65/ 040
OPENING A~ ND DEDICATION OF WHITLEY COLLEGE,
UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE 27TH F-bmuaiY, 1265
õ iec y h rg Ministej r e. hRt oj! 2L._ Sir ~ bt en e
Mr. Chairman, Mr. President and Ladies and Gentlemen t
If you look at your programme you will see that
you are about to listen to an oration. ( Laughter) This is
a sort of university practice. In some cases I an called on
to make a speech. In some cases, rather deceptively, to say
a few words; ( Laughter) but at any university gathering it
turns out to be an oration, but I assure you it won't be.
What I find myself cast for now, having listened
to my predecessors, is a few supplementary observations,
supplementary in particular to what Sir Leslie Martin has
said to you. I have had the great good fortune to have been
mixed up a little in the recent university developments in
Australia. I remember that not long after I came back into
office I think it was in 1950 or 1951 we appointed a
committee to have a look at the immediate needs of the
universities. It was, looking back on it, a singularly
modest committee because it didn't cost us very much a
million or two and it seemed very cheap at the time, But
when it was conducting its discussions, it came to my knowledge
that at least one person connected with it had said there
ought to be no recommendation about residential colleges,
because they were luxuries, and if people wanted to have a
luxury of that kind, they should pay for it.
I thought this was a barbarous sentiment, and
being younger then I am now, more audacious than I am now
and more domineering than I am now I said " Unless you make
a report which includes something lor residential colleges,
I won't have the report at all," And so we got the first
little morsel, but we established a very important principle.
Then later on, as you know, ife appointed the
Murray Commission. We were very lucky to secure the services
of a man like Murray. He was a consummate expert on these
matters. W,, e had a powerful committee, and we had a Treasurer
who, when I broke the news to him and told him about the
committee and told him thiat it would turn out to bo very
expensive relaxed and took it very well. He needed to,
when the till came in. Well, that began another great era,
and you have been reminded the Murray Committee recommended a
provision for residential colleges. Another of the recommendations
that the Committee made was that we should establish
a universities commission of our owm in Australia and we did,
and we had the singular good fortune to persuade Sir Leslie
Martin to become its chairman.
I know that he-has had a difficult job. I go
into university circles occasionally and I find thnt he is
not as generous as he should be. Wiell, if I walked around
the corners of the Treasury they would say, " This man is
becoming positively lush". ( Laughter) But wherever I go,
I will hear some criticism but I will hear a paeon of praise
from most people. I don't think everybody understands what
a difficult problem it is to have a universities commission,
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to be on a universities commission, and above all things,
to be its presiding member. Because universities are growing
enormously in their student population we have more universities
coming into existence, we have a demand for higher education
in Australia which is at once exciting and stimulating and
almost overwhelming, If you had a look at the statistics
11rhich the commission itself produces from time to time, its
forecasts of what will be the demand upon universities over
the next two or three or twenty or thirty years, you would
come to the conclusion that for our population there is no
other country in the world that is generating such an eager
desire for education in all its forms as we are in Australia.
This is an enormous and complex task, and I want to take the
opportunity of saying to Sir Leslie, in his presence, that I
think he has laid the whole country under his debt for the
way he has done his work. ( Applause)
Now he gave you some figures. I am no great
believer in cluttering up remarks with statistics but I
think the first beginning Sir Leslie, ( that was before your
time) was œ 20,000 or œ 30 600 some token item. Well in
the 1958/ 60 triennium, tjat Is the first one under the recommendations
of the Murray Committee, œ. 600,000 was provided
that is by the Commonwealth œ C600,000 for the purposes of
residential colleges which now, of course includes halls of
residence in some of the universities, fn the next
triennium 1961/ 2/ 3, the œ E600,000 had risen to CIM. This
merely whet their appetite, because in the 1964/ 65/ 66 triennium,
the Commonwealth is finding, or is prepared to provide, just
under œ 3jM. for this purpose.
Now you think of that in terms of growth a few
thousand, œ C600,000, ZiM, œ C3iM. It's going almost by
geometrical progression, and therefore I smile when I look
back on the doubting Thomas who thought that residential
colleges were a luxury instead of being as they indeed are
of the very essence of a true university.
Now I am going to give you, as briefly as possible,
three reasons I think one or two have already been referred
to, at any rate but I will put them in my own way. I think
one of the great dangers today in our universities with this
rapid growth is that as the demand for teachers, for staff
grows, and as the difficulties of securing staff of adequate
standards grow, so will there tend to be an increasing
remoteness between teacher and students. dJe put that comically
by saying that there ought to be a certain ratio, that there
ought to be a certain limit to classes, but sheer necessity
will tend to produce a state of affairs, temporarily, at any
rate, in which the teacher happens to be, or -, ppears to be,
far removed from his individual students,
Now this is, in its ways a minor tragedy, if it
is a bed teacher perhaps it is good to have a suitable
distance, but if it is a good teacher, it is a thousand
pities that the people who are in his class in their year
for any purpose should fail to come under the spell of his
own personality, to fail to cultivate an attitude of mind,
which in a sense subconsciously they've borrowed from him.
donderful thing lor any man I don't care if he's a scientist
or lawyer or whatever it may be to be able to look back on
his university and postgraduate days and say "* Jell, I worked
under So-and-so" I with a gleam of pride in his eye and a / 3
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feeling of indebtedness in his heart. And therefore there
is a great danger in remoteness,
Now here we have a new university college,
' e have others just, in effect, over the road. They have
their own tutorial people. They will have closer contact
in college than many of their colleagues in the university
proper may hope to have with a great number of their own
pupils. This, in this sense, is a contribution to bridging
that gap, to removing that sense of remoteness that is liable
to exist in future between the staff and the students,
Well, that's one thing.
Then, of course, there is the second thing.
Sir Leslie Martin referred to it, A good deal of the education
in a university is imparted by undergraduates. I don't
mind undergraduates like us my own kind, who were perfectly
ready under provocation to Instruct the professor or the
lecturer ( Laughter). I was once invited by the late
Professor Tucker, that great classical scholar, to come down
and take the class myself as he felt he wasn't competent
to do it. I refused his invitation ( Laughter) to nobody's
surprise. But undergraduates do instruct each other because
of their contacts, because of the different disciplilos in
which they are working. It's of tremendous importance that
a man for example, doing science, shouldn't run away with
the ilea that science is the be-all and the end-all of life.
It is a very good thing for him to have to sit down with
another student who is studying law or a student studying
arts, or whatever it may be, and thrash out their differences
of outlook. This produces, in the long run, a most valuable
education, It justifies the word " university", the universitas
that can be produced by these contacts, by argument, by
quarrels if you like, by any other means. One branch of
study rubs off on to the other and produces a broader outlook.
I know the Principal who I find is a WJelshmnan
and a Baptist ( simultaneously) 4aughter) I knowt the
Principal would say, " Of course, that doesn't apply to the
theological students", or perhaps he wion't say that. In
my time, theological students or some of them, badly needed
close association with respectable law students, ( Laughter)
There are a few ex-theological students here today, I can
detect I think and they will understand exactly what I mean.
But whatever it is, never let anybody per-suade you that you
have made an error by creating a university college, by
creating these facilities for contact and dispute and some
gathering of some aspect of the other man's study and the
other man's point of view, because I believe that if
everybody going to a university of course this is
impossible but if everybody had the opportunity of living
with other students and debating and arguing with other students
we would produce a breadth of outlook in the Australia of the
fut. ure which would be the greatest triumph of the twentieth
century. Then I want to add my third observation. This
college is a colle~ e established by the members of the
Baptist community. There are other colleges connected
with the university established primarily by various
denominations, by various churches. I want to repeat what
I have said many, many times in Australia, that I believe
that education reaches its highest point when it is 000000^.
conducted against a background of religion, and yet it is a
background which constantly reminds the student that however
clever he may be he is not his own maker, however self-confident
he may think he is, he is living in a world not created by him,
that he has responsibilities, that he has great inheritances,
that he is responsible in his own proper fashion for the people
who come after him, and this spirit is one which has never
developed so completel~ y in the institution which doesn't have
a background of religion, a background of faith, a background
of humility because that after all, must be the inevitable
product of religious belief,
And here is a church college it's young, its
name is an honourable name, the name of a great pioneer in this
field. It will grow, of course. It may expand into other
forms, but I confidently believe that out of all the hundreds
nd hundreds and ultimnately thousands of students who come out
of this college, you will find, or expect to find very few
who have not ackno: rledged the debt that they owe to those who
had enough wisdom and o,-r. rugh faith in God to establish this
College, to accept its labours, its difficulties all the
problems to do so because of their complete faith in the
value of their -, ork.
Sir, this Is no oration and indeed it is painfully
repetitive, but it is true and truth needs to be spoken in
season and out of season if we are not to forget it,
Sir, it is a great honour to be allowed to be here
today, a very great privilege to address you and a very great
and particular pleasure to me to be on the platform writh men
who are contributing so much to the life of our nation.