SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE RT. KONo R. I NZIES
AT THE ALL NATIONS CLUB ON FRIDAY, 25TH NOV4EMER, 1960.
Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen:
I want to compliment my old friend, the President, o)
his obviously continuing studies in ambiguity. ( Laughter) I've
never heard a more masterly exhibition of ambiguity than the one
he gave us tonight, since the last time I read one of his
judgments. ( Laughter)
I also want to say at once, a propos of the last
remark, about Sir Richard Boyer's rock-and-roll session, that on
one occasion this may seem to some of you to be rcriarkr. le I
was up at the A. B. C. Studios doing a television recording this
is a remarkable event and on the way out it turned out that the
Rock-and -Roll Session was on.
For some reason that is concealed from the wis and
prudent and revealed only unto babes, the gentleman in charge of
the Rock-and-Roll Session, who was a young Australian, spoke in
a rich Texas accent. ( Laughter) This apparently is de riguour.
Here were all these young gentlemen, and these young
women, curiously garbed, they were flourishing around there. I
was fascinated to see this because I'm an old follow, T wanted
to know what these frightful performances that excite people's
minds might be. I've never seen a collection of people so
utterly bored! ( Laughter) So miserably unhappy. But at any
rate, as one of the people with me said, it's good exerciseo
( Laughter) Now, that is all I know about Rock-and-Roll; that '. s
the only time I ever saw it. I never want to see it again until
the final shadows are gathering around me, when I might feel that
it induced the necessary atmosphere. Now that is all I have to
say about that. I'm not allowed to be political; I'm not allowed to
have an argument with the Chairman of the Broadcasting Commission
I have plenty, but we conduct them in private, with a smile on
our faces and clenched teeth. ( Laughter)
Nor, Sir, am I surprised to be told that this is a nonpolitical
occasion. If it hadn't been I don't think I would have
been here I have enough of that as it is, in other places. But
I well remember Sir Robert Garran talking to no about the idea of
this Club; and I well remember telling him that I thought it was
a magnificent idea. I think it is.
I'm very glad to realise looking around, seeing what
goes on, seeing what we are given o eat, seeing what we are
given to drink, that you have been able to enlist the aid of a
few tycoons like Dave Blacklock ( Laughter). This is a very,
very useful thing, Dave.
But of course it is non-political, The whole this
matter as it was put to me originally by the grand old man
himself was that some place ought to be established and
Sydney was the obvious place in which to commence it, since
Sydney is always in need of civilizing influences. ( Laughter)
When a man says publicly, in effect, that he is no
longer in need of civilising influences, then he is beyond
redemption. That is all I want to say to you. ( Laughter)
Anyhow that was the idea. I felt at once that this was
a splendid idea because in some way or other we had becone
accustomed, and perhaps we still in Australia, to talking
about " new" Australians and " old" Australians.
I suppose the phrase " new Australian" was a handy,
compendious sort of thing; though I do remember reading an
advertisement one day in one of the newspapers by two nativeborn
Australians who in some mysterious fashion were about to have
a child the wife was anyhow. ( Laughter) And they advertised
to see whether they could have an apartment and they said, " Two
Australians, old, together with one Australian, new, would like to
rent an apartment or flat", or something.
But these distinctions, though t!. ey come trippingly to
the tongue, these broad descriptions, have in them the seed of
something unsound. This Club, I believe, was established so that
all of the people who came here might come here and feel that
whatever their derivation might be, they were all Australians
citizens of one place, of one country, people whose common
interests far outweighed any differences of background or of
circumstances. And that is the whole justification for a Club of this
kind. We are neither new nor old, but we hope to be good; we
hope to be useful; we hope to be powerful contributors in our
own fashion to this country.
All I want to do is to elaborate that idea just a
little because there are a few aspects of it they're commonplace,
they're platitudinous, but thea as everybody knows who reads
about me, I'm a master of the platitudes. ( Laughter) They are
commonplace. But like most commonplace truths, they are
occasionally neglected.
Now first of all, politically. Let me make a nonpolitical
remark, a non-Party remark about the broad political
problem. One of the important things about Australia is that
and this is a matter to which my friend, Mr. Calwell, who began
it, and my own Government which continued it, can share some
credit: I never regard this as a Party matter this country has
for years and years now, since the war, had a great volume of
immigration. I can assure you, speaking as one who long before the
war was engaged in political affairs, that the migration we have
seen into Australia, the movement of populations into Australia,
in the last fifteen years, would have been utterly impossible
between 1925 and 1939. Utterly impossible
There would have been objections of all kinds. There
would have been grumbles. It would have been said that there
are people coming in here to take the bread out of our mouths.
You know, all these orthodox, rather silly, arguments were
current and they were prevalent in the fifteen years before the
war. In the fifteen years since the war, with a remarkable
degree of what night almost be regarded as unanimity, the people
of Australia, employers, employees, great companies, great
unions, ordinary citizens like you and nc, have all said, " T. is
is the thing". The result is that we have had an increase in the
population of Australia in the last fifteen years, apart
altogether from natural increase of the population, which is
developing this country so fast, in terms of humian beings that I
doubt whether there is any other country in the world that can
clain, pro rata, a similar history in that field. ( Applause)
0 3.
I remember on one occasion speaking to Congress in
Washington, and pointing out that we had a good deal in common,
altering the historic period a little. Because when I was a
small boy at the turn of the century everybody talked about the
vast movements of people into the United States. Superior people
said, " Oh, it's only a melting pot". As if there was something
wrong with a molting pot? You wouldn't get too far without it.
But there was the idea; that was the phrase. And the
picture was of immense hoards of people moving into the United
States, from some time after the Civil War until a little after
the turn of the century.
Our rate of intake compared to our base of population
has been greater than the rate of intake of the United States
over that period. Therefore the first thing to remember is that this is
a very remarkable thing: that by common consent of what I will
call the " indigenous inhabitants" of the country, there has been
this great movement of people from European countries, from
Great Britain. There is a danger in all that, only one. It is a
danger that we have to avoid; and a danger which this Club
partly exists to counteracti And that is that we should become
or you should become, those of you who derived from other
Nations members of a colony with some " separatists" element
about it. So that politicians, whoever they may be, will be
coming along at election time and saying, " Now we must play for
the Italian vote; we must play for the Belgian vote; we must
play for the French vote; we must play for the German vote".
That kind of thing would be terrible. It would be
terrible because it would indicate that people, having come here,
had not becone merbers of this cormmunity, but were separate
bodies, floating around, or even fixed, but not coalesced in any
way with the community.
I deplore the possibility of that kind of thing. I
don't want, myself, as a politician, to have to talk to people
and say to myself " Well theoe are ( Italian, German, whatever
they may be) I must remember that; I must speak to them in
that sense". I'm the Prime Minister of Australia and I want,
whenever I talk, to talk to Australians.
And if they have come from other countries, then I must
say that they bear a striking resemblance to my own ancestors.
It's always worth remembering that: the only indigenous
inhabitants of this country were the aborigines.
People like myself you take myself my grandparents
on my father's side were Scots and came out from Scotland a
very honorable exercise and, of course, a great enrichbint of
the country. ( Laughter3 I speak with all the modesty and
absence of bigotry of a Scotsman. ( Laughter) And my mother's
family came from Cornwall. And there you are: the free booters
of the north, and the smugglers of Cornwall. ( Laughter) ( No
wonder they regard me as a harsh tas'. master).
When I married my wife I thorht she was of practically
pure Scots derivation. I discovered too late that she is
practically Irish to the back teeth. ( Laughter)
Well, there we aro, you see. These things are all a
mixture. And when you talk about an Englishman ( Interjection:
" That's the best of the part.) Would yer mind saying that with
a bit of a brogue? ( Laughtor)
Then if you go back a little futher: who are the
English? You know, you have to go back and back the Angles,
and the Saxons and the Picts and the Scots and the Normans who
conquered them. Oh, dear me. The Danes, who half-civilised
them. ( Laughter) Are you a Dane, Dick? Oh
The truth of the matter is that all the great races
and great nations in the world have been built up upon aggregating
a variety of people, and acquiring from each variety a quality
which matters. This has been a great, great thing in the
history of Australia.
I hope that we will all resist as this Club exists to
resist any idea that we should be put out into separate
fractions and pretend that we are just fractions, and that we are
not really parts of the whole.
Now that is the only political observation I make to
you. Industrially I want vou to remember what has happened
in Australia. We've had the most enormous industrial developmentthat
is elementary. Everybody knows about it. Without it we
could not have sustained an immigration programme; and without
the immigration programme we could not have sustained the
industrial development.
I go around a good deal, as you might suppose. And
every now and then I find that I have to visit some big factory
or establishment conducting some operation which I know to be of
enormous importance to my country. Each time I say to the
manager, " How many to use this phrase that I don't much care
for " how many new Australians do you have in this factory?"
The answer is always 40%, 50%, 60%. So that at the end of a
year you are increasingly saying to yourself: " How would we go
for these great industries, if we hadn't had this movement of
population into the country?".
I want you to remember that. This is an occasion of
great pride. I would like all of you to say to anybody who has
come to Australia recently, and who works in these great
enterprises, how much it has meant to this country. Even in
the most basic industries we have, expansion would have stopped
like that, but for the increase in population. Therefore,
industrially, this has been a magnificent thing.
Then, of course, socially I think the impact is going
to be remarkable. I don't want to doscend to the sordid details
of the kitchen but really, what has been done to us in the last
ten years has, I think, been quite magnificent. The good old
simple ideas have been varied. Many thousands of Australians
have begun to understand that there is more in life, more at the
table, than roast mutton and potatoes.
When I was a small boy, and even when I was a young man,
if I could remember back as far as this, there were two kinds of
cheese available in Australia one was old cheddar, and one was
young cheddar. ( Laughter) And now we live in the greatest
variety in the world.
But these are mere gastronomic affairs. The fact is
that in art, in music, in writing, in all the things that touch
the human spirit, and furnish the human mind, I believe that the
contribution of riches to the Australian community in the last
tenyears is not yet. canrt et be fully understood, but will
ultiatel tentdo crnsfo'm he continent.
These are marvellous things, and they will be all the
more marvellous if we can constantly say to ourselves in the old
song on which so many of us wore brought up: " the more we are
together, the happier we'll be" l.
The less we dwell on our differences, the better. But
if we must dwell on them, let us understand them, let us understand
why they exist, and let us, perhaps transmute them
ultimately into occasions not of difference, but of unity, the
new amalgamiation of ideas, a new fusing~ of literature, of
background, of to use a word that I don't care for very much
culture in all its forms.
Now, Sir, all those rather wandering remarks presented
themselves to my mind as I thought about the origin of this Club,
about Sir Robert Garran, who was, himself, a groat scholar, and
a thinker, and a statesman.
I just add one thing to them before I conclude.
The world grovs closer together. You may take th-
" wings" in the morning and fly into the uttermost parts of the
sea in an hour or two today. You can, thanks to the international
dateline and I've experienced this quite a lot
arrive in San Francisco before you leave Sydney. I know; I've
proved it! It's no use the scientists confounding me. The last
time I went I left at 5 o'clock from Sydney on Thursday afternoon
and arrived in San Francisco at twentyfive to five on Thursday.
In one sense all this has been astonishing. In
another sonse it becomes almost frightening; we become so close
to other countries that we feel, occasionally, that we are
vulnerable to them.
But in spite of this tremendous acceleration of physical
neighbourhood in point of time and place in the world, more and
more one sees tendencies to have a sort of isolationism, a
nationalism carried too far, a feeling that, " Well, -: it the rest
of the world look after itself; we'll look after ourselves".
One of the great beauties of what has been happening in
.! Iustralia is that the thousands, and now becoming hundreds of
thousands, and growing into millions, of people who have come
here from overseas, they are not isolationists, they are not
I'm not talking about it in a military sense isolationists in
the sense that they are not interested in the rest of the world.
On the contrary, they come here, knowing by all their
background and experience, that we become more and more part of
the world, part of the world of thought, part of the world of
literature, part cf the world of music, part of the world of
painting and of sculpture. And all this will tend, in 1ustralia,
to make us a m~ ore internationally miinded community.
Sir, all these things I believe are good. And it is
because I believe them to be g ood, because I know them to be
good, and because I want then to continue, that I availed myself
of your invitation to come here tonight and just say a few words
about them. ( Applause)
6.
Question: Does the Prime Minister consider that the United Nations
has a greater chance of survival than the League of Nnations?
Prime Minister: Well, if you all heard that question, did you?, tDo I
believe that the United Nations has a groater chance of survival
than the League of Nations?' I think m., y answer to that is " Yes,
I do". 14 Because I think that the world has learned a good deal
from the errors that occurred in relation to the League of
Nations. There was a great disposition between the two wars to
think that the covenant of the Peacy Treaty, the covenant of the
League of Nations, the existence of the League of Nations in
itself provided protection for peace-loving people against
aggression. And that just wasn't true because it was a som~ ewhat
vague body: it had no strength it was a debating authority
it had no particular strength.
And I believe my self that people leaned on it so much,
particularly between 1 934 and 1939 that they misled themselves
into thinking that they were save, when they were not. I saw
that very clearly in Great Britain in 1936 and in. 1938.
I think we have learned something from this. It is a
slow and painful process; but at any rate on two or three occasions
now the United Naions has actually taken some step in
relation to a matter which has had some significant effectup
in Korea; across in the Congo a very unsolved problem yet,
but a very mauch less difficult problem than it would have been
if the United Nations had stood by.
!. nd then of course in the second place, never forget
that the League of Nations always tried to fly on one wing
because the United States of Amnerica didn't belong to it. But
the United Nations has, apart from the position of China an
almost universal membership. And it certainly contains the
United States, which the League of Nations didn't.
Therefore I think, on the whole, while one mustn't be
over optimistic because there is much to be done yet, I would
give the United Nations a greater chance of success, than I would
have given the Leag; ue of Nations. ( Applause)
Question: What is the Prime Minister's view as to the
establishment of a Pacific Comm~ on Market?
Prime Minister: Well, Sir, if I knew what a Pacific Commu~ on Market was I
might have a better idea of answering it.
If this is something that is designed to balance the
European Comm-on Market then I think I ought to say to you that
the European Common Market scheme was based on the idea of the
Western European powers that if they could get together and
establish some kind of aconomic union with, ultimately an even
Customs barrier which was the same all around them, anA with
internal free trade between them, then they might develop their
economic strength. And I havo always thoufght that was rig ht. Because it
leads to flexibility, to m.' ovement of expert people from one
country in Europe to another, to access to rawq materials from
France, for e.: ample, which could be effoctively used in Gorraany,
and from raw riatorials in Germany which might be effectively used
in France. I think that this thing is well calculated to
reduce costs of production, to prove the overall economic
strength of Western Europe. And that, I think, is a very good
thing for the world.
We have a few aspects of it ourselves that attract our
interest. But I needn't discuss those tonight. But by and
large the European Common Market was a good conception. fand the
Messina Powers are to be congratulated on it.
But you can't take a scheme like that and transfer it
to the Pacific. I find it very difficult to understand how you
could have Australia and New Zealand and Malaya and India and
East Pakistan and the Philippines, al) with one Customs barrier
around them, one covering the lot, and internal free trade.
Because quite frankly, if you will allow me to make a thoroughly
selfish remark, -f I were to propound a scheme of that kind, I
wouldn't be beaten at the next election I'd be beaten before it
ever arrived. ( Applause, laughter)
Question: Does the Prime Minister think th; at mankind will
survive the rapid growth of world population?
Prime Minister: Well, Sir, I think that that is a most ambiguous
question. I suppose it is quite true in theory, that we can eat
ourselves out of house and home in the world, but I think that
the pessimists on this matter overlook two things.
One is that the rate of increase in the population by
natural increase doesn't necessarily maintain itself as
standards of living rise. On the contrary' The rate of
reproduction rather tends to fall as the standard of living
rises. That I believe is what is now called one of the great
" demographic truths".
But in the second place and this is the other side of
the picture how do we know how much food the world can
produce? There are too many people in the world who
pronounce themselves on certain matters without having considered
other factors in the world picture, which are rapidly changing.
We could go to a place six or seven hundred miles from
here where, only relatively few years ago sheep couldn't
flourish: they would dwindle, peak and pine, to use Shakespearet
expression. At the end of a couple of years, ' No, the pasture
was no good; they couldn't flourish on it; they couldn't
fatten; they just died off'. And there wore hundreds of
thousands of acres of it,
Then the raeoallurgists one doesn't think of
metallurgists as agriculturalists, but they are went into it
and they discovered that there were certain trace elements in
the soil, or that wore not in the soil, that were lacking. And
whatever it was on that occasion copper or cobalt, or somethingthey
said " That's the deficiency", the land is put into
cultivation, a certain amount of this deficient mineral -Irilled
in and now they carry two or three sheep to the acre.
Now that is just a trifling example. I don't believe
we yet know how ruch : 2ood the world will produce; or how many
animals the world will nourish. We don't know yet because
science is only at the beginning of solving these problems.
Does anybody know, in the case of Australia, whether
from the Great Salt Lakes of the interior: we won't some day on
a proper and efficient basis derive fresh water and irrigate
the country? I don't know. But I believe it will be done.
And so before one becomes pessimistic and envisages
a future world with doubling and re-doubling populations, with so
many of them dying of starvation, one should be very thankful
to realise that while the Almighty gave us problems to solve,
He also -tve us human minds with an almost infinite capacity for
solving then. ( Applause)
Question: Can the Prime Minister foresee the election of a " new"
Australian, other than British, as a member of Federal Parliament,
and possibly, as a Minister?
Prime Minister: In the good homely Australian phrase, Sir, my answer to
that is " Too right". ( Laughter, applause)
Question: Could world peace be improved by better understanding and
friendly atmosphere between the world loaders at Summit mec; ings
by each speaking the other's language?
Prime Minister: Did you hear that? The suggestion is that we would all
get on very well together if we spoke each other's language,
I'm not at all sure that agree with it. I'm sorry
to disappoint those who are advocates of some form of
international language, but I'm not at all sure that I agree with
it. I have known a few . people and I have had a few
responsible tasks in my life; I've had a few follows that I
think I might have got to an -"-derstanding with if I hadn't
understood what they were saying. ( Laughter)
And as a corollary to that, let me tell you that there
is a great virtue in talking, if I may select an example at
random, to a Russian. And i have no Russian. There is some
advantage in being able to meditate about the matter while the
interpreter gives you the translation. There is a good deal to
be said for that.
I don't belong to the yak-a-ty yak school
of negotiation you know what I mean? You see a lot of these
people: one has hardly shut his mouth when they are talking the
same language, before the other follow is sr-ing, " Yes, yes but
look, so and so and so and so" o And then the second cuts the
first off in mid-air. No, NoJ When I speak I like to be
understood. But when the other fellow speaks I'm not too sure
that I do. ( Laughter., applause)
Quetin: What impact will the election of Senator Kennedy to the
Presidency of the United States have upon world affairs?
Prime Minister: There is a very honest answer to be made to that
don't know". I don't know because I have met Senator Kennedy and
that is all. I know Nixon pretty well. Therefore everything I
would have would be mere hearsay.
But I think that we want to act on this assumption which
I think is well-founded, that the incoming President, Senator
Kennedy, is a man of parts. He has, though he is young, a
pretty active experience. I have every reason to believe that he
is a man of courage, of resolution and of breadth of mind. And
that is not d bad equipment with which to start in discharging
the greatest office in the free world. ( Applause)
Question: What is considered by the Prime Minister as the best
contribution Australia can make to world stability?
Prime Minister: Well if I may say this, I think that the first
contribution that any country can make to stability is to be
stable itself. No unstable country can make a true contribution
to stability in the world.
And if we are to be stable in xustralia, then I don't
mean that we are to be stagnant in Australia. Of course we
won't be. But as we go along, if we can be stable, sensible,
sane, developing, never be afraid to express our own views to
the other nations of the world but never fall into the error
of thinking that we are one of the greatest powers in the world
an error that people occasionally do fall into that is our
contribution. Good sense, wisdom, a spirit of adventure. But a
sense of balance underneath it all.
And one of the great tasks, internationally, o~ f any
Australian leader, whether it is myself or my successor, or
whoever it n-ay be, is on that basis of s to talk with
modesty, but with firmness, and with frienuiness in th~ e Councils
of the world. And it is surprising how, in spite of our numbers,
almaost, or relatively insignificant numbers, we are listened to
in the Councils of the world. I think that is a good thing.
We want to go on. ( Interjection: " Don't you think that is
because of you rather than of Aiustralia?") Certainly not.' It's
in spite of me. ( Laughter)
Question: Speaking of cricket, in the Prime Minister's opinio~
do Meckiff and Rourke really " 1chuck" and would batsmen do better
if they refrained from doing so?
Prime Minister: Sir, I don't know. The umpires have a habit of
deciding those matters and they are in the best position to
judge.
BcL I just want to renind you I saw this story
attributed the other day to my friend Jack Hobbs but it
originally began in relation to Victor Trumper. He was in
batting many years ago with a distinguished colleague of his, a
fanous cricketer, and they were ' doing very nicely, thank you'
and Vic's partner came donm the pitch for one of those nid-wicket
consultations like going behind the Speaker's chair at Canberra-
( Laughter) and he said " Vic, this fellow's throwing". And Vic
said, " Shut up; right take hin off!" ( Laughter)
, uestion: Would the Prime Minister care to say :. wat he tainks of
Mr. Khrushchev?
Prime Minister: Now there is a time limit on these things and therefore
I can't really profess to answer this question without talking
for half an hour.( Laughter) And I am not going to do that.
Put I had a most interesting, and quite long, personal
discussion with hin. He of course is an exhibitionist, beating
the shoe on the desk I was there; I saw all this and slapping
with the hand. All this is a forn of showmanship. He is an
earthy character, He is not without humour. I found that
rather disturbing. ( Laughter) I ventured to describe it on some
occasion after Igot bac: hone as what might be called " farm yard"
hunour, if you follow me.
Andthere he is. I don't think that he wants a global
war, a nuclear war. I think he means to nake all the ".' vance he
can in the world short of waging nuclear war. I don't think t-t,
he is very sensitive to what I will call the " western mind"; I
don't think ho really understands it.
I think he still believes that we are perhaps more
easily frightened by bluster than we are. Because we are not
really a bit frightened by bluster. But he hones that some of
the new countries, particularly in Africa, may take hin ' au pied
de la lettro' and say, " This is it. Je nust behave. We can't
quarrel with that nan; he's fornidable; he's strong; he's
threatening". That was his object. I don't think it succeeded. In
sone ways I think that he is a man with a rough, robust
intelligence that is not to be overlooked at all, that is
fornidable. But whether he clearly sees the ultimate direction
in which he is travelling, or whether he clearly understands the
nature of the people that he is dealing with, that is an entirely
different matter. A lot of these people who are dic '". ors are accustomed
to believe that people are numbers, they're statistics, they are
people to be moved around. In our kind of world we believe that
the most indestructible element is the spirit of man that is
the indestructible thing. And it is because we look at men and
women as individual human beings who have a spirit which is
indestructible, that we never regard them as mere statistics, or
people to be ordered around. That is the great distinction.
I think I can understand his point of view; I would
doubt very much whether he understands mine, ( Applause)