ADDRESS TO CONVOCATION
BY THE PRIME MINISTER ( THE RT. HON. R. G. MENZIES9 Q C M. P.)
AT A GRADUATESt EVENING IN THE~ GREAT HALL OF THE UNIVERSITY* 6F
SYDNEY, FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, 1959.
I am much honoured by your invitation to deliver what you
are pleased to describe as the Annual " Oration" to Graduates of
this great and famous University,,
I was flattered some little time back to be made one of
your graduates causa honoris an agreeable expression which in
one blow gets rid of th obligation to pass examinations and
adorns one with unearned but delightful academic splendour. I
wish that I could repay your courtesy by offering to you an
address profound but engaging, the product of weeks of quiet
reflection in the company of my books and my thoughts. But for
a Prime Minister in a vigorously political community this does
not prove possible. Some of you may recall that in one of his
speeches during the war, Winston Churchill made a glancing
reference to Australia, where, he said, " politics seemed to be
carried on with a fine 18th century vigour".
There are certainly, for me, other problems to be
wrestled with, and preparations to beomade for much less academic
controversies. What I have to say to you, therefore, will be
somewhat discursive and occasional. B3ut here and there, I hope
there may emerge some ideas which represent the Views of a man,
himself a University graduate by examination, who has been
privileged to have something to do with Universities and the
attitude of Governments towards them,,
In Australia. the intense interest of Governments and
Parliaments in universities is comparatively modern. When I was
a student at the University of Melbourne I once heard a Member
of Parliament refer to it as " a bear-garden of the idle rich",
a quaint expression which even then, as I contemplated myselfland
my fellow students, seemed both stzange and. wonderf'ul.
When I was Attorney-General of the.-State of' Victoria, I
introduced into Parliament the legislation which, for the first
time, created the office of Vice-Chancellor of the Melbourne
University. Many years later, as Prime Minister, I had the great
privilege of setting up the Murray Committee, of securing the
assent of Cabinet to the adoption of its recommendations, and of
seeing them put into legislative and administrative effect. As
I extract some personal pride from these later developments, I
propose to say something about them.
In 1956, having conceived the idea of an authoritative
committee of investigation, I saw Sir Keith Murray in London. He
was and is the Chairman of the University Grants Committee in
Great Britain. I pointed out to him that while the Commonwealth
had, except in respect of its direct Territories, no comprehensive
legislative authority with respect to education, it did have power
to make grants to the ScL-ates, and that such grants might be made
for specific purposes and subject to such conditions as the
Commonwealth Parliament might think proper, With the co-operation
of Mr. Harold Macmillan, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer,
and was therefore the Minister to whom-thte University Grants
Committee was responsible, Sir Keith Murray made himself available.
We associated with him a strong group, consisting of the late Sir
Ian Clunies Ross, Professor Charles Morris from Great Britain,
Sir Alexander Reid of Western Australia, and Mr. Richards, a
university graduate on th. e staff of the Broken Hill Pty. Co.
The Committee was given a very broad charter. it
conducted the most intensive investigations and it made
recommendations, the adoption of which Iventure to say, has
opened up a new era in the history of he Australian Universities,
In the course of its report upon the role of the
Universities in the community, the Committee drew attention to
certain important considerations which are, I believe, at the
root of any proper examination of the place and functions of
university training.
A few of these aspects deserve particular mention, since
we must constantly have them in mind if we are to keep the
problem in proper perspective.
The first is that the modern complexity of life and the
increasingly complex nature of Australian economic development
require a very large increase in the supply of highJly educated
people. It is only in comparatively recent years that commerce
and industry have felt the need for more university graduates.
Public administration calls for more graduates. The pressure for
a greater concentration upon research calls for more graduates.
The growing need for more and more precision of thought and
analysis requires the trained minds which it is the function of
universities to produce. If all these needs are to be satisfied
then it becomes essenti a! that our uni ' arsities should be able to
provide accommodation and instruction and facilities for a
rapidly increasing number of students0
In the second place, as the Committee pointed out, " fIt
is the function of the University to offer not merely a technical
or specialised training but a full and -true education befitting a
free man, a ci-ifizen ol" a free country'?
I have had a good deal to say about this on other
occasions, but I take the opportunity of reiterating that there
is danger for the world if technologists and scientists should be
too narrowly trained, so that th-ey become less fitted to accept
their enormous social : cesponsibilities, It is one of the marks of
the current century that i. while magnificcnt skil. and a degree of
scientific investigation amounting almost to genius have presented
us year by year with more an~ d more material miracles, there is no
evidence that we understand hiinan bein~ gs any botto_ or that
wisdom has marched with knowledge,, Indeed it is the greatest
paradox of the 20th century that with all its superb cleverness it
has been marked by more violence and hatred and bar-barism than any
other century since the Middle Ages.
The third principle is that while education by teaching
must be one of the great objects of a great university, it has an
equal responsibility for research, This, of course,~ means that
the universities must attract and encourage brilliant men and
women to whom the function of discovery is a vocat: Lcn of an
absorbing kind, limited neither by the clock nor by undue
concentration upon material rewards.
The fourth principle is that a good university should be
a guardian of intellectual standards and intellectual integrity.
This, of course, involves a consideration of w. thas been called
" academic freedom". There may be some who think that this
expression connotes q. freedom from all restraints or from the rDrmal
rules which govern ordinary people, This is a misconception,
" Academic freedom" connotes the absence of external or political
compulsion upon the mind, it means that the search for truth must
not be controlled. by any authority other than the integrity of the
mind and spirit of the searcher,
I have no particular respect for university teachers or
researchers who think it good that they should accormmodate their
work and ideas to their previously formed political alignments;
because, if they do so, they will introduce a tendentious
character into their work which will deprive it of objectivity
or authority and will tend to distract them from the unobstructed
investigation of the scientific or other facts.
By the adoption of the Murray report and the provision
of the very large sums of money involved in this adoption, we have
at any rate put the universities in the way of having better paid
staffs, more adequate accommodation, more up-to-date technical
equipment and greater general capacity for improving the essential
contact between teacher and student which has been increasingly
sketchy in recent years. One process of improving has, however,
been going on for some time. I can myself remember the heated
debates which used to occur about whether university graduates
ought to be given some special admission to the Civil Service
instead of having to start at the bottom rung of the ladder,
with no further intellectual training than is afforded by the
passing of the Leaving Examinations at the schools.
Slighting references used to be made about the " academic"
mind, as if a University degree, hard-earned it, most cases,
detached its possessor from the realities of ordinary life.
Relatively few graduates reached high administrative posts;
comparatively few entered Parliament. The position in these
respects has materially improved. Great organisations are eagerly
looking for graduates. Many of the leading men in the Civil
Service are graduates. In my own Ministry, there are no less than
12 Ministers, including myself, who have university degrees.
All this means that the universities have come closer to
the community and that the community is getting increasing benefit,
even in the most practical terms, from their existence and their
work. There is another aspect of University training to which
I should interpolate a brief reference. When I established an
earlier committee to make a quick report which gave rise to the
system of Commonwealth university grants now so enormously
expanded as a result of the Murray recommendations, I made a
special point to the Committee that I wished some portion of their
recommendations to be in relation to residential colleges. Ever
since then we have made increasing provision for these colleges.
For some strange reason, there was a certain resistance to these
ideas, based upon the fact that many of the residential colleges
are Church foundations and therefore have a religioiz background.
" Why," it was said, " should the State subsidise any Church
activity?" Without endeavouring to open up the much wider question,
which has been so hotly debated for a long time in respect of
church schools I would like to say that in the case of the
universities, ihe whole criticism seemed and seems to me to be
based upon a misconception of the true nature of university
training. A student in a residential college '-as a great
advantage, if he has the right point of view. He lives constantly
in a community of scholars and of students. In addition to the
normal attendance at class or in the laboratories, he has right
through the days and the weeks and the months, the opportunity of
discussion of informal talk, with men much better informed than
himself,. A thus has the opportunity of securing an education
" in the round". And it is exactly this broad and humane education
which the world lacks most, and the comparative absence of which
has so marred the history of the century.
Before I leave the Murray Committee I should say something
of a recommended but most significant development.
In their report, Sir Keith Murray and his colleagues took
a long range look at the future. Realising as they did that their
financial recommendations which were very substantial) would
cover a limited period of time, they came to the conclusion that
there should be appointed a permanent Australian University Grants
Committee. As this Committee ( under another name -to which I will
refer a little later) has now been appointed under Statute and
much of the future of our Universities will, I hope, be inhuenced
by its advice, I will at once remind you of the reasons which led
the Murray Committee to recommend its creation.
In effect, there were six reasons
1. The Murray Committee had concentrated its work into a few
months. I accept responsibility. Art is long, but political
life is normally short; and I was keen for results. The
Committee knew that it had not completely covered the-ground.
It felt, therefILore, that there was need for further study,
and continuing study, of aspects which there had been
insufficient time to consider fully.
2. The university problem is not static but highly dynamic.
Demand is growing much more rapidly Lhan resources. " The
moving finger writes; and having writ, moves on." " The
degree of the required expansion," as the Committee said,
" and the ways in which provision should be made to cater for
this additional need will vary from institution to institution
and from State to State; the problem is far from being a
simple mathematical one and will call for close and continuous
consideration on a national basis."
3. Having regard to modern events, they concluded, as I think
most of us would, that an increasing percentage of students
would be attracted to the pure or applied sciences. They
recognised that, in terms of accommodation, and technical
equipment, science teaching costs more. They saw that the
provision of post-graduate and research facilities is of
particular importance in the scientific field. All of this
argued an urgent need for the existence of some body which
could continuously re-assess the financial needs of the
universities. " These needs," as the Committee said, " cannot
be determined once and for all."
4. There is the problem of university academic salaries, which
the committee found to be " the largest single item of the
universitiest annual current expenditure", and which is not
likely, in a world competing for skill, to remain static.
The Committee therefore thought that periodic consideration
of salaries should be undertaken on a national basis, and by
a permanent Commonwealth Committee.
Murray Committee further thought, and I thiink we would all
most heartily agree, that there is a standing need for coordinating
the w~ ork of the universities so -is t~ o get the best
value from limited resources, not only of money but of trained
manpower. ( That is a horrible economisth expression, "' manpow",
but you know what I mean.) This, they thought, applied with
particular force to specialist branches of unde~ rgraduate
teaching, and to post-graduate and research activities. They
made pointed mention, which it is timely to recall of the
need for consultation on the setting up of new institutions
of university status. There mfay be a temptation to regard
the creation of a new university, for example, primarily in
terms of money and buildings. The provision of' staffs of
high quality is even more difficult, and will be doubly
difficult if we endeavour to spread what we have over too
wide an area. Of course there will be new universities;
notable beginnings are already being made; but great care
will have to be exercised to avoid duulication and waste.
To achieve this, the proposed new body will be of immense
value.
6. The projected committee will need to secure the confidence,
not only of the Commonwealth, but of the States, in the hope
that its advice will be acceptable, and accepted, all round.
It would be a calamity if the States who have done so much
to create and nourish their universities, came to think that
the Commonwealth was invading their proper autonomy in these
matters. My own policy has been to assist, not to invade.
We accepted this compelling reasoning, and therefore
decided to act upon it. WTe rejected the suggested name, the
Australian Universities Grants Committee because we thought it
contained a suggestion of a limited funcLon the recommending
of payments. As every Commonwealth Treasurer has known, no
particular encourage ment in this field is ever needed! We
therefore adopted the name " Australian Universities Commission",
and set it up under the Act of that name, passed this year.
It may be helpful if I remind you of the main provisions
of what will, I hope, turn out to be one of the landmarks in the
educational history of Australia,
The Commission has a full-time Chairman, that notable
scientist, Sir Leslie Martin, formerly of the University of
Melbourne, and is authorised to have 2, 3 or 4 part-time members,
We have in fact appointed four:-Professor Bayliss) Professor
of Chemistry in the University of Western Australia; Professor
Trendall of the Australian National University and Emeritus
Professor of Classics at Sydney; Mr. K. A. Wilis, Managing
Director of G. R. Wills Adelaide, and Chairmand of the Finance
Committee of the University of Adelaide; and Dr. Vernon, the
General Manager of the Colonial Sugar Refining Co. This,
as you will agree, is a highly qualified and most powerful
commnittee which should inspire confidence in all quarters.
The statutory functions of the Committee are:
to furnish information and advice to the Minister ( at
present myself) " on matters in connexion with the grant
by the Commonwealth of financial assistance to
universities established by the Commonwealth and of
financial assistance to the States in relation to
Universities";
to perform its functions with a view to promoting the
balanced development of universities so that their
resources can be used to the greatest possible advantage
of Australia;
to consult with universities and with the States upon
the matters on which it is empowered to furnish
information and advice;
to recommend the conditions upon which financial assistance
should be granted.
I might , with advantage, add a little gloss, since words
like " balanced development" are not necessarily self-explanatory:
Ci The Commission will be expected to see the universities'
picture as a whole; to make its overall financial
recommendations not so as to satisfy everybody's demands
everywhere, but so as to arrive at figures which have a
sinsible relation to government budgets and, in
particular, to government revenues, which the taxpayers
provide. We cannot do or have everything at once ( in
spite of some not unpopular misconceptions to the contrary)
nor can we have all that we need quite so quickly as we
would like.
( ii) " Balanced development" does not mean that any established
University, old or new, should be prevented indefinitely
or for very long from establishing those usual faculties
and disciplines which are the main function of a University,
The teaching of history in Perth does not duplicate the
teaching of history in Sydney. The teaching of biology
in Melbourne does not duplicate the teaching of biology
in Adelaide. If a university is to be true to its name,
there are certain things it must teach, and certain studies
which it must pursue,
But there are highly specialised studies of a more
uncommon kind which may need to be pursued in one place in which
our limited resources may need to be concentrated, For example,
oriental studies, including oriental languages, which we have
sadly neglected, and for which we have so few qualified instructors,
cannot or so it seems to me, be sensibly pursued in, or in
connexion with, more than one University or centre or perhaps two.
In all these considerations, let us always remember that
the greatest shortage in Australia is of trained and disciplined
minds; we cannot afford to waste the efforts of any one of them,
I have high hopes of the Commission, Perhaps my greatest
reason is this: The more the advice of the Commission comes to be
regarded by both Parliament and people as careful, sensible and
authoritative, the less will the advance of University education
and of the universities themselves depend upon the enthusiasm and
encouragement of some Minister or Ministers who is or are
University-minded. The Universities will becomeby common
acceptance, a great and recognised instrument of national
progress and of rising standards of mental, spiritual and material.
living. I have spoken with some pride about the increasing
provision made by governments for universLties, This is, I
suppose, largely inevitable since if we are to train the many
thousands of graduates whom the community needsI the fees of
perhaps most of them will need to be met from other than family
resources, as will the cost of buildings, equipment and staff.
But at the same time, I would think it a misfortune if
universities in Australia came to be too heavily or even completely
dependent upon the goodwill and money of governments,, True, in
Australia, there are relatively few great individual fortunes,
It is, as I have pointed out, only recently that the controllers of
great businesses have looked to the universities for recruits and
have, therefore, found themselves deeply interested in the
success of those universities, There have, of course, been some
splendid benefactions to universities, but I would take leave to
doubt whether of all the thousands who graduate each year, more
than a few regard themselves as having any debt to their
university which they might hope thereafter to reccgnise or repay
in some degree. The Americans have, I think, set a great example in this
respect. In that country, universities have been on a great
scale beneficiaries of those who have passed through their doors
and have become financially successful, with a pride in building
up the university from which they graduated.
There are, after all, obvious disabilities which attach
to an over-dependence of universities on governments. It may not,
in our time, be possible to avoid this over-dependence; but at
least we can become aware of the dangers and seek to avoid them.
The greatest danger is, of course, that he who pays the piper will
always be permitted to call the tune. We politicians are, in
spite of rumours to the contrary, human beings, and we are
perhaps not averse from obtaining or exercising power. There
will, therefore, always be a considerable temptation for
politicians, who by their votes provide the universities with
funds, to seek to dictate or influence lines of study and
occasionally to concern themselves unnecessarily with staff
appointments. This kind of thing can, unless it it sturdily
resisted, lead to a lowering of standards and a debasing of the
academic currency. It is, I fear7 a fact that Members of
Parliament are themselves in receipt of more advocacy to reduce
expert qualifications than to raise them. If the advocacy comes
from a sufficient number of constituents, there will be a
temptation to yield to it, There is always somebody to be found
to complain by correspondence or in the press that examinations
are too difficult or that they ought to be abolished. Such
anguished complaints are usually based upon the fact that " Little
Willie" has been ploughed in an examination in spite of what his
parents know him to be an extremely clever boy. Yet the truth
is that if we are to hold our place and make it a better place in
a growing and complex competitive world, the greatest ching is to
have rising standards of expert qualification,,
We can always get increased numbers by lowering the tests.
We will never get increased quality, which is the thing we need,
without raising them.
From time to time there emerges what I believe is called a
" modern" approach to the process of education. This approach is
based upon a somewhat pedantic interpretation of the word
" education". It concentrates upon the " leading out" of the
individual. It emphasises individual self-expression. It dislikes
the idea of discipline, One hears it said that the child must be
given the opportunity of following his own bent. This, I venture
to say, is a soft and escapist approach to education. It is,
oddly enough, never applied to athletes' We have not yet unduly
suffered from it in Australia, and I hope we won'to The fallacy
of such ideas is that they ignore the basic truth that before any
student can just " follow his own bent" he must have achieved by
concentrated work certain fundamentals, It is clear that his mind
must have acquired a degree of self-discipline before it can
venture freely into fresh fields of its own choosing, He may find
the study of mathematics a terrible drudgery. His parents may say
" how will this wretched algebra help my son to earn a living?".
But if the son's bent of mind is towards the sciences, he will slur
his mathematics at his peril.
It is the modern fashion to despise and reject Latin,
which is for most of us difficult, as being both dead and
irrelevant, but the neglect of the foundations of our wonderful
language is already bearing its fruit in slovenly speech and
writing, It is an odd thing that in a community in which we are
all given to self-expression, the niceties and precision of speech
have come to be somewhat disregarded, The avereae boys' school
appears to be completely indifferent as to how boys speak; so
that they may go through the school curriculum with satisfaction
but at the same time speak a species of obscure vernacular which
appears to take some pride in illiteracy and to regard good speech
as " sissy". A great number of girls' schools seem to me to do
much better than this, Yet good plain clear speech is of
increasing importance in the world.
Sir John Monash was, by commuon consent, a very great
soldier. He was a notable engineer. His success in both of these
fields was largely attributable to the superb clarity of his mind.
He was a magnificent and persuasive speaker, one of the best
advocates I ever heard.
Sir Brudenell White, his outstanding staff officer, was,
I think, the most lucid and graceful of after-dinner speakers.
Sir Thomas Blamey, blunt man of" action as he was in many
respects, had a complete command of pointed and persuasive speech.
I am no scientist, but the greatest scientists I have met
have been men thoroughly educated in the use of their owfn
language and with a rare capacity for exposition.
You may say to me " What has all this to do with a
university?" Well, it has a great deal to do with it. The whole
point I am making is, if I may put it in this way, that at our
peril we should not attempt to divorce the study of the physical
sciences from the study of the humanities. We should not aim at
the production of the narrow specialist, since his narrowness will
put deadly limits to his social usefulness. We should, in all our
seats of learning, endeavour to provide courses of instruction and
facilities for daily contact which will brighten -the minds of both
the scientists and the humanists, making each of them want to know
something of the other man's work, and producing for all of them a
broad education which will not impair the acquisition of the highest
technical skill, but will actually improve that skill by giving
its owner a deeper perception and a clearer understanding of its
use and of its consequences,
To stun up, centnries ago, students at the few universities
were, so to speak, withdrawn from the world, walking and talking
in the groves of Academe, furnishing their minds.
They were not particularly concerned about whether their
studies qualified them for the earning of a living, except,
perhaps, in the Church. They pursued humane letters. Sciencelin
the modern sense, was largely unknown,~ Greek and Latin,
philosophy, history, were the chief materials of scholarship. The
universities were not professional schools; they aimed at the
general training of the mind, largely by reading and discussion.
They were ancient and autonomous bodies neither the servants of
government nor, in any real sense, maintained by themp.
Today, the whole scene has changed. The university is
predominantly, but I hope not definitively, a professional school,,
True, research is more and more encouraged, in the great tradition
of true learning. But increasingly, universities are maintained
by governments in the discharge of what is seen to be a social
responsibility. Classical studies have declined until they have
come to be regarded as a minority eccentricity, There is a great
drive for the production of more and more practising scientists,
doctors, lawyers, engineers, and teachers,
There have been other changes.~ Even as recently as in my
own youth, most students were attending their classes by the aid
of hard-won scholarship or ( and in many cases, and) by a real
self-sacrifice on the part of their parents, Today, that has
already changed. We have come to regard a university training,
for those qualified and willing, as a social right. Not only are
fees paid for many thousands every year, but in many cases living
allowances are provided, I remember saying to Sir Keith Murray
that I had great doubts as to whether enough wij--ers of
Commonwealth Scholarships were of genuine scholarship standing.
His reply was " You are looking back to your own time, when
scholarships were scarce and only a student well above the average
could hope to win one. But today most scholarships are government
grants in aid. Without them, far fewer people would be attending
universities." No doubt this great expert was right; there have
been fundamental changes.,
9.
But though people of average intelligence and skill are
essential to the world's work ( which is a great comfort to me),
there is still a growing and incessant need for something better.
A great university scientist said to me recently tha,: t while the
average capacity of to-day's students was very good, and probably
better than ever, he doubted whether we were producing enough
" 1peaks". This was, to me, an arresting remark. I know that in
Australia we have a curious passion for " uniformity" whether in
taxes or otherwise but we must realise that this passion can
become destructive. The great forward movements in civilise~ d
history have been commenced or led by uncommon men and women. The
great scientific discoveries have not been the product of routine
minds. The whole process of development and improvement in
Australia will slow down unless we succeed in producing more and
more people of superior talent, training and devotion,
That last word " devotion" needs some emphasis. The purely
monetary test of professional success is now increasingly popular.
" Which profession offers the greatest monetary rewards? That's
the one of me!"
Such an attitude of mind will, of course, never produce a
great doctor or lawyer or scientist. It never has. Take the law,
my first and true love. To one who finds his vocation in the law,
its study and practice have almost infinite satisfaction.
Protracted hours of work become a pleasure. To one who has no
vocation for the law, but has adopted it solely as a means of
living, it must, I imagine, forever remain a thing of dust and
drudgery. I know next door to nothing about science. True, I recall
that the first law of physics is that " action and reaction are
equal and opposite", but this is so true of politics that its
scientific origin has become dulled in my mind. But I do most
clearly understand that the great scientific discoveries have been
made by men of vision with a passion for research; not the
slaves of the clock, but of the elusive truth.
These reflections may help to convey to you my conception
S of the ultimate task of tlie Universitis which is not to be
content to be professional schools though this is bound to be
their primary function but to aim at contributing to the nation,
and to mankind, minds which are at once disciplined and imaginative,
reflective and productive.