YOUNG LIBERAL RALLY
HA4dTHORN TOWAN HALL. , E3URNE, VIC. I 21ST MAY, 1965
S pee ch by t he Prime Miitr Rt o SShL ZrRqboy etJ42sj
Sir and Young Liberals: It is great fun for me to come here, It is
thirty-six years ago, which is before most of the Young Liberals
here were born, that I first stood for Parliament you must treat
me with respect;( Laughter) I am an old and doddering follow
it is thirty-six years ago, ( whistle blown) I couldn't even.
whistle like that. ( Laughter) This was in the days when th
Legislative Council was a distinguished body and I aspired to its
membership. ( Laughter) Having been in it for thirteen months
I left it quite voluntarily. But the biggest meeting I had In
the whole of that campaign was in the supper room at the Hawthorn
Town Hall I must tell the Mayor about that. There were fifty
people there. That was the biggest meeting of fifty-six meetings
I had in 1928 and the smallest meeting was four ( Laughter) at the
Glen Iris Bowling Green and of the four, three were members of
my committee. ( Laughter3 Now I tell you that because I think it
may encourage you to realise that you may have small beginning$.
You can't start off you know, completely winning. I learned a
lot in the course ol that campaign.
Then about two years later, I sat down in my
house with two other men, and we decided that there were too many
of the old brigade who were running the Parliament, we really
ought to do something about it. So we started the Young
Nationalist Movement. I am telling you this because I would
like you to realise that I have been young myself ( Laughter) and
nobody understands better how you feel than I do because we were
a bit disgruntled and we said, " Vie will form the Young Nationalists."
And we were terrific, tremendous. We made speeches at street
corners. We received over-ripe tomatoes on our faces ( Laughter)
in the vicinity of the Prahran Market; an egg or two descended
on us, It was really great fun. These were spirited days.
( Laughter) But because we knew what we were at, because we
believed in things because we had enthusiasm just as you have,
at the very next election in Victoria, we came in with very little
short of half the Members on our side of Parliament belonging to
the Young Nationalist Movement. That's worthwhile remembering.
Because however necessary it is to have people of experience and
judgment and what-have-you, it is vital for any party to be
refreshed constantly by young people who come in with their own
ideas, with their own fervour with their own determination to do
something about the state of Lhe nation, This is, believe me,
the most important thing in the world. And so whatever I talk
to you about tonight, you must understand that what I really ought
to do is to say I move a vote of thanks to you, and that would
be eloquent in its own way.
But what I really want to do is not to talk down
to you as if I were educating you, as if I were patronising you
because this is the last thing in the world I should ever dream
of doing. I am talking to you as a veteran in politics and I
am talking to you as my successors in politics. I am ialking / 2
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to you as people upon whom the future of our country in a
political, and vastly important political sense, depends.
And so I just want to talk to you about one or two matters
as I would wish to talk to members of my own family, knowing
that before long inevitably there will be great changes in
leadership, in personnel, but that inevitably there will be
a growing need for people who believe in things and who
know why they believe in them and who are determined to
promote them. And this Young Liberal Movement whose tie
I am wearing tonight is therefore, in my opinion, the heart
and soul of our side of politics and it is indeed the heart
and soul of the future of the nahion.
Now we have been having a good deal of discussion,
a good deal of controversy ( though it is sometimes difficult'
to discover exactly where somebody is in these matters),
about the position of Australia internationally. There are
people, some of them of eminent respectability, who keep
on saying that we are all wrong, that our foreign policy,
our approach to the rest of the world ought either to be
one of peace at any price or in the alternative, one in
which we leave the responsibilities to other people. I have
had considerable controversies about this matter myself, as
the older among you will remem~ ber,
I had a correspondence Epistles to the Bishops
( Laughter Applause) and one advantage I had over the Apostle
Paul was Lhat when he wrote an Epistle to the Romans or tile
Corinthians or whatever it might be, as far as I know there
was no reply. ( Laughter) But I had replies. Well the
problem was exhibited. I think it was clarified7 and the
more I think about it, the more I realise that this business
really does and must give us furiously to think: What is it
we believe in what is it we stand for. Not as a section
but as Australia because I beg of you, never let it be
said about the Liberal Party that it speaks for anybody
except Australia not for just some people, not just for a
party, but for Australia. I sat down, knowing that I was
coming here, and said to myself t" de11, now, this might be
a good opportunity of doing a little quiet analysis, for
the benefit of my younger colleagues, of our foreign policy
and in particular our desires, our objectives in relation to
the countries of Asia." 1
Now, of course, the first one which apparently
needs to be stated frequently is that we desire to live at
peace with all of these countries, with mutual understanding
and assistance. Now this is true. We have some reason to
be irritated, in fact that is a mild understatement, with the
President of Indonesia but we have continued to do everything
in our power to maintain some friendly contacts with Indonesia.
We have been criticised for some of them. Of course we want
to live at peace. Nothing could be more terrifying for us
than to think we might by erroneous judgments or foolish
actions find ourselves in conflict with the whole of the
people of Asia. Of course we don't want that. We don't
want it for two reasons.
One is that there is no future in that kind of
position and the other is that there is no sense in that
position. We want to live at peace. ! e want to understand
our neighbours. We go to great pains to see that we do.
But at the same time, Sir, our next objective is that we are
to defend our own security and that of our territories -I
say " territories" because, technically, that is right -and
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of all these people in Papua and New Guinea for whom we have
assumed, in the eyes of the world, tremendous responsibilities,
I hope nobody will want to make us believe for half
a minute that a defeated Australia an enslaved Australia is the
kind of Australia in which we would want our grandchildren:-
mine or yours or yours to have to live. This is a matter of
national security preserving our integrity as a nation,
preserving our own right to live our owm lives according to our
own standards. Now these two things are not easily reconciled, are
they? A desire to be on the best of terms with your neighbours
and at the same time a resolute intention to defend the security
of your own country. No reason why they shouldn't be reconcilable
but for some of the events that we have been looking at recently.
But we have recently been looking at events in South-East Asia
which exhibit in the most practical terms the aggressive quality
of world communism, and in particular the aggressive quality
of Chinese communism because as the Russian communists have
played it a little -more and more softly so have the Chinese
communists emphasised more and more that they have no patience
with peaceful co-existence, they are out for world domination.
These are not just phrases. These are demonstrated
in the field. India knows all about it, because India has been
invaded. Tibet knew all about it because Tibet was overrun.
Laos knows a great deal about it because in that country the
vexations the conflicts in an attempt to create a peaceftul
government have been enormous bnd have by no means finished.
And of course in Vietnam we have, day by day a demonstration
of the fact and these facts can hardly be denied; I have not
heard them seriously denied that inside South Vietnam there
are great pockets of what they call Viet Cong who are communists
and who are out to overthrow the Government of South Vietnam by
force, by terror, and who intend to convert South Vietnam into
a communist community just like North Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh.
These are the simple, painful, horrible facts and this is all a
matter of communist aggression.
These facts are not very well understood. I hope you
will make them well understood. I have had to listen or read
r'emarks from eminent people who don't seem to understand that these
are the facts. It has been said to me as you may recall that
it is really the fault of South Vietnam that there haven't teen
free elections in Vietnam. Now I ask you free elections in
VietnamJ Can you imagine a free election in a communist country?
Did anybody seriously believe that there could be a free election
in Ho Chi Minh's territory? And how would you like to haVe an
election being organised and the ways and means worked out-: and the
electoral act created if we at this very moment were having a
civil war in our own country, with not a thousand or two of Viet
Cong but with scores of thousands of Viet Cong grouped in centres,
invading villages, masscring people all done in the closest
communion with the communist power from the North. To talk in
this theoretical, academic way about free elections is really to
ignore all the facts of life. There can be no freedom, or free
election, or effective self-government in any country which is
being torn asunder by aggression from outside and insurrection
from within. Therefore we, in Australia, have found ourselves
compelled to face a problem which the United States of America
with its immense power has also had to confrontl What can we
do to preserve the freedom of our Asian friends7to help them
to remain outside communist control? Now this is a problem 0 0 0 0a
that hasn't arisen all of a sudden. I want you all to remember
that this Government which I have the honour to lead thought of
all this quite a long time ago. We were one of the promoters
of the South-East Asian Treaty, and the South-East Asian Treaty
has been in existence ever since, and in it you have the United
States, you have France ( a rather hesitating partner at present),
you have Great Britain, you have Australia and New Zealand, you
have Pakistan Thailand, the Philippines and that treaty which
set out to establish the proposition that we wanted to protect
people's freedom we wanted to draw a frontier against communist
aggression in Asia has, I think, had considerable significance.
Under that treaty one of the protocol countries, as it was
expressed, is South Vietnam one of the countries an attack upon
which the SEATO powers would regard as an attack upon them.
And so the first reason why we are there if you want to be
technical about this matter is that we bound ourselves by
treaty to be there should the South Vietnam Government ask us
to come, in just the same way as did the United States of
America. All right. Well how do we offer to protect, to do
what we can to protect our friends and I am talking about our
Asian friends. Dontt let people get away with the idea that this
is a line between the Asian people and the Australian people or
the American people. It's our Asian friends, it's the people
of Vietnam, it's the people of Thailand the people of Laos, the
people of Malaysia these are the people in South East Asia with
whose freedom we are concerned, and in order to concern ourselves,
we believe we have to do this in concert with our allies and,
as I have just indicated, pursuant to our treaty obligations*
Now, in concert with our allies just think
about what that means. Most astonishing business. I don't
want to advertise it though no doubt it will be well attendedbut
Sunday afternoon in the Richmond Town Hall there is to be
a great meeting, a mightyprotest against the Federal Government's
decision to send Australian troops to fight in Vietnam, And to
my intense astonishment among the speakers are Mr, Calwell
( Laughter) and of course, Dr. Cairns. ( laughter) Now I said
to my intense astonishment because I don't think quite honestly
Calwell and Cairns agree on this matter at all ( Laughter
Applause) but with our distinguished opponents in the Ialor
Party, a good deal depends on whether you are reading the first
edition or the late City because things happen in between,
don't they? Now, let us go back to the first edition on the 18th
February of this year I repeat, of this year 18th February,
the Federal Labor Party issued a statement on these matters.
This was very good. The Executive had attendedi a great deal
was said to and fro and I know who are the " tots" and who are
the 11frots"~ ( Laughter) and then the statement came out.
Could I read you three paragraphs of it, in a clear voice?
( Shouts of " yes") t
" In its statement to the Security Council
on February 7th reporting the air strikes against
military installations in the south of North Vietnam,
America insisted that its object in South Vietnam,
while resisting aggression, is to achieve a peacelul
settlement maintained by the presence of international
peace-keeping machinery and that it would not allow the
situation to be changed by terror and violence, 0 0 0
4 " This statement of American purposes is
unexceptionable 1
Mark that " unexceptionable". Although there are various
interpretations of the E~ nglish language, that doesnt seem to me
to be very ambiguous. " Unexceptionable". This is what was said
by the people who are going to invite people Sunday afternoon
at Richmond to condemn the sending of troops to Vietnam, Well
let's go on. " and the case for the American action of recent
days, as based on the aim of shortening the war and
achieving a negotiated settlement which would establish
and maintain the rights of the South Vietnamese people,
deserves sympathetic Australian understanding."
This is the best thing they ever said. ( Laughter)
" At this moment, it seems clear that President
Johnson is determined to limit the areas of American
retaliation to the factors believed to be assisting
the Viet Cong attacks."
Isn't that right? He has said so time after time.
Well, now what do they mean on Sunday by saying, " Yes,
that's all right for the United States. We quite agree that the
United States is justified in putting Am~ ericans in there or on the
water the Navy, the Army, the Air Force. This is all right.
It is quite unexceptionable that they should do that in order to
help to preserve the freedom of South Vietnam and the people of
South Vietnam, but ( and this is the appendix that will be produced
on Sunday afternoon, let it be understood) that's good for the
United States. It's not good for us. Not good for us. What we
ought to be doing is to say to the United States ' Look, it's
your job. You do it. We'll give you a few kind words, We'll
make an agreeable speech or two, but when it comes to the business,
you understand it's for you."'
Well, really, I am happy to say I know the American
Administration very well and I know that we enjoy some repute with
them because we don't say that kind of thing, because we have made
it clear right through that although we, to a very large extent,
depend when it comes to the last desperate thrust on American help
and American power we don't regard this as one-way traffic. I.-hen
vie executed the ANHUS pact with the United States~ we didn't believe
for a minute that this meant that America was to hlp us but that
we were not to help America.
There is a great and continuing reciprocity about
international engagements. V~ e must never forget it. These are
not one-sided things* You may be disposed some people may be
disposed to say, " Oh, yes, but we are a small country what can
we do? It's very little, and because it's very little, perhaps
if we didn't do it, it wouldn't be noticed." Look, my friends,
I remember the first time I ever made a speech to the American
Congress. Itv been a little bit lucky or they have been
unlucky because I have made about four now over the years.
But the first time, I reminded them that in Lhis century, they
had become the greatest power in the world and that in the
nineteenth century, Great Britain was the greatest power in the
world, and in the nineteenth century when Great Britain, by her
command of the sea, commanded the strategic position of the
world, she was an unpopular country, hardly had a friend in
Europe delivered Europe from Napoleon, delivered Europe time
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after time hardly a friend. In France, perfide Albionthe
whole attitude of criticism of a great power, a powerful
power, one that could help us. It's the old business you
know, the old business. Rich relatives and poor relations.
( Laughter) Not too many thanks in Pie world. And she was
unpopular. I said all this to the American Congressi-ten, and
I said, " In this century, you have the power and you are
beginning to worry as to why people aren't more grateful to
you for what you do, and you do wonderful things for the
world. Forget about it. Don't think you are doing anything
for public gratitude. Realise you are doing it because
intrinsically it's the right thing to do, and if it comes to
having a friend or two, well I now declare Australia to be
your friend. ' ve are quite small but even a small friend is
better than none.' ( Laughter) ( Cheers) And quite frankly,
ladies and gentlemen, they have never forgotten that. I ha ve
been reminded of it every time I have been there since. I
don't think they ever will because they realise that our
policies in Australia have been policies of action uip to our
capacity for action and not just kind . yiords.
Now all this adds up to something which is at the
very heart of all this. Of course we wrant peace. J! e are not
going to try to secure peace by appeasement or by surrender.
I would have thought that the world by now would have discovered
that there is no future in that. Jewant peace, a peace
based on understanding, a peace based on a genuinely friendly
approach, a peace bc'sed upon not exacerbating any little
differences that may occur between us and any of our neighbours,
but when it comes to the stage where there are hundreds of
thousands of armed people engaged in war-like operations in
Vietnam and the very frontier of freedom is in that country,
then we must make up our minds that we are not just bystanders.
This is not only thie freedom of South Vietnam, it is
our freedom. It is the freedom of all countries in this part
of the world that is involved, and therefore we say, and I am
sure you agree iwith us, we are not appeasing, we are not
retreating, we are not going to subscribe to any foolish view
that the right way to solve the South Viotnam problem is for
the Americans to desert South Vietnam and for us to go out with
them. Wlhat fantasylJ You settle an argument with communism,
aggressive coimunism, by yielding at the field and delivering
millions of people into its clutches. This is not the
Australian spirit, and it is because I have nevar doubted as
to where the Austr, Iian people stand on this matter that from
first to last we have said what we have said and have done
what we said. Now, time marches on and my years are not illimitable
and yours are to come. It may be in theory that when you have
come into your estate politically, it may be thought that we
were wrong. I hope It won't be. But when you have come into
your estate, I hope that you will have concluded in your own
time that there are some things in life for which you must
stadfor which you must battle, in which you must believe,
whatever the dogs are barking. This is the secret of liberalism.
It is in your hands.