have been the
case if we had fumbled and passed over an opportunity to display such tremendous
leadership.
I am delighted that this launch today coincides with the second volume of
Alan Martin's biography which I will read as well with intense interest.
I read the first instalment of that biography some years ago as many in
this audience would have and I was struck by the, I think, the intellectual
rigour, the accuracy and the historical perspectives of it and I look forward
to the second volume.
I remember the phrase that was used by Sir Robert after his deposing by
his own party in 1940 and he described how he was going to go away and bleed
a while. And he did, he bled a while but he recovered from the experience
and he returned with very great strengths and an enhanced capacity and went
on to become Australia's longest serving and greatest Prime Minister.
This volume and those who have contributed to it I thank them, I honour
their contribution to political and intellectual thought in Australia I
have great pleasure in launching it and finally Alan could I pay a very
special tribute to you for the enormous leadership that you have shown in
this enterprise. You have been the driving force behind the Trust, you have
kept it alive you have gathered support, you have won the respect of all
of us and today's gathering is a very special tribute to you as well as
to the memory of Australia's greatest Prime Minister. Thank you.
[ends]