A/ SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTS2R THE RT. HON.
R. G. iMENZIES T THE OPENING F THE ATOMIC
ENERGY COMMISSION BUILDING, LUCAS HEIGHTS,
ON F1RIDAYq 18TH NOVEMB, 3ER__ 1360
Mr. Chairman, Parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen:
I didn't make a specific reference to Senator
Spooner because he, in these parts of the world, is an abiding
presence. If he gives you as much trouble as he gives me
about this place, then he is active on both fronts.
I don't know why they invite a miserable politician
to open a place, the work of which he doesn't understand,
unless it is on the cynical principle that politicians are
always dealing with things that they don't understand, and
this is good enough practice anyhow.
But when I heard the ominous words about some
presentation, I remembered at once that two and a half years
ago, I think, I went through the motions of opening the Reactor
which is now known, I gather, familiarly as " Hifar",
O though wthat " Hifar" means I have yet to understand.
And in order that I might have a souvenir of this
event they presented me with a beautiful little model of
" Hifar", and I keep it in my study at The Lodge. So each time
I w. ant a change from meeting, and encountering the
eccentricities of Her Majesty's Opposition I go up and I have
a look at the model of " Hifar". And I look at it, north,
south, east and est, and at the end of that looking, I say to
myself: " Menzies, how ignorant you arc" which I believe is
very good for the soul and on the whole very good for the
Atomic Energy Commission. ( Laughter)
Because on the old principle which the Latins
described as ' Omne ignotum pro magnifico' this mystery, this
insoluble mystery, as it is to me induces in my mind such a
respect for the work of the scientists, that Spooner gets
another half million out of us before we know what has
happened. ( Laughter)
Still there may be something in common between
these scientific people , nd the politicians. Because just
before I came in I was being told by a very distinguished
scientist, not far from me, that one of the jobs in the
metallurgical section of this building, which I am opening
this afternoon, is to try to discover how, when you have an
assemblage of matter it falls apart; and how to discover the
ways and means of preventing it from falling apart, and making
it last for a couple of years.
This is precisely the full-time duty of a Prime
Minister dealing with a Cabinet. ( Laughter)
I mention that fact to you because it shows that I
and my colleagues here are engaged in, really, a scientific
undertaking' A few years ago, not so many years ago, a very
distinguished Australian scientist offered a sentiment in
public, which was of course, published, that he looked forward
to the time when every member of a Common. wealth Government
would have a Science Degree. I thought, . that a terrible
prospect that would be". I think that the scientists ought to
be very thankful to the Federal Government for not including
scientists. One or two we might get by with; but twenty
scientists, sitting around a CCbinet Table, jach of them
knowing full Tell that he knew far more about it than these
homely, and lowly bodies who conduct these actual operations,
this would be the very definition, I think, of disaster.
i think that we arrive at a very happy compromise
when as in the case of this Commission, we find assembled
together a remarkable team of scientific and technical peo'ple
who are so persuasive, th-ough their spokesman, Professor
Baxter, and through my benighted colleague, Sc' . tor Spooner,
that they can induce ignorant politicians to do the right
thing by them, and to encourage the scientific-work that they
are engaged in.
Now about that work I just want to say one thing. I
may not say it in just two or three words, but one thing.
It is not so many years ago that wo were accustomed
to reading about the work being done, for example, by
Rutherford. These great men who were then piercing the
mysteries of nature and those were the days, in my ow. n time
as a student, when the idea of splitting the atom . ras regarded
as a rather rhetorical idea on which a couple of rather
amiable people, or many moro, wore engaged.
Cynical people, unacquainted with science, and
unendowed with imagination would say, " Viell, what is the point
of it? Suppose they do split the atom? iJhat then? How will
that affect my standard of living? How will that affect my
life? ! ill that grow me more vegetables? iWill that do this
or that for a not uncormmon attitude of mind.
And then our attention, the attention of laymen at
least having been distracted from this matter, all of a sudden
towards the end of the last war came the nuclear bomb; and
all this projection into the public mind was a projection of
horror. This was the great, ultimate instrument of
destruction. I'm afraid, Sir, that even now, too many people
think of research in nuclear physics and all its allied
activities, as h-ving something to do with increasing the
cap.: city of man to destroy man. Just as in the earlier days
of the war, ; hen we discovered that a thing called " Radar" had
been devised, it was thought of, and thought of for years, as
an instrument aptly fitted for use in wiar. It is only since
the war that re have discovered tz-. enormous variety of civil
and useful purposes to which it can be put.
So I just want to say to you that I think that while
war quickens things, while war induces an enormous
concentration of resources that may move forward the boundaries
of scientific knowledge most dramatically, we are not to think
of those things that have been moved forward, primarily in
terms of war, 4e can't forget that aspect of it; but today
the work that has to be done in this field is overwhelmingly
directed to the betterment of human life and the strengthening
of the human future.
When scientists and their helpers in this wonderful
enterprise, which has developed so magnificently, and has been
so splendidly conducted, are working here, they are
concentrating their minds, not so much on how to produce
something that might be used to destroy somebody, as they are
to fashioning an instrument which will give industrial power to
places that now no longer have adequate supplies of material
for industrial power. They are concentrating on something
that may revolutionise the -holo industrial history of the
country.
3.
Jho knows? The by-products of these -r':' rprises,
in the field of medicine, and engineering, and agriculture,
lay reach points of revolutionary effect to compare with the
trem. endous work of the bio-chemists in the course of this
century. It is one of the odd things about us in our
generation, that we have fed full on revolutions. There have
been more revolutions in our time than perhaps in any other
period in history; and some of then revolutions of blood and
Iisery. But there have boon other revolutions in hum an life
which we yet perhaps don't fully appreciate. I remain a little
cynical, myself, about satellites in the sky just a little,
I know I'm wrong. I ought to be fascinated by them; but I
confess that I am very much more fascinated with the
constructive work of the scientists, the enormous revolutions
that have occurred in medicine, and engineering, and transport,
and in the production of power, and the increase of resources
in the world. For these things the scientists, the devoted
scientists, working principally in the dark, so far as the
public are concerned, anonymously, relatively unknown, with no
hcadlines, these are the people who constantly lay us under a
debt of gratitude that it does us good to remember from time
to tiine. It isn't very long since this site, where we are,
was just a vacant hill-top. It was selected for what I know
we thought in the political field, was a rather bold and
rather speculative enterprise, to establish an experiiental
re-actor at Lucas Meights.
1Jll, w. hat did this involve? What was it for? And
I once more want to say that this Commission owes a great deal
to my colleague Senator Spooner who has literally never lot up
on this matter. Finally we became interested, Then finally
w. e said: " Right, this seems a good thing to do". And oven
two or three years ago it was a me: re frqction of what it is
today. I believe that the development here, with over 700
people engaged in their work in this area, is one of the most
significant things in recent Austr.: lian history. It w; ill not
only give us a place in the field of research in these
iatters, a respuctable position in the world, but it wTill also
do and continue to do what has already been happening. It
will lead to exchanges of highly trained people, to
contributions of knowledge, outward and inward, to a growing
association with the Universities, and growing facilities for
the ultimate post-graduate and research activities-at'
Universities,. his will become a nucleus of advancement in
physical science, the limits of which I believe no one can
sue, And if anybody supposes that all that kind of
progress is not practical what dividends does it pay? I
make two replies: It will in fact, in the most vulgar sense
of the word, pay dividends, because it is going to produce
immenso practical results in Australia. But if it produced no
practical dividends in that sense at all, it would produce an
addition to knowledge in this country, and in the world as a
whole which would do great honour to this country, and be a
source of strength to it in the scientific councils of the
nations.
I am vory happy to say, boforc I finish, that this
Cormission, tho Cxacutivo iraanber of -rhich has boon r: forior
humible obedient sorvc. Int, M'r. A'lan Xcnigh, has boon
conipliraontcud on its work through this thing, that Mr. McKnigh~ t
roos off next year to be thu Chiairman of the Inti. rnational
A'tomic Energy authority sitting in Vionna a compliment to
Mr. McKni, 7ht ; ihich ha -Toll do) scrvos. But a vory gro at cor-plimont
to th-o Atorafc iEnorgy Commission of AustlraliaL, and to the
onormous constructiva contribution that it is making to this
bracfh noiladoand to theo Solution of thais gro at . iod,) rn,
problem in tha world.
Sir, I n~ ay to--ll you that I was ,) aven a lot of no-' os
for a speoch this aftu rnoon, and following my usual habit of
obedience to thosD -who advise ime, I ruad tho notos: if didn't
understand thorn, and thorofore Ilve just givan you a bit of
r., y own. Ihave vary ;, ruact ploasuro indeed, in declaring
the building open. ( Applauso)