SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER, MR. MENZIES, 
TO 700 BUSINESSMEN AT FINNEY'S AUDITORIUM, BRISBANE,
ON FRIDAY, JULY 22, 1955.

SUPPORTED BY MR.KEN MORRIS, PARLIAMENTARY LEADER OF THE LIBERAL PARTY IN QUEENSLAND 
SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER, MR. MENZIES, TO 700 BUSINESSMEN AT FINNEY’S AUDITORIUM, 
BRISBANE, ON FRIDAY, JULY 22, 1955.

This is a very remarkable gathering because I have just been considering whether I have ever been called upon to speak to so many people at a single dinner anywhere in the world before. And with some difficulty, I have dredged up out of my memory an occasion on which, through -somebody's courteous error, I made a speech in London to a thousand people at a dinner. That is the only occasion that I can think of in a long and mis-spent life, which excels in numbers this very remarkable gathering.

Ken Morris is here tonight, and I just want to say in the simplest possible words that I am a veteran in these affairs. I don't want you to think that I am doddering into the grave, but I have reached the ripe age of 60. I want to tell you that Ken Morris pleases me beyond words. There is nothing that I can do for him that I won' t do for him, it is a splendid thing to have, particularly here and in State politics somebody who has enthusiasm, who is full of hope or - as he would say, as he has said to me full of realism, and who goes out to win. And you know, Sir: a good deal of my political life, when I've heard State politics discussed in Queensland I have heard people, actually I have heard them shrug their shoulders and say: 'Oh well, you know'. And if there is anything I detest it is these fellows who say: 'You know'. I have had a lot of experience of this kind of thing. May I tell you that I can remember as vividly as any  living man how in 1943 we were told that Labour was in office in Canberra almost forever. And in 1949 they had the biggest defeat that any party had had for a long, long time. You don’t win political campaigns 
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By being an apologist. 'You don't win political campaigns by not being too clear about what you stand for. You don t win political campaigns by going around and joining the Prophets of Gloom, because the Prophets of Gloom politically are the largest  religious organisation in Australia. But you win campaigns by saying, 'I am going to win’. And when the Leader says that, then it just depends on how many people can rally around and say. 'Right, and we are going to win with you'. 

Now, I commend my friend, Mr. Morris, To you. He has been down in Canberra. I have had the benefit of a number of long discussions with him I want to say to you, 'I believe in this man', And if everybody in this room tonight and you are the most influential collection of men who could be brought together in this State - if everybody in this room believes in him, believes in my friend Frank Nicklin, whose absence I so much regret tonight, then they can win. I know all about the question of whether the electorates are so organised, but I hope you will allow me to say that I never come into Queensland myself without remembering that in 1949, in 1951, in 1953.and in1954, this state of Queensland was my sheet anchor.

But first of all, may I say a word or two about this great and historic meeting that is occurring in Geneva. I don't know what it is going to do any more than you do. I don't know what the result of it is going to be any more than any of those who are taking part in it, because the more responsibility you have on international affairs the less likely are you to be dogmatic in advance about what's going to occur. But I just want to put one or two thoughts into your minds about this conference. 

The first of them is this; that one of the great troubles in our time, in modern times, is that it is almost impossible for the heads of
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Governments to have genuinely private conversations with each other. That is something that is worth remembering. They decide to meet. They have scores and scores of technical advisers, The Press of the world, the wire-less of the world are all organised. The people are fascinated by it. And the result is that discussions which if they are to be for the greatest good of mankind, ought to occur quite privately, occur under the fierce glare of publicity. And that, I think is one of the unfortunate things of our time, Just imagine, the four men sitting down together nobody else present. With no agenda. And A saying to B. Now look, we are in great trouble. What are your real troubles about us? And the other one reciprocating and saying: ‘What are your real troubles about us?' And they talk as men may talk. Not to the record, not for the audience but they talk to each other as any four of us tonight might talk to each other sitting in a private room chatting about some matters about which we had disagreed.

And that unfortunately, appears nowadays to be almost completely impossible. And the tragedy of that is, that the moment you make a negotiation between nations or between men a matter of public debate you must accept the consequences of public debate.

Public debate clarifies differences, it crystallises differences but so far as I know, it never resolves differences, because when you go into a debate you go into it to win. That is the essence of debate, and you don't normally go into a debate unless you know quite clearly what you have in your own mind, what your views are and how wrong the other man's views may be, I think public debate is a useful thing in Parliament because it lets the ordinary voter know what the issues are. It may be a very useful thing on an occasion like this, because it may serve to let the world know what the differences are. So it is useful so long as we remember that public debate does not resolve differences. And I am hoping very much that when the good things that will undoubtedly come out of this meeting have come, when ice has been broken when people have become accustomed
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to talking to each other in a friendly way, when there is more understanding and more knowledge, I am hoping that after that, there may be private discussions, quite informal discussions, with no publicity which will enable problems to be looked at from the point of view of resolving them and not from the point of view of expounding them. I hope I make my view on that matter perfectly plain.

In the meantime, ladies and gentlemen. so far as we are concerned, in this remote corner of the world, all we can do in the old words of Holy Writ is 'to watch and pray'. These talks can't produce peace nor; indeed, can they hope to resolve particular differences which require immense technical examination. But I believe they can open a door that the world has wanted to see opened. I believe that they can produce among heads of Government and among those immediately associated with them, a new spirit of friendliness - maybe that is too great a word to use - but a new spirit of understanding. And a new feeling that well I have met the other man and I know him. I have had myself, in my own very small way, a vast experience in international discussions and I have never engaged in one that was half so useful as the private talk with the head of some other Government a private talk with some Minister, the kind of talk in which you can, in the metaphorical expression; can let your hair down, and get to understand what it is and what the trouble is about. And the only things that have happened which I would regard as effective internationally in my own second term as Prime Minister have been brought about by private talks when you met as man to man and talked personally and not for the benefit of a gallery.

And, therefore, all-I-want to say to you about this great conference, and it is a great conference, this is quite historic, is that we are not to expect too much. It is a very human temptation, isn't it, to think that after a week or ten days of talks we will be given the complete recipe for
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universal peace. Now don't let's have any such ideas. Peace is not produced by resolutions. Peace is not produced by some article of protocol. Peace is produced by an attitude of mind in the nation's concern. We will have peace in this world when the people of the Soviet Union, the people of China, the people wherever they may be have the same instinctive desire for peace as we have and have the power to make that desire effective in governing forces. And, therefore, don't let's be over simple in our minds on this matter and say, ‘Well, this will produce some resolution which will mean that we can beat our swords into ploughshares'. Because to expect such a thing from one meeting, from the first-meeting, would I think, be a fatal error.

In the second place, don't let us fall into the error, ladies and gentlemen, of thinking that if much advance is made in understanding and that is the object of the conference in Geneva, that the result may be that we will abandon our defence programmes and give ourselves a defence holiday. That, let me remind you, is something that has almost happened before. Between the two wars there were lots of people who said: 'Well, we have the League of Nations and because we have the League of Nations, all is -well. We have collective security.' And a lot of people -said: 'Well collective security is security'. Whereas collective security merely meant something that had to be backed by strength in the interests of common security. And because that wasn't understood we had in this world between the two wars the spectacle of the victors in the first World War. the British Empire: as it was, I-am happy to remember, still called, the United States of America, France. What happened? The victors in the war proceeded to disarm each other by agreement, but not the enemy. The result of this illusion, this emotional cloud cuckoo land, in which we lived for the second time in this century we went within an ace of utter defeat in a war.

Now, we must-remember these things. You may never confidently, and you certainly may never comfortably argue international problems from weakness.
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It is our duty to be strong and I don’t want to be regarded by any of you as having a pessimistic view. I believe that this conference will do an immeasurable amount of good. But when it is over, I will be surprised if as Prime Minister of Australia, if I  still don’t have to say to my own people: ‘We must still be strong’.

Now, Sir, that induces me to mention one other matter and I mention it merely because every now and then some echo comes down from Queensland and after all, Queensland has every right to be regarded by me as my favourite state. I wouldn’t be here but for Queensland, I know that. But every now and then somebody says: ‘Well, there is a great propaganda movement going on’. It is occasionally promoted by people with their tongues in their cheeks about the necessity for defending Queensland, and what is the Commonwealth doing about it? And, therefore, I want all of you to do a little thinking between the 18^th hole and the 19^th hole on this matter, and say to yourselves, ‘Where is Queensland best defended?’. Now like all of you, I am British, and British to the boot heels and I have an undying affection for the Old Country. And I, therefore, recall to your winds that Great Britain has been the principal home of liberty in the whole of the modern history of the world. Therefore, it is worth recalling that from the Battle of Hastings in 1066, from the Battle of Hastings on through the whole of modern history, Great Britain has defended her own territorial integrity in other places and not on her own soil.

The only time when an invasion was in prospect, arose when the Battle of Britain went on in the recent war. And there the Battle for Britain was won magnificently in the air over Great Britain and later on by the indomitable spirit of people confronted by new strange weapons coming from distant places. But for 900 years, the good sense of that country and of its people has indicated that you want to defend yourself as far
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Away from yourself as you can. And therefore, when people say no Australian troops ought to go to Malaya, that we ought to leave it to the conscript youths of Great Britain; we ought to leave it to the conscript Youths of the United States; it is not our business. How terrible. How utterly out of harmony with the true Australian spirit. And yet this is the doctrine of the Evatt Labour Party, naked and unashamed. 

Do you know, ladies and gentlemen, that at this moment when the United Kingdom has under training and under arms, boys for a period of 18 months 2 years, sent around the world, when Great Britain has a greater force, a greater military force under arms than ever she had in her peace time history, 80% of them are outside Great Britain. And we are to be told with our limited forces that we mustn’t have them anywhere except on the Queensland coast, or the Victorian coasts, or at Darwin or somewhere else. I will refer to this – I ought to apologise to you for referring to it – but it is very frequently forgotten that if aggressive Communism finally decides to sweep in our direction, it will take any steps about it, is when they are a couple of hundred miles away from out coast across the sea.

Now, Sir, the other matter that I thought I might trespass on your time about for a few minutes is our internal problems, the internal economy. I can relieve the minds of my distinguished colleagues by saying that I don’t propose to anticipate the Budget, But I always anticipate it with fear and trembling. And having fear and trembling, I then proceed to anticipate it by doing what I would recommend very warmly to many other people. I sit down and I swot over the documents. I find out what the facts are. It is a very good idea when you are settling these matters, to know the facts. That is a piece of wise advice that I merely hand out to you gratis. Though, no doubt, Leon Trout would like to charge you a shilling or two for it. 
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But could I venture, gentlemen, to help you on this matter by saying that there are some things that we ought to have quite clearly in our minds. One of our troubles in Australia, and indeed it goes for every country is that whereas we, who have the responsibility, must consider financial and economic policy from every point of view – because that is the essence of the whole movement for which I stand – most private people inevitably consider it from their own point of view, as it affects their business as importers or as exporters, or as farmers or whatever it may be.

Now I am not quarrelling about that, but I do think that every now and then we ought to stand back a little and say, ‘What is the position in the broad?’. Because I know that there are practical people in the world who say that politicians generalise, but believe me, to be able to see a problem in the broad, to be able to evolve general principles for its solution is the hardest exercise of the intellect. Anybody may say, ‘This is how to fix my business’. Or ‘What is the first thing to be said?’ Our troubles, and we have economic troubles in Australia are oddly enough, and for the first time probably in our history, the problems inherit in prosperity. Have that in mind, I beg of you. Most of the men here tonight have been through a period of the depression and can remember all the bitter problems of those days were the bitter problems that were inherent in depression, not in prosperity. And we have now lived long enough to know that prosperity produces its problems.

But you don’t guarantee the continuance of prosperity, and Australia is at this moment more prosperous than ever before in its history, we don’t guarantee the continuance of prosperity merely by saying ‘We will go on spending hard and we will pretend that there is no economic problem’. Because there is an economic problem. We are prosperous. We have a high purchasing power. We are short of labour. Our managerial efficiency is still not as high as that in 
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some other countries in the world We have at the elbow of our wage-earner a smaller supply of power than his opposite number in the United States has. In other words, we are feeling at this moment the pressure of high monetary demands on restricted supply of labour and  management and materials. And, Sir, that gives rise to problems that are not to be brushed off. These problems require thought, Somebody who says,  Well, the right way to deal with that is for the Government to let us have more of our own money seems to settle the argument.
He hasn’t t necessarily settled it. Somebody says ‘Well, this is the perfect case for a great migration programme, so that we may have more and more people to be employed', I am a great supporter of a high migration programme. But please look at it both ways. A migration programme does in the short run increase the demand upon capital facilities, the demand upon factory accommodation, the demand on plant, the demand on schools, on hospitals or whatever it may be. The capital demand that is generated by 120,000 150 000' migrants coming into the country every year is enormous. In the long run - it may be five years; it may be eight years.  I don't know how long in the long run the productive effort of the new population will be counter inflationary, because it will stimulate the production of goods the people want. But you can't go through a period of intense migration without understanding that that’s a period in which inflationary pressure is bound to be quite substantial.

I balance those two things, one against the other and I have come down heavily in favour of migration because I believe that what this country wants more than anything else is population more and more millions of people, but all I am talking to you about this matter for is this, don t please accept the idea that when you have said we will have more millions of people that you have solved the problem, because we will, in consequence for some time have a high pressure of demand on our resources of men and of materials and those are things that may require, occasionally, stringent financial measures. And the stringent financial measures which we took in 1951, in the short run; produced hostility and misunderstanding and criticism and, sometimes, abuse. But if you don't mind
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abuse - and I assure you I thrive on it - then you know in the long run that if you have been right, you will find that the economic position has been improved by it and that in the long run, as now, everybody is better off.

Now Sir. I don t want to make a long sermon to you about this matter. But could I, perhaps illustrate the kind of thing I have in mind - and I have been talking rather longer than I intended to - by talking about a matter just quite shortly which most of you gentlemen here tonight have discussed privately I am sure, more than once, and that is the question as to how we get more capital into Australia from overseas. There, again, I occasionally find, Mr, Chairman that people oversimplify this matter, and They say, ‘Well. let's get capital in from overseas and everything in the garden is lovely'- Then every Premier will have what he wants, though I don t believe that day will ever come, and there will be plenty of money to do everything, well in the first place I think we ought always to remember this, that if everybody in Australia let's put it in this way, if every working man if every  man capable of work, capable of  employment in Australia is in fact employed, and you add £100 million of capital to the demand upon his services do you create more men? Do you make them more willing to work? My experience has been - I hope I am not entirely pessimistic that the greater certainty of a job, the more likely it is that the productive effort will tend to fall. I don't want to put it too high, that goes for you. too as well as to, the fellow who carries the bricks, it goes for me. no doubt. If somebody were foolish enough to guarantee me that I will be Prime Minister for the rest of my natural life I don't mind telling you with all shame, I would take three weeks holiday for the first time in my life.

And therefore, it isn’t just a matter of adding money to the economy. I agree that to develop Australia and Australia is in spite of its remarkable efforts, a relatively undeveloped country to develop Australia we need capital, but we also need manpower, we need skill, we need effort. We need more production
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of the materials: that are wanted for this work. And you must never isolate one of these factors and say, ‘You can solve it for me by borrowing a £100 million.’ 

I hope I make that point quite plainly to you, because at the moment in Australia there is no unemployment. On the contrary, we have demand, an unsatisfied demand for people to be employed. There are more jobs than men. Now does that mean that we are not to concern ourselves with overseas borrowing. Not at all. I would like to tell you a simple little story about that, Because I know something about overseas borrowing.

In 1950, just after we had come back into office, and just after our distinguished opponents had said that you couldn’t borrow money, and you couldn’t borrow dollars and we must, therefore, go without the goods for which at the time there was no substitute, great earth-moving equipment, all sorts of things needed for public works, They said it can’t be done. And I sat in my room until half past one in the morning for about two months and read all the documents I could get out of all the departments on these matters, and then went into my Cabinet and said, ‘Well, we have no answer to this vital shortage of capital goods.’ You see why I mention capital goods. It is not just a matter of bringing money in and adding to monetary demands, but a matter of buying capital goods that would come in here and be producers from the time they arrive. I saw no hope of that unless we can raise a dollar loan, and I would have thought that that was impossible. And so eloquent was I on this matter – and I have moments – that all my colleagues beamed at me and said, ‘R.M., it is quite unanswerable, you had better go abroad and borrow some dollars. ‘Oh, I said, I was saying exactly the opposite’. And they said, ‘Yes, I know, but still give it a go.’ Go and see whether you can  borrow some dollars. That was a pretty good assignment. And I went. 

Now, you don’t borrow money anywhere in the world, and this again I want you to have in mind, unless
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your country is regarded as creditworthy, unless your administration is regarded as reputable and creditworthy and unless you, yourself are regarded as a responsible person. And I don’t mind telling you that the credit of Australia when we came in at the end of 1949 was such that had it continued, nobody would have been able to borrow dollars in the United States. I wouldn’t have to put them into the dollar-sterling pool, which is very important from our point of view, because then everybody else would have a cut out of it, you see. I said: ‘I want them for myself, Stafford’. And he agreed. And then I went to the United States.

Well, I had my negotiations with the International Bank. I started being fairly long in the tooth now, with President Truman. I got him on my side. I then got Dean Acheson on my side, then got Averell Harriman on my side. There is nothing like having a few friends, you know. I have sometimes had very few, but you always want a few. And we got from the International Bank $50,000,000 in as many days as they had taken months to lend them to any other country in the world.

But every dollar, every dollar was earmarked, not just to stimulate some monetary demand in Australia, but was earmarked for the importation into Australia of capital goods of massive-working equipment needed for the development of this country. That is the whole point I am making. Don’t borrow for money, borrow for things, borrow for the things that you need. And on my last visit through there, Mr. Black, President of the World, said to me that
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he would like me to come to the World 'Bank to sign the last borrowing we had-made. He had the whole of his directors, about 30 of them, in the room, from all the countries in the world, or a great number of the countries in the world and I signed a loan contract for $ 54 1/2 million. He pointed out to the Directors that Australia had, during our time in office, - permit me to emphasise that - Australia had secured from the World Bank $258 & 1/2 million for capital goods, more dollars than had been secured by any other country in the world.

One has only to go around Australia to see the impact of this kind of thing. Well, I mention that to you to demonstrate how I approach this matter of public borrowing. We don't share the Labour Party s horror of borrowing; These silly statements that are made at Canberra from time to time about putting yourself into the hands of the Overseas Bankers. This is a lot of nonsense. Nobody in this room, in his five wits, can fail to understand that if we hadn't secured all this dollar finance there would be works standing half-completed all round 'Australia, which have now been done. And what you must do is not to borrow just for the fun of it, not to borrow with reckless indifference as to how you repay, because we have had all that in mind all that matter well in hand. But to borrow on the public account, not just to add to expenditure, but to add to our physical resources of plant and equipment in Australia.

And, Sir: the other aspect of the matter is, of course, private finance. There has been a fairly substantial movement of private investment capital into Australia. But there again, I point out to you, that nobody bringing $100 million into Australia can by that simple act, create another X thousand employees. If we haven’t more people, then he adds to the demand and up goes the cost of wages, up goes the price, up goes the inflationary movement. And, therefore, we ourselves have always to consider that while we encourage overseas investment, we believe in private capital. We have none of these silly ideas. I merely want you to have in mind that is private capital 
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coming into Australia is to be effectively employed for our benefit, and for its own legitimate benefit, then we must face up to the conditions of that kind of thing. One of these conditions is that we must justify additions to our capital supply by additions to our productive effort. And that doesn’t really mean one man or two men or three men. It means management, it means efficiency of organisation, it means technical improvement, it means genuine productive effort on the part of the employee. This goes all round. Otherwise, we will become drunk with the idea of money; we will say: 'Well there is more and more money. The turnover is greater’.  We don’t pause to say, ‘Well it may be greater because the price level has risen’. We can easily become obsessed with the idea of money, whereas for genuine continuing prosperity in Australia, we must watch more and more purchasing power with more and more productive effort and more productive achievement. And if I might bring that to a simple single point, I would say this to you..

This country, through the Arbitration Court and various State laws has a forty-hour week. This country can afford a forty hour  week, but only if it is forty hours work. If we are going to be such fools in the face of history as to get all the enormous leisure – if we are going to be such fools as to think, that having a forty-hour week, we can by this rule or that regulation or that practice, to whittle it away to 35 to 30 to 28 then we must be intelligent enough to face up to the consequences of that. And the consequences of any such attitude of mind as that must inevitably be that our costs will rise, that our prices will rise, and the day may well come when we price even our export industries on the land out of the world market.

If we are going to do that, then we will have reached the Last folly; because although there may be some people in the world who believe that a Government
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with inexhaustible supplies of money can subside everybody, so that everybody remains happy. You don’t believe that. Nor do I believe that. This country’s prosperity, so great, must be a solid prosperity. I would go out of office miserable, out of politics dejected, If I thought that all I had done was to leave my own country in a state which looked like a state of prosperity and in reality, was a state of complete delusion. I am not a pessimist. I am an optimist. But if you are going to be full of hope about your country and full of confidence in its future, then it becomes necessary every now and then to say: ‘Don’t let’s forget the simple, sensible conditions of continuing prosperity. Don’t let’s abandon the ancient virtues’. Because you know, if you go around Australia and look at what has been done and what is being done, you constantly remind yourselves that this was done by the ancient pioneering virtues that made Australia, work done by simple people who worked in their day and generation, who were as honest as the day – and honesty takes many forms, just as dishonesty does – who were honest in their day and generation; God fearing people who believed in their families and in their future and in their country. God knows there is not a man here tonight who doesn’t come from some family of that kind. And, therefore, let us restore in our own minds, repair in our own minds, these great virtues, so that the happy state of affairs in which we now live will continue.

Now, Sir, I said just now that I was about to finish, but will you permit me just three minutes to mention one other matter before I have done? I haven’t except in a glancing way, referred to the impact upon Australia of the great influence against production, and against effort that we have and that is the Communist movement. That is its stock-in-trade. It believes in the strike. It believes in slowing down. It believes in getting rid of prosperity, because then it has the soil in which its doctrines may grow. I hope that everybody in Australia has observed in the last few months that the two elements which has conspired together honourably and effectively to get rid of Communist control in Unions – the secret ballot and the groups in the union who stood against Communism – have both come under violent attack by Dr. Evatt. The 
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attacks, so violent and so successful, partly cloaked as some bogus sectarian view, partly cloaked in other ways, have been so successful that if you open your newspapers week by week, you begin to read how this union which was under Communist control and came out of it, has gone back to it. Does this give pleasure to the people of Australia? This is no accident. This is deliberate. This is the price that is paid for Communist support. I never read any of the records of these things without feeling, that one of the most shocking things that has happened in my time is that the great Labour Party, which really is no more Communist than I am, as a Labour Party should have been misled into a course of conduct which is greeted with cheers in Marx House, and greeted with despair by decent trade unionists who have for years been battling against Communists.
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VOTE OF THANKS TO THE PRIME MINISTER MOVED BY MR. KEN MORRIS PARLIAMENTARY LEADER OF THE LIBERAL PARTY IN QUEENSLAND

It is my very, very proud opportunity to propose a vote of thanks to the 'Right Honourable R.G. Menzies. As I looked around the table as he was speaking, and as I heard the reception that you gave to him at the conclusion of his speech, I realised that every one of you in the room tonight would like to be doing the same thing. Because I believe that you will be with me when I say that we have got in our Prime Minister of Australia, in Robert Gordon Menzies, the greatest Australian that we have known in our generation. 

Many of you will have heard me say that not only in the presence of the Prime Minister, but also in his absence. And I have heard you say the same thing. The proposal of a vote of thanks, of course, is usually-the formal conclusion of a gathering. But there are some exceptional occasions, when we have an exceptional guest, that it resumes somewhat greater proportions, as it does to-night. And when I think of the pages that will be written in history in the future about our Prime Minister, I believe that all the historians will most proudly put him shoulder to shoulder with that other very great leader of our generation, and of a previous one, that great Englishman, Sir Winston Churchill.

Ladies and gentlemen, we of the Liberal Party have ideals of which we are enormously proud. We have issued, as you know, a booklet called 'We Believe'. I think all of you have had it. But I feel that those ideals which are illustrated in that booklet, 'We Believe', are the ideals for which our Prime Minister has worked and fought and sacrificed let us not forget that and sacrificed over the past 25 years. It is because he has sacrificed himself for those ideals that he is bringing to Australia something that we could never have had, if it hadn't been for
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his presence. I ask you to co-operate with my Parliamentary colleagues in the State sphere to give him what I believe he needs, a government in the State sphere which will.co--operate with him to bring to Queensland the real development and the real advancement that Queensland so richly deserves but is losing because of the lack of co-operation that we have from the present administration. I want you to know that every one of my Parliamentary colleagues in Queensland believes with me that they, and you, who are leaders of your industries have faced in the years that have gone by tasks that have been difficult. tasks that have been almost frightening in their difficulty. We in the State sphere face a task, not at all frightening; but a task which is admittedly difficult. But I can assure you that all of us believe that with your .co-operation we will, most definitely, win the election next year. That is not optimism, but it is based on a realistic analysis of every electorate in Queensland. And don't forget this that in the past few months, I have had the opportunity of visiting with my Leader, Mr. Frank Nicklin all the large areas throughout Queensland. I say to you in conclusion on that matter that if you will cooperate with us, as I know you will, if you will go out, as I think Sir Arthur Fadden said a moment ago  if you will go out on a crusade and spread the gospel of the ideals of Liberalism which are the greatest political ideals which it is possible to have then you will see the change of Government in this State.

To you Sir, may I say that I am awfully proud to be the mouthpiece of those who are here now. And who heard you, we feel it is more than an honour to be associated with you. You are our Leader, and to you we give all the thanks for the work that you have done. We will show you what we think in the State election next year in 1956.