_._ BROADCAST NO,
BROADCAST BY THE-! RIME EINISTER ( RT. HON. RG. MENZIES)
Over NATIONAL STATIONS at 7.15 p. m. MONDAY,
27TH NOVEIIER 1961
DEVELOPMENT
As the election campaign goes on, it becomes more and
more clear that there is a basic difference between Government and
Opposition in their approach to the national problems. I can best
illustrate this by referring to our well-known policy of national
development a policy which we have been pursuing with great
vigour, and in relation to which we have already accepted
substantial additional obligations over the next few years. I
refer to the West Australian iron ore, iron and steel, and railways
scheme, Beef Roads in the north, improved coal ports, and the like.
From our point of view, the great continuing policy of
works for development, particularly those calculated to earn more
* export income and save imports, is essential. It provides a
foundation upon which everything else stands. For when you
develop our country, whether in minerals or water supply or power
or transport or heavy industrics or more intensive production from
the soil, you are doing something which increases the national
Swealth and the national income and enables living standards to
rise and makes it financially possible for a Government to
increase social services and other cor= unity benefits. We regard
national development as the cause, and improving social benefits
as the result. Labour seems to start at the other end. Mr. Calwell
has been complimented in some quarters for putting forward a
constructive policy. Yet that policy is, in reality, a string
of financial promises and hand-outs ha" ing for the most part
little or nothing to do with the development of the nation's
resources. His approach is, therefore, fundamentally different
from ours. We have shown, and will show, that great works of
development must be based upon economic stability and the
encouragement of investment, and that only such a policy can give
rise to increased employment and wealth and growing social
advantages. The Calwell policy, so far fron being constructive, is
in reality destructive. It will check national development because
it is grossly inflationary, and will, therefore, lower living
standards and operate against effective saving and investment in
Australia. If he won this election it is quite clear that the
more he attempted to put his policy into operation, and the
greater the rate of inflation became, the slower would be the
rate of national progress and the greater the difficulty of
honouring the rest of his promises.
Now it must be said for us that we hxve very seldom
made election promises in relation to what I will call broadly
" social services". We have simply known . and determined that these
would be improved as the national capacity to provide them
becpaec greater. And wh. at has been the result?.
2.
I hate to weary you with figures, but the ones I am
about to give you tare quite rum. rkablu. Wlhen the Labour Party
was defeated in 1949, having had up to that time a clcar majority
in both Houses of Parli-~ nt, and being therefore able to put its
policies into force, it . as spending œ 85n. on social services. In
the current year we are finding œ 273m.. But there are great
additional items. When they went out they were finding œ 6.3n. for
hospital beneofits wve re now finding œ 23n. They were finding
nothing for mldical benefits we are finding œ 16m. They were
finding less than half a million for pharmaceutical bunefits this
year we are finding There are other similar ite-s, such as
tuberculosis benefits and the nutrition of children. Add all these
up and the simple fact is that in the whole of what I will call
the " hoalth field" they were finding in 1929 we are, in
1961, finding œ 8mn. Those latter figures includu two remarkable
benefits for old age pensionors over nud above the actual amount
of their pensions of œ 4.8n. for mudical services and œ 9.3m. for
pharmaccutical bcnciits, or a total of œ 1. n.
Now I want to s-y to you that this record, which puts
La: bour's present electioJuaring protestations and pronisos in
their true light, could not have been achieved unless, und-jr our
overall policies of development and high public credit and
investmecnt, both domestic and fron abroad, the gross national
product had risen fromn 2,729-. in 1949 to œ 7,208. this year.
You see wha. t I man? The cxpansion of the resources of the
nation ha. s -ade it possible soundly and justly to increase the
benefits coming to citizens. You cannot, without inviting
d: ioa3lor, put tChriIt' p'Jp. pi) ico ' i. fln r:: t. nrtu by saying, as Labour
appears to say, that the individual benefits create the national
vealth. In our torn of office, as a result of these basic
policies, Lustralia has bccone, ong other things, the tenth
Sretcast traing nation in the world. For that is what has
enabled its living sta. ndardLs and its social services to grow.
To put this in the shortest possible t r s we believe
that a nation must create before it can distribute, and it . must
earn before it can pay out. We have . lr ady, as I have said,
plcdgod over the njxt three years vury largo sums of roney to
wiorks of national doveloprcent. Our oconomy will need to be strong
and stable to sustain and forvm. rd these enterprises, to say
nothing of others which will emerg. Yet, Calwoll lighth.
artedly proposes to add hundreds of : illions more each year over
and above the lready c om: iitted C-overn ment expcnditure iLnd, I
repeat, the great bulk of his proiscs have nothing to dc with
dcvelop-ment cr with the creation of vwualth at all. He seems to me
to be putting the cart before the horse. Indeed, so little
attention does he pay to the basic probloe of building up this
nation, that I begin to think that so long as his cert is full of
glittering gifts ho does not think that a horse is necessary at
all.