" ROUND TABLE" TELEVISION INTERVIEW~
VJITH THE RT. HON. THE PRIME MINISTER,
SIR ROBERT MENZIES, ONQTu CHANNEL 9
TELEVISION STATION, 7 BRIS3AINE ON
23RD APRIL, 1963.
Members of the Panel : Dean Baddeley
Ex-Senator Condon Byrne
Mr. H. J. Summers,
( News Editor ( QTQ9)
DEAN BADDELEY:
PRIME MINISTER Mr. Prime Minister, may I say how much I adore
every minute of the four and a half years I have
been in Australia. One of the things which I find
awfully fascinating here is to see the sort of
various levels of influence coming from other parts
of the world the American influence, the European
influence and the Asian influence. Now, in th-e
present situation, all of these influendes are of
tremendous significance to our whole way of life.
I wonder if you would like to comment how you think
this pattern will take shape in the future, whether
we shall gear ourselves more to one or the other
to Europe, to the United States, or to Asia,
Well, you know, I think that there are some influences
which are superficial and therefore obvious, There
are others that are perhaps more profound and it is
very difficult to forecast which will fall into
that group or which into that group. The influence
of America on Australian habits and speech is, of
course, obvious, largely as the result of the moving
pictures in the earlier days and still to an extent,
to television and what-have-you; and the vocabulary
in Australia tends to be garnished with American
expressions. All that's quite true. How far that
is permanent I wouldn't like to say. It is equally
true that with a lot of immigrants coming into
Australia, particularly from the European countries,
we are beginning to take a little interest in cooking
food new dishes new stYles, and I am sure that
the impact of these new citizens on what you might
call the " restaurant habits" of Australia is
immediate and obvious. But all these things, I
think, are on the whole, superficial. They are
interesting, certainly; they are sometimes very
engaging but they are superficial, if I may repeat
that worA. Our habits of mind are pretty deop down
in us and I think it will take a long, long time
before the instinctive processes of thought derived
from Great Britain are altered. You know, I
frequently say to myself and to other people if they
will listen, that the British habit of mind is
inductive. 1feIar gue always from the particular to
the general and this is deep in our consciousness,
It is the history of our parliaments; it is the
history of the common law, whereas Continental
countries are deductive and , aherica, to a remarkable
extent is the same: Lay dow~ n the general principle
and then deal with the particular case. It is a
different habit of mind. 66009 @ 06690/ 2
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QUESTIONER Would you say th~-is is because in the English way of
life there is a tremendous value set upon individual
enterprise, individual thought, individual
ingenuity?
P. M. I think that's right but it is not the entire
explanation. I think this goes back to the fact
that England developed a process of civilization
which wasntt entirely dominated by the old Roman
ideas. Exccept for a fleeting century or two,
they were never in the Roman Empire and if you go
back to the roots of our legal system, our
parliamentary system, you will find something that
you won't find in Justinian, speaking legally or
in the codifications of Europe, speaking polilically.
Yes, I think there is a profound difference.
Q. We proceed, Sir, from the particular case to the
general principle and don't rely so much on codes
of law like the Code Napoleon or the Justinian Code.
P. M. I thoroughly agree with you.
Q. Do-vm from precedent to precedent.
P. M. Yes. And, of courso, the fact is that our systems
have been worked out on encountering a problem and
saying, " Well, now, what's the thing to do about
that, What makes justice and sense about that,"
and it's decided to do it this way. And in a
hundred years' time, some clever graduate comes
along and does a study on this and discovers that
certain principles have been evol~ ved. But the
people who did the things weren't much concerned about
the principles that they wore evolving, as in the
intrinsic justice and practicability of what they
were doing.
Q. What about Asia?
P. M. The Asian influ,. nce, I would have thought at the
momentl was very slight. Of course it is quite
true that, geographically, we have an intimate
association and will have a more and more intimate
association with 1' sia. I don't agree with people
who say that means that we are now to be regarded
as an Asian country. I don't think that's true.
I think that we will continue to be a country with
all our basic principles, our basic ideas deriving
from the old world. But more and more, we will have
to learn to live with the Asian countries, to
understand them not only to keep the peace with
them but to establish positive goodwill with them.
This is not going to be an easy or quick process.
QQ There is their cultural and trade associations in
Malaysia,
P. M. Yes, and we have much to learn from them and they
will have something to learn from us. I say all
that and I believe all that, 2 but I don't accept the
proposition that we ought just to go around saying,
11, doll, we are an Asian country now in Australia,
with no connection with the Old World," 1 but we
have e 9 / 3
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Q. But you cannot escape geography, Sir.
P. M. Oh, no, Exactly. But I thought the point I was trying
to make was that, geographically, there we are
Indonesia next door Malaya, Laos, Viet Nain, Burma,
India, Pakistan, China, all'these countries, they are
in our section of the world, and I don't ignore
geography. I think that how we get to understand
them and how we can perhaps influence the way they go
about things may have a lot to do with our future.
But I can say all that and still be, as the Scots
would say, Robert Gordon Menzies QMingies") ( Laughter)
Q. Sir Robert, that brings us on to another aspect of the
whole situation and it is this: Presuming that
Australia does retain the hard core of the traditional
British point of view, traditions and culture; now,
we find a new British Commonwealth emerging, newi
Asian nations, coloured nations, black nations, with
different ethnic ties; we are going to see a
completely new British Commonwealth. Can this new
Commonwealth, in its new form, assume the place of
the old one? Australia obviously can fit into the
pattern but can they? Therefore, what part do you
thinks hr Robert, that the new emerging British
Commonwealth, with all these vast differences that
are now injected into it, can play in the new world?
P. M, Well, you have now put what I believe but the Dean
will know better than i do the 064 question.
Because, I don't think really, that anybody can answer
that question. You See, my memory goes back a long
way. I remember attending a Prime Ministers'
Conference it wasn't then called such in 1935.
A long time ago. I wasn't Prime Minister, but I went
there to represent my Prime Minister, Mr. Lyoens, who
was ill at the time:-. And there were five of us,
sitting at the table, that's all. Ie were all the
same kind of fellow, we all spoke the same language,
iwe all had grown up on the samu body of ideas. All
thi -s was quite simple and the last one I attended,
last year, there were what, fourteen or fifteen of
us, togethr with five or six or seven observers who
next time will be Prime Ministers themselves. And
it would be idle to contend that it is the same sort
of thing. It isn't. Itts a very strange mixture
this new Commonwealth because some of us are in Zhe
direct allegiance to Zhe Throne and ethers, who
recognise the Queen as the head of the Commonwealth,
but are themselves, republics. The Queen's writ doesn't
run in their countries, And, of course, some of them
are pretty rich in experience. You tako a statesman
like Mr. Nehru. He is as rich in experience of public
affairs as anybody could be, And take President Ayub
of Pakistan or the Tunku in Malaya these are people
who by long association really do think mere or loss
as we do, Then you get somo new countries, just
emerged, with the echoes of their struggles still in
their ears. You can't expect them to be looking at
things in the soa way and, in fact, if we all looked
at things in the same way, it wouldn't be much of a
Commonwealth, would it? I must say, I still find
myself saying every now and then, " I wish I knew what
he had in the back of his maind," 1 and perhaps he is
saying the same thing. 0 0 / 4
Q. Isn~ t it a fact Sir Robert that each one of those
countries is changing, undergoing a process of change?
Australia, itself, is undergoing a profound process of
change, You would agree on that?
P. M. Oh, entirely, And as a matter of fact, what you say
just reminds me of this. We are a little bit tempted
to lump them all together. To take all the African
countries, for instance, that have merged and say,
IhVell, now, the African countries think so and so,"
It's silly because they are all different. The first
thing that we have to learn, if we are to be wise, is
to know that they are different, that there is a world
of difference, from the point of view of the Prime
Minister of Nigeria, Sir Abubakar Balewa, and Nkrumah
in Ghana, and probably a great deal of difference between
them and Tanganyika or wherever it may be. These are
not the same countries. You just can't apply a simple
rule and say " Well, that's where they fit in," because
the fact thai they have become independent means T~
they all have their own national aspirations. Difficult
enough to persuade a New Zealander that he's the same
as an Australian. ( Laughter) Much more difficult to
persuade a Ghonian that hets the same as a Tanganyikan.
Q. Sir Robert, do you think any common point of view
British Commonwealth point of view can continue to
emerge among these nations? That again is purely
speculation.
P. M. Well, I must say I am optimistic about this because at
several recent meetings I am practically the oldest
inhabitant now, you see
Q. You are the doyen of the corps.
P. M. and at the last meeting or two I have noticed
acute differences of opinion, then some discussion and
I have been interested to see how much advance is made
to a more common point of view, a more common understanding.
You can have a conference at which people
begin by emphasising their differences and at the end
of a week they are emphasising the matters on which they
agree. And that is the spirit of the Commonwealth.
So I am no pessimist,
Q. It's encouraging because the British Commonwealth should
have a tremendous part to play if it can retain its
integrity, its unity in the new world.
P. M. Tremendous, and the less dominating it is in the physical
world, the more influential it can become in the world
of tile spirit. It can indeed, presenting quality, wisdom,
character and experience.
Speaking of the changes in Australia, Sir Robert nobody
would have seen as much experience as you. In ail
Australian history, there hasn't beon a man who has so
long held the Prime Ministership as yourself. Nobody
would be in a position mere than you to judge the change
gradual, but ever so constant change in this country.
Viewing it as from today, what would you say are the
most significant changes in Australia's development, over
the span of your political life? 0 & 00.1a/ 5
P. M. Well, that would be a difficult one. Wie have had, of
course, the most tremendous internal physical development
and that goes on. But I think, on the whole, the greatest
development has been in the position that we occupy in
relation to other countries. I do think that we can say
without boasting that we have a significance novi with other
countries, a significance in London, a significance in
Washington which porhaps we didn't have before except by
fits and starts. I think there has been a very great
development of an understanding in those places of us and
of an understanding on our part of them. This, I think,
has been a great development.
Q. Do you think, Sir Robert, that our significance is somewhat
out of proportion and greater than our physical
strength, our population?
P. M. I am sure of that.
Q* And even our remoteness?
P. M. I am sure of that. Our remoteness may perhaps be a
contributing factor.
Q. We stand a bit aloof from the scene?
P. M. Oh, yes. Here we are; we attract the attention of some
of the old Wiestern powers by the very fact that we are
remote and that we are carrying on in the old traditions,
and I think this is a source of strongth for us.
Q. There are of course the cha--nges developmentally. There
are changes in the emphasis on Australian development.
You would agree I think we Queonslanders like to think
that it is so that there has been a greater emphasis in
recent times, very recent times, on the potential of the
north and the development of the north.
P. M. I think that over the last five years, the growth of
emphasis on northern development has been quite remarkable,
and it is not just all a matter of government or governments'
point of view. The discovery of uranium at the
time was most exciting and attracted a great deal of
attention; the great bauxite deposits in the north;
the phenomenal mineral developments in Mount Isa the
increasing emphasis in the public mind on mineral wealth
as a source of Australian development. All this has
happened in just a few years. And of course,
This oil discovcury in Queensland is, of course of
dramatic importance and if it is followed by other
discoveries, as I think we may reasonably hope.....
Q. In other parts of Australia?
P. M. Yes, or in Queensland or wherever it may be. If this
happens, of course, this could revolutionise the Australian
external ecotiomy by reducing the drain on our overseas
resources. I think it is in the mineral field that you
have had the dramatic and exciting things over the last
five years and they have all lifted eyes to the north.
There is no doubt about that. */ 6
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Q. Unfortunately, Sir Robert, we arc suffering in Queensland
from the fact that we do not seem to be attracting the
migrants here. Apparently migrants are attracted to
those areas where there is heavy industrialisation. We
are a magnificent primary-producing State. It would
appear that some conscious and determined effort by the
Commonwealth the State and the private sector of
business will be necessary to redirect the trend,
otherwise we become the victim of circumstances and the
gap between us and the industrialised States gets wider
and wider. Would you think that is the position?
P. M. I think that is the position. It's quite true. I read
with great pleasure about certain industrial developments
that are occurring here. There is, I think not the
slightest doubt that migrants will go where there is a
prospect of industrial employment. Indeed, unless we
have increasing secondary industrial activity, I don't
think we can sustain the flow of migrants because there
is not much additional employmunt to be got in the rural
industries, Every authority on the rural industries will
admit that.
Q. Particularly with increased mechanisation?
P. M. That's right. With increased mechanisation, and therefore
if you are going to have a hundred thousand people coming
into the country each year, there must be a sustained
development of secondary industries. Well, I think I can
look back to a time, you know, many years ago, when
industrial development wasn't f5Aightfully encouraged in
some States. I think that's right.
Q. That's perfectly true. The sugar industry for one.
P. M. So far as I am concerned, I think that every State that
has the potential within itself ought to be encouraged
in industrialization, so that it has a balanced economy.
I remember the time when South Australia was a purely rural
ccmmaunity, and during the war when I was Prime Minister,
we put a number of munitions establishments into South
Australia, South Australia is now, in terms of percentage,
one of the ziost highly industrialized States in Australia
and that's why the proud moment cane when Sir Thomas
Playford was able to say, " We are no longer a claimant
State".
Q. And, Sir Robert do you visualise that that position might
develop here with the concentration of effort in those
three centres?
P. M. I do. Well, I don't mind telling you and I am not just
saying this because I am in Brisbane that a lot of people
in England have spoken to me from time to time, " Where do
you think So-and-So ought to go to got in on the great
stream of development in Australia?" I always say
Queensland.
Q. Splendid.
P. M. Because I think Queensland has a greater potential for
future development than any other State in Australia.
I do. And it is beginning to come. oa. * e oa/ 7
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One of the great contributions that Queensland has
made, it seems to me, is in the export market and I
think I am right in saying and you must correct-me
if I am wrong that the contribution made by exports
from Queensland last year and previous years too,
exceeded by far anything else that any other State made.
P. M. You mean per head?
Q. Yes.
P. M. That wouldn't surprise me at all. You take sugar, for
example. The export of sugar from Queensland, ten years
ago, twelve years ago, was about half a million tons.
Today it is a million and a quarter tons. This is a
very big item. The Mt. Isa developments alone will
produce an export income which nobody dreamed of seven
or eight years ago. The bauxite deposits, all these
things, coal exports now why, it is only the other day
that we were importing coal. You see? And now exporting
coal, and of course the big industry, the cattle industry
in Queensland, has suffered from time to time by droughts
and one of the counter-agents to the drought is to have
effective means of transporting cattle out; and beef
roads that are going on now all these steps I hopewill
continue and continue and mean that the exports of
beef from Queensland will grow and, I think, quite
phenomenally.
Q. I shall think you are a Queenslander in a moment,
instead of a Victorian. It's very heartening,
P. M. Well, Itm a Queen's Counsel. ( Laughter)
Q. It is very heartening for us in Queensland to hear you
say these things because we talk a great deal about the
future of Queensland and think of oil and bauxite and so
on, but I don't think half of us quite realise the
tremendous contribution it will have to the future of
Australia,
Q. Well, against this background of the future of Queensland
and of-Australia, so very very bright and so very.
promising and now starting to get under way, comes the
whole question of Australian defence, the integrity and
security of the country. Mr. Prime Minister, would you
care to comment on this? Do you think Australia is
regarded as a sort of Southern bastion of the American
defence arcl or do you think Australia and i1erica*
reciprocally have common security engagements, each as
important, significant, perhaps indispensable for the
other.
P. M. I think our relations with America must be regarded as
reciprocal. It would never do if we underplayed our
part in defence. I think we constantly have to revise
what we are doing in the defence field. We are doing
it now, at this very moment in the Cabinet, because we
can't just leave it to the other fellow. If we want
America to stand by us in a time of crisis, we must
stand by America. It is as simple as that. You can't
have one-way traffic on this matter and, really, I have
been very upset by some of the isolationist tendencies
which manifest themselves in some of this recent talk
4P eo/ 8
8-
P. M. about a nuclear-free Southern Hemisphere; whether
( Contd,) the Americans ought to be allowed to have a signalling
station in the north-west of Australia. I think this is
just old-fashioned isolationism, and quite inconsistent
with our treaty arrangements with the United States.
Q6 It is something that is giving the Australian people
cause for very grave thought.
P. M. I am sure it is.
Q* In the course of your long and very distinguished
service as Prime Minister of Australia, Sir Robert, you
must have also seen great changes in the world of
education.
P. M. Yes I think I have. This is, of course, the evergreen
topic. I even find myself being attacked for not
being interested in it. I think it is a little
ironical.
Q. I remember a speech you made at Queensland University....
P. M. But really it is phenomenal when I look back at my own
schooldays, going to a country State school and then to
a State School in Ballarat, going to a secondary school,
going to a public school and then to a University, and
think of the relatively primitive arrangements that
existed then and the relatively small amount of money
that was spent in State Budgets on education. I really
thank heaven that things have changed so much. Of
course, we can always spend moro but the rate of
expenditure today is, I think, quite exciting. And, of
course, in the case of the universities which I have
made rather my own special responsibility well, when
I spoke to Sir Keith Murray in England ana said, " Would
you come and be the Chairman of the Committee?" and
finally stole him from Harold Macmillan who was then his
Minister and he came out, I wasn't even game to tell the
Treasury what I was doing. And we got the report and
this, of course, ran into almost as many millions as
people had been thinking in thousands, and each three
years it doubJ~ es itself and I don't grudge a penny
of it. But I think there is a terrific challenge to
us in A-ustralia. We are either going to become an
increasingly highly-trained and well-educated people
technologically, yes scientifically, yes culturally,
in the humanities, perhaps, much more important than
some people think. We are going to do this and become
more and more influential and responsible in the world
or we will become not only remote but second-rate and
that's no good.
Q. Do you think that the fact that the system of education
is very much bound up with each State is a weakness or
a strength?
P. M. No, I don't. I think it is a strength. I don't believe
in uniformity on these matters. I don't want to have a
Commonwealth power over education. I don't want to have
some centralised bureaucracy at Canberra deciding what
is a good systom for North Queensland and what's a good
system for South Tasmania. Really it doesn't work,
That's no good. Education is someohing that you do to
/ 9
9
P. M. the individual, not to the mass. It is the individual
( Contd.) that you are dealing with and therefore -there must be
a tremendous lot of individuality about State systems of
educatilon and regional systems of education. No, Heaven
forbid that we should have uniformity in this,
Q. What is true there, Mr. Prime Minister, is true also in
the general sense, the general administrative, executive
and political sense.
P. M. Quite right. This is the case for Federalism. I'm a
Federalist. I think it would be a bad thing if we had
everything centralised. You know, my dear fellow, we
have both met these fellows who say, " I believe in
centralisation of power and decentralisation of
administration." As you would say, Dean, " Hooey".
( Laughter)
Q, Mr. Prime Minister, would you think that perhaps the
Commonwalth Constitution is requiring some amendinelit in
some particulars that may centralise some aspects of
power more,
P. M. I think that there are some amendments that could very
well be made to the Constitution but the difficult is to
get any five people to agree on them.
Q. And certainly to carry a referendum?
P. M. Yes,
Q. What about the other method, Sir Robert, of the States
under the appropriate section transferring powers? They
are most reluctant to do that I would think.
P. M. Oh, we have had an almost unbroken failure on that front
because if one State does, another State doesn't. You
can't have a Federalpcier that limps along, operating in
three States and not in three. But it is high time we
got over this idea that the States are all separate
bodies, that they are sovereign, because as you know, they
are not sovereign. They exercise sovereign powers just
as the poor old Commonwealth does. We all exercise
sovereign powers in our sphere of them, what has been
given to us. But we ought to preserve Federalism, but
to cu-1tivate the habit of thinking nationally a little
more than we do. The two things are not irreconcilable.
Q. Do you think, Sir, that oven though the States lost
a great deal of their sovereignty once the power of
diruct taxation was substantially accumulated in the
Commonwealth, that there is still a residue of sovereignty
that is well worth preserving and is most valuable and
salutary, a0 0 0 0 1 0* 0 00
10
P. M. Well, you know, this word " sovereignty" is rather abused.
You don't have a sovereign State in a Federation. That
was settled a hundred years ago. You have sovereignty
in the community as a whole divided up, some parts of the
sovereignty going to the central Parliament and some
parts remaining with the States. This is the whole
essence. Sovereignty lies in -the nation. And I think
that if we just begin to think that way a, little and to
be first of all keen on what happens to the nation, we
can still be pretty strong Federalists. I am myself.
I don't want to see unification in Australia. I am
a Federalist, but I am also a Nationalist in the sense
that I balieve in this nation. Indeed I ought to.
They have been trusting me with the business of looking
after them for a long time.
Q. Do you think it will come off? Her Majesty The Queen
will have a residence in Canberra? She will be resident
here for say, two months of the year?
P. M. With very groat respect to His Grace the Archbishop, I
think this rather sweeping, a sort of bravura gesture,
because an awful lot has to be worked out, you know,
You can lay out a lot of money and have a residence and
who lives in it except for a month when The Queen comes
and what do you do writh it? Oh no. All I say is that
these proposals are well worthy of some study but they
don't adimit of a kerbstone reply.
Q. I shouldn't have thought it was practicable. If she did
it to Australia she would have to do it to New Zealand,
she would have to do it to other parts of the Cormonwealth.
Sheo would never be at home. So it does seem a little
bit unrealistic and I am quite sure that we all feel that
the recent visit of Hor Majesty was an unbounded success
and tihat Australia is as loyal to the Crown as ever before.
P. M. No doubt about it.
Q. I am sure you are basking in your Thistle. ( Laughter)
P. M. 14 Basking in a thistle is not a prospect that appeals to me.
( Laughter)
DEAN Uell, I think on tha-t rather humorous note, I ama afraid
BADDELEY we must draw our programme to an end, Mr. Prime
Minister, will you please accept the gratitude of our
viewers and listeners and the immense gratitude of this
station and particularly of Messrs. Summers, Condon
Byrne and myself for honouring us with this visit.
P. M. T'hank you.
DEAN Web always feel it is a jolly good thing for Southerners
BADDELEY: to come and sniff some of Queensland's sun and the
expansiveness and fun of it all and I hope that you will
go away a little refreshed by your very short visit to
Queensland. Thank you very much indeed for coming.