22nd Parliament · 3rd Session
Mr. SPEAKER (Hon. John McLeay) took the chair at 2.30 p.m., and read prayers.
page 703
– I have to announce that, during the absence abroad of my colleague, the Minister for Trade, the Minister for Supply will act as Minister for Trade.
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Incident at Navuneram.
– 1 desire to ask the Minister for Territories a question regarding the incident at Navuneram, when two natives lost their lives. Were any other injuries caused to natives as a result of that affair? I have heard a report that other natives were injured. 1 cannot vouch for it, but I ask the Minister whether there is any substance in the report.
– From the information that I have received, it would1 appear that what happened was that the Administration patrol was attempting to arrest certain people under a court order. It grappled with those people and was then attacked by other villagers, and a hand-to-hand scuffle took place. In the course of that scuffle, some natives who were in the vicinity commenced to throw large-sized stones, delivered with slings over a distance of about 200 yards. These stones fell down on the scuffling people. In the course of the encounter, the police constables used the butts of their rifles to ward off the people who were attacking them. Both from the scuffle and from the stones which were being rained down on the struggling crowd, a total - I am not quite sure of the number - of seven, eight or nine-
– Would1 thirteen natives in hospital be a correct figure?
– Thirteen would be a possible figure for both sides - that is, the side of the Administration patrol and the side of the villagers. The injured people received treatment in hospital.
– This is the first time the House has heard of that!
– Those facts have been common knowledge. About thirteen persons were injured and were taken to hospital for treatment. I understand that none of the injuries was serious.
page 703
– Has the Minister for Labour and National Service knowledge of reported statements of the Leader of the Opposition in the Queensland Parliament that unemployment figures released by the Minister were subject to jiggery-pokery and were presented in a way that effectively smoke-screened the true position, and that the unemployment position was a great deal worse than that revealed in figures issued by the Minister? Is there any justification for such statements being made by a Queensland Labour leader or were they made solely for purposes of cheap political propaganda?
– The first knowledge that I had of any comment being made along those lines by the gentleman referred to was when I had a question put to me by press representatives this morning. I made the comment then, and I repeat it now, that such allegations are an entirely unwarranted slur on the officials who supply me with the information that I release. 1 have never distorted or altered the figures supplied to me by the officers of my department, who would supply those figures in the same way and in the same form to a government drawn from any part of the House. I accept full responsibility for any comment that I apply to the figures when I release them. I have frequently pointed out to honorable members that only at census times can one give a precise and accurate figure of the number of persons unemployed at that time, or of the number of persons who declare themselves to be seeking work at that date. What the combination of figures released by me will do is to indicate over a period trends in the employment sector. In that way the figures have a very valuable informatory usefulness, not only for governments, but also for industry and commercial institutions generally. The charge that factual statements released by the department are jiggerypokery can only be the product of an entirely irresponsible mind or, as the honorable member suggests, is made purely for purposes of party political propaganda.
page 704
– Is the Minister for Primary Industry aware that prices at last week’s opening wool sales were 7± per cent, down compared with prices at the end of last season’s sale, and that a continuation of this position will reduce this year’s national income by more than £30,000,000? Is the Minister also aware that traders in wool futures in London, New York, Antwerp, and Roubaix operate to reduce Australian auction prices by fixing lower limits? Will the Minister take action to protect the nation, and 90,000 wool growers operating as single sellers in a market controlled by a small number of organized buyers? Will the Minister also refrain from making further statements in Parliament, in the press, and on television that encourage buyers to fix low price limits?
– At least two of the statements in the honorable member’s question are wrong in point of fact. The fall in the price of wool was about 2i per cent, for high quality wools, 5 per cent, for medium quality wools, and 7i per cent, for low quality wools. Secondly, the honorable member’s estimate of a drop in income of £30,000,000 could not be taken as realistic. The person who can estimate what the future course of wool prices might be, and therefore what the net result might be at the end of the season, has not yet been born. Thirdly, as to futures markets in the United Kingdom, this Government has no control over futures markets, but it is thought by competent observers that those futures markets could have a steadying influence rather than a depressing influence on the market.
As to the last part of the question, which is sheer propaganda, I shall do all in my power to create confidence in the future of wool. I am certain that whilst there may be temporary difficulties, the future of the wool industry cannot be looked at in the way that the Opposition looks at it - glumly.
page 704
– I ask the Prime Minister a question without notice. Has the right honorable gentleman noticed that considerable agitation by private individuals is being fostered in New South Wales to induce the Commonwealth Government to provide assistance for State educational purposes?
Is it not a fact that the Premier of New South Wales, Mr. Cahill, has repeatedly affirmed that education is a prerogative of his Government, and that he is opposed to transferring any of his authority in education? Have any direct approaches been made to the right honorable gentleman by the Premier of New South Wales indicating that he is unable to cope with education in his State? Finally, does it not appear that Mr. Cahill could allocate more funds for education from his own resources if he would only assume his rightful responsibilities and refrain from using public funds to bolster his socialistic adventures?
– The problem of the provision of Commonwealth funds beyond what are now provided for education is one that has been brought to my attention not only by members of this House, but also by certain groups of teachers and other people interested in the matter. However, it has not been brought forward by any State government. The fact is that in the case of New South Wales, as, I think, in the case of other States, value is attached - and I would think very properly - to the State management of these matters. I am not aware of any State having suggested to the Commonwealth that it should take over the general power over education or that it should make special grants to any State for that purpose. Consequently, this argument has been one which exists outside the sphere of State government-Commonwealth Government communications.
The position this year, as honorable members know, is that the Commonwealth has found substantially more money for the States, both on loan account and on revenue account, although on each item the capacity of the Commonwealth has fallen; in other words, we are providing more out of less. I would think that honorable members generally, looking at the figures, would conclude that the States have been pretty generously treated. What any particular State - New South Wales, to take an example - does with the money that it receives from, or by the help of, the Commonwealth is a matter entirely for that State. If it decided to spend less on education and more on something else, that is entirely its responsibility. But it is a complete error for anybody to think that this is a problem upon which a State is asking the Commonwealth to accept additional responsibility. The State mentioned has not done so, and I have seen no indication whatever that it will do so.
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– Can the Minister for Primary Industry advise the House whether the prices of the artificial fibres that compete with wool have fallen in sympathy with the fall in the price of wool?
– I think the honorable gentleman will know that it is unusual for the price of manufactured goods to fall in exactly the same way as the price of raw materials and agricultural products. Taking the last two years as an example, I think it can be stated that there has been very little movement in the price of synthetic products, such as acrilan, nylon, dacron, and other similar fibres. If the honorable gentleman so desires, I shall get for him a copy of a graph that has recently been produced by the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, showing the movement of wool and synthetic fibre prices over the last few years. He will then be able to make up his own mind on what the variations have been in the last six or seven years, and particularly in the last two years.
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– Will the Prime Minister indicate to the House whether he is prepared to appoint a committee made up of representatives of various sections of the community which are vitally concerned, to study and report upon the desirability of the early adoption of decimal currency in Australia?
– This matter of a decimal currency has engaged the attention of the Government for some time. We recently had a deputation from people interested in the problem, introduced by the honorable member for Balaclava. The matter has been, as I say, considered by us a good deal, and we have decided - in fact, we had decided before, in principle - to have a committee to look into it. The committee, of course, will need to consider in particular the practical problems involved in a changeover to decimal currency. Those are, of course, complex.
They involve a consideration of the cost to industry and business generally. It was very satisfactory to learn from the deputation - a very representative one - that in the business community, broadly, there is a strong feeling in favour of the changeover. We therefore propose to have, that matter investigated. When the honorable member says “ a representative committee “, I must confess that I am not very keen on having people who merely represent somebody else. It would be a good thing to have a committee chosen for its own competence on these matters, and drawn from a variety of experience, so that a man might in one sense represent manufacturers, for example, without being chosen by them. Somebody with experience in that field should be chosen. The honorable member will see at once that there is a material difference between having a lot of nominated persons whose duty is to somebody else, and having a selected body of people who are able to take a completely objective view. That is what we aim at, and we propose to establish such a committee as soon as possible.
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– Is the Minister for Labour and National Service aware that the “ Sun “ photogravure department of Associated Press, situated at Rosebery, Sydney, has given dismissal notices to the entire staff, numbering approximately 150 women and girls, in the book-binding section? If the right honorable gentleman is aware of this happening, will he state the reason for this course, and what action is proposed to find alternative employment for these people?
– I have not had brought directly under my notice the dismissals which the honorable gentleman tells us have occurred in this organization. I shall make some inquiries and, if the facts are as he states, see what prospects can be indicated by my department for the absorption of the employees elsewhere.
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– Has the Minister for Air any further information on the future employment of the staff of the Aircraft-
Maintenance Branch at Northcote, Victoria, when the branch is transferred to the control of his department?
– Yes, I can give the honorable gentleman some general information. The taking over of the Aircraft Maintenance Branch of the Department of Supply was one of the changes recommended by the Morshead committee, and that recommendation was adopted by the Government. Discussions are going on between my department and the Department of Supply to give effect to that decision. Some of those persons at present employed by the Department of Supply will quite definitely be taken over by my department. Some, I am advised, will probably remain with the Department of Supply. Most of the present employees will find employment in one place or the other. I can give the honorable member no guarantee that all of them will be so absorbed, but most of them will be.
page 706
– Will the Minister for the Army inform the House of the stage that has been reached in equipping the Australian Army with locally produced FN.30 rifles? As there has been some misinformed criticism regarding this matter, will the Minister say why it was advantageous to conform to the present production programme? Has the type of FN.30 rifle being used in Malaya by the Royal Australian Regiment proved satisfactory?
– I am informed by my colleague, the Minister for Supply, that delivery of the FN.30 rifle to the Army will commence in about February of next year. There has been no delay whatever in the manufacture of these rifles. As a matter of fact, I think the Department of Supply and the Lithgow factory are to be congratulated on the progress that they have made. The misunderstanding, I believe, has occurred because the FN.30 rifle which was adopted by the Nato countries was subject, of course, to protracted user trials and like tests, and it was not until the sealed drawings were available to us in Australia that production could commence here. Since those sealed drawings have been received, the production programme has been Excellent. Although a limited number of the previous models were manufactured in the United Kingdom for trial purposes, that country now is also manufacturing according to the sealed drawings, as, too, is Canada, which is party to the Nato agreement. A committee has been set up, representing Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, which keeps pace with the refinements that are found necessary from time to time. The battalion in Malaya is fully equipped with FN.30 rifles which we obtained from the United Kingdom. That, I think, is all the information I can give. I am very satisfied with the production programme, and delivery to the Army will commence in February of next year.
page 706
– My question, which is directed to the Minister for Primary Industry, is supplementary to the question previously asked by the honorable member for Lalor. Has the Minister considered the proposal for a floor-ceiling system in the sale of Australia’s wool clip? If he has considered the matter, what action does he intend to take to protect the wool industry, which is vital to the nation’s economy? Has the Minister any plan to protect growers against the practice of buying and splitting lots, which is destructive of the efficient and just operation of the auction system?
– The department and I have given a great deal of thought to the question of a floor-price for wool. The honorable member will know that some years ago, as a result of the action of the Menzies Government, ‘proposals were put to producers and were decisively rejected. The proportion of votes against the proposals for a support scheme was of the order of 80 per cent, or 90 per cent. Since that time the industry itself has not submitted any proposals to me or, so far as I know, to the Government, to the effect that the matter should be reconsidered. The auction system has stood us in very good stead over a number of years, and I personally would be reluctant to change it unless I were certain that there were decisive advantages in some other system, particularly a system of floor prices. Nonetheless, if the producers themselves put up a proposal to the Government it will, of course, be again carefully considered.
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– Is the Minister for Primary Industry aware of current reports that Japanese pearl shell operators have been observed and, literally, caught in the act of poaching shell in prohibited areas in our northern and north-western continental waters? In view of the fact that this industry is one of great importance to the north-west of Western Australia and cannot afford to be deprived of opportunities for gathering first-grade shell, which is its mainstay, will the Minister inform the House whether those Japanese poachers have, in fact, been caught? If so, have they been effectively dealt with, and has action been take to afford proper protection of Australian interests in this industry? If not, why not?
– I have read some reports that a Japanese pearling fleet has been caught poaching in the waters to the west of Darwin. The allegation is completely wrong in fact. The Japanese have been operating this season east of Darwin only. During the whole period their vessels have been under close surveillance and their movements are well known. Therefore, all I can say at the moment is that this is a clear case of mistaken identification. The basis of it, of course, might be that some luggers in the Australian fleets do use Japanese who are indentured by Australians for the purpose of pearling, but it might be wiser to refrain from further comment because if persons were caught poaching, a prosecution might well be launched in future. That matter is in the hands of the Attorney-General’s Department, and more will be said about it later. I should also like to inform the honorable gentleman that the Japanese have not been licensed to operate in Western Australian waters this season.
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– -I direct a question to the Minister acting for the Minister for Trade. Is it a fact that recently a trade agreement was reached between Australia and Malaya and that, apart from trading arrangements, the agreement was framed so that it would protect both Australia and Malaya from improper practices adopted by other countries? Is the Minister able to inform the House which countries have been referred to as those which have adopted improper practices, and what was the nature of the improper practices referred to in a recent statement?
– Yes, I am aware that an agreement has been signed between Malaya and Australia. My colleague, the Minister for Trade, went through Malaya the other day for that very purpose. The terms of the agreement - as one would expect from an experienced negotiator like the Minister for Trade - would be such as to cover all improper practices, but I do not think it would have been necessary for him to state just what countries he had in mind when he spoke of improper practices.
page 707
– Has the Minister for Labour and National Service seed a report of a statement made by the interstate executive of the Australian Council of Trade Unions with reference to the conciliation and arbitration system operating in the Federal and State spheres? Does the Minister consider that the A.C.T.U. executive was justified in making an attack on the industrial courts in statements to the effect that often orders were made and fines imposed without regard to the merits of the case?
– I did not see the statements attributed to the interstate executive of the A.C.T.U., and I immediately made some inquiries to ascertain what basis existed for the complaints which had been made public. There is nothing novel, of course, about criticism coming from the trade union movement and directed at what are termed the penal provisions of the arbitration legislation. Those provisions have existed in one form or another in our arbitration legislation as far back as I can remember. They exist at the present time in the legislation of most of the States. They follow what I believe to be the very reasonable principle that, as unions and employer organizations have become registered with the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission for purposes of compulsory arbitration, it is necessary to have some adequate sanction to ensure that the decisions of compulsory arbitration are carried into effect. So far as penal provisions are concerned - if that term could be accurately applied to them - it was always intended, by this Government at any rate, that they should be used only as a last resort and after the processes of conciliation and arbitration had been fully exhausted. My inquiries, made as recently as this morning, when I saw the report, would suggest that there has not been abuse in any general sense of the provisions as they exist. Since our amending legislation was adopted in 1956, of 157 unions registered with the commission, only fifteen have been involved in applications under the appropriate section of the arbitration legislation and only three of them have been punished by way of a fine as a result of the orders made. The fines totalled £1,000 for the three unions concerned; but £900 of that total was imposed on the Seamen’s Union in respect of a dispute which held up a ship for more than three months, lt will be seen that £100 was paid by two other unions and that the remaining unions in Australia paid nothing. In the circumstances, it can hardly be argued that excessive, unwarranted, or unreasonable use has been made of these provisions in the legislation.
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– I ask the Minister for the Interior whether it is true that a decision has been made, and is being implemented, that from now, probably until the end of the year, no more government homes will be allocated to people already in Canberra and on the waiting list for homes. Does this mean that all homes that are to be completed in the period from now to the end of the year will be reserved for occupancy by personnel of the defence departments which are to be transferred here in January? Have some factors such as withdrawal of plans for revision, bankruptcy of building contractors and engineering contractors, contributed to a loss of production in homes so that the present relevant figures are not as the Minister anticipated that they would be earlier? Will the Minister recognize that this is a matter of vital interest to the people of Canberra and will he consider making a full public statement on all aspects of the erection and allocation of housing? Before making the statement will the Minister again study the answers that he gave on 8th October, 1957, and 27th March, 1958, and see whether the estimates which, no doubt, were given in good faith then, have fallen short of actual construction of homes?
– For the very reason that the honorable gentleman mentioned, I would not be prepared to make another statement on the question of housing in precise terms at this stage. The general background of this problem is that two years ago, when the Commonwealth accepted a proposal to transfer the Defence services to Canberra, it also accepted the requirement that we should have a vastly expanded housing programme. This was to be expanded in terms of the number of homes to be constructed and decelerated in the rate of construction. It was to provide, first of all, for the transfer of the Defence services. Secondly, it was to provide for an increase in the rate of construction which would, in the long term, and perhaps in the short term, benefit those who were already waiting for housing in Canberra. During 1959, between 1,000 and 1,100 defence officers will either be transferred or appointed to the Defence services in Canberra. Inherent in such proposal is the requirement that, when they come here, housing should be available for them. They will be coming in two moves, the first, 1 think, of 500 in January, and the second of 600, or thereabouts, beginning in June next year. I am sure that the honorable gentleman will understand that houses will not be turned off, over the period of the physical transfer, at the rate which will be required by the arrivals in Canberra. So, quite necessarily, there is a requirement to stockpile houses - to turn the key on a number of houses which will be completed between now and the end of the year - so that the January movement of the Defence services will not be interfered with. At the same time, I should point out to the honorable gentleman that to this point in time those on the waiting list have benefited from the increased rate of production. It is of no use for the honorable gentleman to shake his head, because I have the figures here. Compared with the figures of last year we have, to this point in time, made available more tenancies than were available in the same period last year. I expect that a further 100 homes, to be completed between now and Christmas, will be surplus to the requirements of the Defence services transfer, and therefore can be made available. That is a figure I give for information only, and without making any commitment. I think I should make it clear to the honorable gentleman that the movement of the Defence services to Canberra is a Government requirement. Special funds have been ear-marked for that particular project; therefore, absolute priority must be given to those to be affected by the transfer. It is quite true that in one case the default of a contractor in completing a major contract has thrown us a certain distance behind in the number of homes completed. However, that does not alter the fact that the rate of turn-off in connexion with the Canberra waiting list is better than last year, and, of course, immediately the transfer is completed the rate will be 150 per cent, or 200 per cent, better than the rate that obtained before the decision was made to transfer the Defence services.
page 709
– 1 ask the Minister for Territories the following question: - What is the present position in regard to the provision of a new high school at Darwin? Have the demolition of the old Vestey’s meatworks and the clearing of the site proceeded to such a stage as would permit the building of a high school? What funds are available for the provision of high school facilities in Darwin at present? Will the Minister agree that the absence of adequate high school facilities tends to militate against the attractiveness of Darwin for people with families?
– May I, Mr. Speaker, separate the two questions, the first regarding the use of the Vestey’s site, and the other regarding the construction of the high school? The site formerly occupied by the Vestey’s meat works was, of course, a site occupied by an eyesore. About two years ago, a decision was made to demolish the meat works, and at that time I gave instructions that the site was to be reserved for higher educational purposes, the intention being that a high school should be built on it. Eventually, we hope that the University of North Australia will also occupy that site. That is looking some distance into the future. The demolition of the building is proceeding according to the programme. Good progress is being made, and the site should shortly become available. It is recognized that there is a most urgent need for better high school accommodation in Darwin in order to keep pace with the growing population and with the very happy situation that more and more families are seeking to have the whole of the education of their children completed in the Northern Territory instead of sending them to the south to complete it. About twelve months ago, I gave ministerial approval for the building of a high school or. that site. When the plans, having been carried to the design stage, were returned to us it was found that the amount involved would be £400,000, an amount very much larger than 1 had’ myself expected, but which was so large because of the modern ideas that were being included in the plans for the high school building. In those circumstances, as the cost was to be of such magnitude, my colleague, the Minister for Works, acting within his own province, has taken or is about to take the decision to refer the matter, as he needs must, to the Public Works Committee. It is customary for public works of such magnitude to be referred to that committee. As the project has not yet been passed by the committee it was not within my capacity to seek the inclusion of any amount for it in this year’s Budget.
page 709
– Is the Minister for Labour and National Service aware that the number of persons registered for employment in Tasmania is now at a higher level that at any corresponding period during the last eighteen years? If he is aware of this fact, will he discuss with his ministerial colleagues the possibility of having outstanding Commonwealth works in Tasmania, some of which have been programmed for several years, accorded the highest priority so as to assist in relieving the serious situation which now exists?
– I have not the latest figure with me, but I could get it if the honorable member wished to confirm the statement he has made. However, the percentage in relation to the total availability of persons for employment in Tasmania is still very small indeed, as he would be aware. In fact, my understanding is that Tasmania, generally in common with the rest of the Commonwealth, continues to enjoy a high state of prosperity by comparison with the standards of any other country or, for that matter of this country at earlier points of time.
The capacity of the Government of Tasmania, or, for that matter, this Government, to improve the employment position was considered at the recent Australian Loan Council meeting when all States received sums additional to those which they were given last year for their general governmental purposes, and, in particular, for their loan works programmes. What the Government of Tasmania does with the funds which have been made available for these purposes in order to stimulate employment in that State is a matter for itself to determine, but no doubt it will so arrange the programme to give the maximum amount of employment that it can contrive.
page 710
– I ask the Minister for Air, who is acting for the Minister for the Navy: In view of the substantial fleet of submarines which has been built up by the Soviet bloc and the consequent menace to Australian shipping in the event of war in the Pacific, can he given an assurance that our naval and air forces are being adequately trained and equipped to deal with this type of warfare?
– I can say, with complete assurance, that the potential threat to Australian shipping in the existence of large numbers of submarines which could be hostile to this country is very well understood by the Air Staff and the Naval Staff. The Royal Australian Navy is equipped with types of ships and naval aircraft to make it predominantly an escort force. The Royal Australian Air Force has two squadrons of maritime aircraft, one of which consists of very modern and very good aircraft indeed; the other consists of old reconnaissance aircraft which, nevertheless, are of considerable value. Both services are trained continuously in anti-submarine techniques. A common doctrine is produced and taught in the Australian joint anti-submarine school at Nowra and the two services are exercised together in anti-submarine warfare.
I would not pretend to the honorable member that the task of defending shipping around the enormous coastline of this country is a simple one or that it would be easily accomplished in war, but with the’ forces which a small country like Australia can afford, I believe that the most possible is done, in peace-time, to provide for the future defence of our shipping and in training the personnel of our two services towards that end.
page 710
– 1 ask the Prime Minister why there has been such delay in answering the question I placed on the notice-paper, at his request, three and a half months ago asking him who, in Australia, gives or would give the authority to tap telephones or intercept letters which, in the United Kingdom, must be given by the Home Secretary. I ask him also whether Cabinet has yet given consideration, as he forecast in answers to questions by the honorable member for Hindmarsh and myself last November, to the report of the committee of British privy councillors on this subject and to a statutory basis for the procedure in Australia.
– I am sorry that 1 cannot as yet say anything beyond what I have already said on that point. The matter has not yet reached finality.
page 710
Extra-judicial Employment.
– 1 ask the Prime Minister whether it is the view of the Government that judges should not accept positions as directors of private companies. If so, will he say whether any action can be taken by the Australian Government in respect of the acceptance by Mr. Justice Spender, a member of the International Court of Justice, of the position of director of the Goodyear Tyre and Rubber Company?
– I should be very surprised indeed to learn that that is true. 1 know nothing about it myself.
page 710
Motion (by Mr. Downer) agreed to -
That leave be given to bring in a bill for an aci to amend the Nationality and Citizenship Act. 1948-1955.
Bill presented, and rea-J a first time.
– by leave - I move -
That the bill be now read a second time.
This is a comparatively short bill, of eleven clauses, designed to amend the Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948-1955. Its introduction was heralded by my predecessor, the present Minister for Supply (Mr. Townley), at the last Citizenship Convention, and was subsequently foreshadowed by His Excellency the Governor-General when he opened this parliamentary session. The Government now fulfils the promise.
This measure has two principal objectives. Firstly, we propose to erase from the Nationality and Citizenship Act every discrimination, except one, between naturalized Australians and people born in Australia. For some time there has been resentment amongst certain of our European settlers against the power inherent in the Minister for Immigration to deprive naturalized Australians of their citizenship on the grounds set out in sections 21 and 22 of the existing act. Actually, these provisions have been utilized on the rarest of occasions. Only seven people out of approximately 150,000 who have become naturalized since the war have come within their ambit. Nevertheless, it is the presence of this power, rather than its exercise, which hurts; and the Government in a desire to welcome our new citizens with speed, sincerity and warmth into our national life asks the House to delete it from the statute book.
May I, very briefly, remind honorable members of the substance of these discriminatory provisions. Section 20 declares that a naturalized Australian who resides outside Australia and New Guinea continuously for seven years shall lose his citizenship unless he has at least once during the second and each succeeding year, or at such other times as the Minister in special cases allows, notified an Australian Consulate of his intention to retain it. Section 21 enables the Minister to strip a naturalized person of his citizenship on each of five counts: Disloyalty towards the Sovereign; unlawfully trading or communicating with the enemy in any war in which Australia is or has been engaged; gaining his naturalization through fraud; not being of good character at the date of naturalization; being sentenced in any country within five years of his being naturalized to imprisonment for twelve mo.. thi or more. Section 22 entitles the Minister to deprive a naturalized person of his citizenship if he, being previously a citizen of another Commonwealth country, lost such citizenship on any ground similar to those I have just mentioned under section 21.
The bill, in clauses 6 and 7, repeals these three sections. In their stead, one simple proposition is put forward which, I believe, will command1 the assent of all reasonable people. Where a person is convicted of obtaining his naturalization by false statements or by concealing a material circumstance, and the Minister is satisfied it would be contrary to the public interest for such person to continue to be an Australian citizen, then the Minister may deprive him of his citizenship. This is embodied in clause 7, and will become a new section 21 of the principal act. Complementary to this, section 50 has been re-drafted and amplified to include concealment of material circumstances, for such concealment could be just as deceptive as an outright false statement. This is contained in clause 11.
Before leaving this aspect of the bill, direct the attention of honorable members to clause 8. As I said a few moments ago, we are seeking to abolish the seven years’ absence from Australia rule. It seems only just that if we are willing to accept this new principle, we should be prepared to apply it retrospectively. Accordingly, clause 8 proposes to insert in the substantive act a new section 23a, which will enable persons who have already lost Australian citizenship under section 20, to regain it very easily. All they need1 do is within a year of the operation of this bill, or on attaining 21, or within such period as the Minister in special circumstances allows, make and furnish to the secretary of my department a simple declaration that they desire to resume Australian citizenship. Upon the secretary registering such declaration, the applicant will become once more a fully fledged Australian citizen. The other portions of clause 8 are merely a re-statement, in more precise terms, of the existing law.
I turn now to the second objective of the bill. Section 7 of the principal aci enumerates those countries the citizens of which are held to be British subjects for the purpose of our nationality laws. When that comprehensive measure came before the House in 1948, it was possibly not contemplated that various parts of the British Commonwealth, still in colonial status, would attain independent nationhood so soon. As it is, within only a few years, three new Commonwealth partners emerged: the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Ghana, and the Federation of Malaya. Clause 5 of the bill recognizes this fact, by repealing sub-section 2 of section 7 of the principal act, and bringing the list up to date. And in order to avoid similar amendments in future, we propose in the same clause that future additions to this list may be made by regulations. The British Commonwealth, as we still like to call it here, is an expanding organism, lt has long been the aim of British statesmen to assist its subordinate members to complete equality and full stature. Within our lifetime, we shall surely witness the continuance of this evolving process. It therefore behoves us to provide for its recognition simply and effectively in our own legislation.
As to the rest of the bill, little need be said. The opportunity has been taken to make drafting improvements to the existing law on procedural matters. Clause 4 offers a new definition of the term “ protected person “. The present definition has been found too narrow to enable the status of protected person to be accorded to women who have married natives of our trust territories, but who themselves were not born in those lands. Clause 9 is an amendment consequential upon the Migration Bill now before the House. Honorable members may recall that the Migration Bill provides for the substitution of certificates of exemption by temporary entry permits for issue to persons admitted temporarily to Australia. It is, therefore, necessary to make corresponding changes to section 25 (7) of the Nationality and Citizenship Act. Clause 10 proposes a minor alteration relating to the making of declarations under section 30 of the principal act.
As honorable members will see, this measure should remove whatever legal disadvantages settlers from overseas feel themselves subjected to after naturalization. Henceforth, Australian citizenship will be, as it were, a one-class train, without any suggestion of first or second class according to origin. The one exception to this new order will be naturalization by fraud, and about this I do not feel there can be any legitimate controversy. No parliament should readily condone deceit. 1 have made some study of the nationality laws of other Commonwealth countries, and the House may be interested to know that, if it approves these proposals, Australia will possess the most generous, the least inhibited, nationality legislation of any member of the Commonwealth. Indeed, it is probably true to say that no country in the world will have gone so far to remove the legal differences between those born within its confines and those who have assumed its citizenship.
Here, then, is another example of the Government’s determination to absorb, not by compulsion, but by opportunity, our new settlers into Australian customs, traditions, privileges, and rights. Immigration in Australia will have a Jong history - this must be so, if we are to develop and survive. But we shall only succeed in this great movement of peoples from the old world to our own continent if we acclimatize them, and their children, sympathetically and speedily to our ways of living, and induce them to regard Australia as their home. That is the underlying intention of this bill, and I ask honorable members to give it their warm approval.
Debate (on motion by Mr. Calwell) adjourned.
page 712
Debate resumed from 21st August (vide page 621), on motion by Mr. Hasluck -
That the bill be now read a second time.
Debate (on motion by Mr. Cramer) adjourned.
page 712
In Committee of Supply: Consideration resumed from 21st August (vide page 691).
.- I should like to make some observations about the general workings of the Parliament. Whilst Parliament has functioned successfully over the years, I think that some improvements could be made by changing some of the methods that are used.
– Some of the members.
– That might happen soon. Whilst there may not appear to be much room for improvement, we should not rest on our oars, but should look around to see whether the proceedings of Parliament can be improved for the benefit of the Australian people. I do not think that, under present conditions, Parliament is operating with 100 per cent, efficiency. I do not blame the Government or any honorable members for this, but because of the way Parliament is conducted there are several avenues whereby some improvement could be effected.
There is no doubt that since the Parliament was increased in size more than nine years ago a great deal of frustration has been felt by many honorable members. This is understandable, because only a certain amount of time is allowed for the discussion of bills and other matters. Because of the time limit many honorable members are thwarted in their desire to speak on various matters. The size of the Parliament was increased from 75 members to 123 members, but the Parliament does not sit any longer now than it did when its numbers were smaller. It is obvious that the increase in the number of honorable members has meant that opportunities for debate are less than they were when the Parliament was not as large as it is to-day. I suggest, as I have done on a number of occasions in the past, that we should give serious consideration to an extension of the committee system. I have advocated this before, and I shall do so again.
By an extension of the committee system we would secure a better exchange of views between honorable members and, if I might be so bold as to express an opinion, we would secure better bills also. Bills would be broader in their scope than they are at present, and that would be to the advantage of the Australian people. When I suggest an extension of the committee system I do not advocate that the committees should deal with highly controversial political subjects. I realize that the major political parties have a premeditated course to pursue with regard to controversial party political subjects. Every party, of course, has its own policy, and the recommendations of all-party committees would not alter the policies of the major political parties. 1 know that, on a number of matters, there is a clear and unambiguous line of divergence between the major political parties, and no amount of good intent could alter the line of demarcation. But, on the other hand, on many measures that come before the Parliament, there is no great gulf of disagreement between the parties.
At present, a bill is presented to the Parliament as embodying the considered views of the Government, and it is passed regardless of what Opposition members may think of it. It is only on very rare occasions that Opposition amendments are accepted. This is to be deplored. I am saying this now as an Opposition member, but my views would be the same if the party that I support were in office. All the wisdom of the Parliament is not vested in the members on one side of it. In the nine years that I have been a member of this place, a great many sensible suggestions that I thought would have been accepted by the Government have been advanced by Opposition members. I should have thought that many of those suggestions could have been accepted without any deviation by the Government from its policy, but it seems to take the attitude that only very rarely shall an amendment proposed by an Opposition member be accepted. It is true that, on four or five occasions in the last nine years, amendments have been accepted by the Government. The attitude in this Parliament is in sharp contract with that in the Victorian Parliament, where, frequently, regardless of the political complexion of the government of the day, Opposition amendments are accepted. It is, indeed, a rare occasion when, in this Parliament, the Government says to the Opposition, “You have something there. The amendment is worthy of consideration and we are prepared to incorporate your proposal in the bill “.
– I think the honorable member will find that, in respect of most of the major bills dealt with in the life of this Parliament, amendments have been accepted.
– Not many. I am satisfied that a great many suggestions that the Government will not adopt when they are made on the floor of the Parliament during the debate on a bill would be adopted if they were the subject of recommendations made by an all-party committee under the extension of the committee system that I suggest. That is the point that I wish to make.
I first became enamoured of the committee system and its benefits when I served as a member of a municipal council. Councillors met round the council table and matters were thrashed out, and frequently we found that the ultimate decision reached as a result of the deliberations took into account the views of all members of the council to a greater or lesser degree. Obviously, the faction in control of the council had the major influence in determining the points of view most strongly reflected in the decision, but, nevertheless, the views of the minority were not ignored.
The opinions that I gained as a municipal councillor were reinforced when I became a member of the Public Works Committee of this Parliament. That splendid body is an example of a committee that produces positive and tangible results for the people in the workings of the parliamentary machine. It adopts a non-party approach to numerous projects that are the responsibility of this Parliament. By means of that non-party approach, the committee is able to hammer out many difficult matters. I am sure that members of that committee will agree with me when I say that it always deals with matters entirely on a non-party basis. As a matter of fact, I do not think that I have ever seen a party line-up on the Public Works Committee since I have been a member of it. On the contrary, one frequently finds that, in the deliberations of that committee, one is supporting a member whose views he often and vigorously opposes in debates in this chamber. The Public Works Committee makes recommendations to the Parliament, and the Cabinet, of course, has the right to say whether or not it will accept a recommendation made by the committee. But, in practically every case, the committee’s recommendations are accepted. As a consequence, the committee has been highly beneficial to the Australian taxpayers.
The Public Accounts Committee is another illustration of a committee that has rendered splendid service to the Australian people. If one judges it by the very interesting reports that it submits to the Parliament from time to time, one must incline to the opinion that it adopts a non-party approach to the numerous and important problems that it considers. The fact that its deliberations and findings have always been based on a non-party attitude has been of distinct advantage to the Parliament and the nation.
– What is the honorable member’s attitude to foreign affairs?
– I will answer that question in a moment, if the honorable member will bc patient. The extension of the committee system would give members of the Parliament who are unable to take part in debates because time is too limited an opportunity to make a tangible contribution to the discussion of the various problems that come before the Parliament from time to time. Not only that, but also the working of the parliamentary machine would be considerably improved and added strength would be derived by the democratic system at a time when there are all too many people in the community who, at all times, are looking for an opportunity to knock the parliamentary machine and those who form part of it. On many matters, honorable members, participating in the deliberations of all-party committees, could bring a reasoned approach to bear on problems without emphasis being, placed on a party political outlook.
There are many matters that come to mind as fitting subjects for consideration by all-party committees under an extended committee system. The honorable member for Petrie (Mr.. Hulme) has mentioned foreign affairs. That matter, unfortunately, is highly controversial, and I suggested earlier that all-party committees could not effectively deliberate on highly controversial topics. But there are many less controversial matters that they could consider with great advantage. We have deliberating at present the Constitution Review Committee. From all accounts - I can get my information only from the newspapers - members of that committee have reached agreement on a number of constitutional reforms. I should say that, as a result of the united view taken by the committee, and possibly as the result of an all-party approach to the Australian people for a change in the Australian Constitution, we shall get much-needed constitutional reform. If, on the other hand, one party had suggested an amendment to the Constitution, following the practice at previous referendums, the proposal would probably have been defeated on a party line-up. Because the Constitution Review Committee is an all-party committee it will, I suppose, present to the Parliament a more or less unanimous view on a number of matters, and this will enable the parties in the Parliament to go to the nation, to use a term that has been bandied about in this place recently, on a unity ticket so far as constitutional reform is concerned.
Then there is the matter of social services. I am satisfied that, in many respects, Opposition members and Government supporters think alike on social services, but, when a social services measure is submitted to the Parliament as an instrument of government policy, sound and worth-while suggestions made by Opposition members on the floor of this chamber are rejected, whereas, were they made in a committee room and thrashed out there without the rancour and heat frequently associated with debates on the floor of the Parliament, they would be considered and some of them would be accepted.
Another fitting subject for consideration by an all-party committee is the transport system. Probably Government supporters and Opposition members are 90 per cent, in agreement about what should be done in respect of the transport system. Television and broadcasting, also, would be a suitable subject for consideration by an all-party committee. Primary production, which looms large in our minds at the present time, would be another suitable subject. These matters could well be looked at from a non-party angle, but as soon as they become political footballs, the Government refuses to give due consideration to suggestions made by Opposition members. Migration is a very important matter, and here an all-party committee could make a really worth-while contribution. National development, also, comes to mind as a matter in which there is not such a wide divergence of opinion between the major political parties. It, too, could well be considered by an all-party committee.
If all-party committees of the kind that I have suggested - we have two or three functioning at present - could consider these matters, they could make recommendations to the Government, and it would be a matter for the Government to say whether or not it would accept the recommendations. These committees would provide the ground-work for the presentation to the Parliament of measures that would, in detail, receive ready acceptance on both sides of the Parliament because they were the subject of recommendations by all-party committees. The Government would find that recommendations made by the committees were the result of balanced conclusions and mature consideration free from the influences that are usually so prevalent in debate on the floor of the Parliament. Too frequently, in this chamber, we find that certain statements receive undue prominence in the newspapers. Honorable members know this and, possibly, for that reason, some of them, seeking an advertisement in the newspapers, say certain things that they would not say in the comparative calmness of a committeeroom.
There is no one sooling on members of a committee. There are no newspaper reporters looking for something on which to make reports which will be appreciated by the newspaper public. Everything is considered calmly and dispassionately on its merits. Such a system would lead to a better approach to many national problems.
This suggestion is not new. Other parliaments throughout the world use the committee system far more extensively than does the Australian National Parliament. Over many years, they have found that it is the best method of approach to many questions that come before them. The American parliamentary system is in many respects different from our own but, taken by and large, America is a democracy just as we are. The people go to the polls and elect, in the main, two major political parties. The legislation that comes before Congress emanates from the party in government. The members of Congress are largely influenced in their attitude to bills by the reports of committees. Committees operate extensively not only in America but also in Great Britain. The
House of Commons has many committees, but not as many as has the American Congress.
Order! The honorable member’s time has expired.
.- In rising to support the proposed vote for the Parliament, I want to make a brief reference to the cost of the Parliament, and then to say something about the traditions of this great institution and its place in the life of the nation. First, may I point out that, having regard to the great significance of Parliament as a national institution, the cost as indicated in these Estimates is infinitesimal - and I use the word advisedly. If one sits down with a pencil and a piece of paper, one can very easily work out that the total appropriation for the Parliament for the year 1958-59, £1,082,000, represents something less than 2s. for every man, woman and child in the Commonwealth. On the basis of the number of taxpayers in the country, it works out at about 5s. a head.
– Half the price of a ticket in “ Tatt’s “.
– Yes, indeed. When one thinks of Parliament and the value of it in terms of pounds, shillings and pence, one cannot help but agree that it is cheap at the price. There are many people in other parts of the world, behind the iron curtain, who would give their right hands to have a free, properly elected, and democratically constituted parliament such as we have in this country. I want to make a few comments, in the brief time I have, about the value of this great democratic institution, because I believe we should be very conscious all the time of the need to cherish its traditions. Before I do that, however, may I take moment to pay my personal tribute to the staff of Parliament, the Clerk of the House, his assistants, the attendants, the Joint House Department, the Librarian and his staff, and all the other people in the institution of Parliament who keep the machinery oiled and in good working order, in order that Parliament itself can do its job to the best of its ability.
It has been said that the roots of the present lie deep in the past. That is very true of the Parliament. Time will not allow me to attempt, even in the briefest way, to trace the history of modern parliaments, but we do know that there have been many ups and downs through the centuries. We passed from the days of the autocratic monarchs through the period when we had no monarch at all under the British system but, instead, a protectorate; then to the restoration of the monarchy. I do not think I can do better on this particular note than to quote from a book called “ Our Parliament “, published in England some years ago by the Hansard Society of England. Referring to the Mother of Parliaments - the British Parliament, of course - it reads -
Always changing, yet changeless in its spirit and purpose, Parliament has its roots in history of centuries ago, yet its branches reach out to the days still to come. Parliament is part of the birthright of every citizen, the mirror of the people’s minds, and the guardian of their liberlies. It is the high duty of every citizen to be informed about Parliament and its purposes and to be concerned with its operations.
I believe that it is of first importance not only that people in this country should realize the significance of Parliament as an institution but also that they should be encouraged and, where necessary, educated to a proper understanding of its functions and of the full part it can and does play in the life of the nation. I am afraid that there are in the country quite a number of ill-informed critics. Of course, there is always the cynic, and you would not impress him or prove anything to him if you talked for a month of Sundays. I believe that the fairly constant belittling and degrading of Parliament in various ways over the years has tended to bring it down below the level on which it should be.
I believe that the responsibility to uphold all that is best and worthy in our British parliamentary institution rests first and foremost on those of us who sit in Parliament and have the privilege of representing the tens of thousands of electors who do us the honour of electing us. If those who are constantly belittling and degrading Parliament would only stop to think for a moment, they would realize that they are only playing into the hands of those subversive elements we have in our community which are aiming and hoping for the day when Parliament as an institution will be overthrown. 1 know that Parliament has its faults, because it is made up of human beings and, of course, we all have faults. As an institution consisting of human beings, Parliament itself must therefore have some faults. But with all its faults, the parliamentary tradition which we have inherited in this country is the best that could be worked out through the centuries in the interests of the nation as a whole.
I felt very honoured some months ago to be elected to the Committee of Privileges of this Parliament. I do not need to remind honorable members of the need for us all to be alive and alert to the rights that our constituents have, through us as their representatives. The Committee of Privileges exists, not so much to protect the rights of members, as to protect the rights of Parliament as an institution, and to protect the rights of the constituents whom we represent. The alternative to democratic parliamentary government is an ugly one. Unhappily, there are plenty of countries in the world where the only form of government is one of dictatorship and tyranny, where democracy, as we know it and are able to enjoy it, is virtually unknown, or is just a memory of the past in the minds of millions of people. How would we like to live under a one-party system, such as so many countries behind the iron curtain have; where the people have only one candidate to vote for, and where there is no secret ballot, as we understand it and have it here? As I said before, there are tens of millions of people in the world who would give their right hands to have a free and democratically elected parliament such as we enjoy. Let us not abuse it, degrade it, or belittle it. Let us keep it up to the highest level of British parliamentary traditions.
Four years ago we had the great honour and pleasure of seeing our Sovereign here in her own Parliament. I think it is worth taking a moment just to remind ourselves that the Sovereign in Parliament is supreme - not Parliament itself, but the Sovereign in Parliament. When Her Majesty sat here in her own Parliament as the Sovereign of Australia she represented the highest authority in this land.
It is perfectly true that there are weaknesses in the system, but I think it is equally true that the parliamentary system is still evolving, just as it has been evolving over the centuries. I would point out that it still exists, that it has stood the test of time, and that, despite all its failings and shortcomings, and despite all the critics and the cynics, it will continue, I hope, to exist in Australia for all time. It will be a sorry day indeed for this country if those who follow after us do not have the privilege of a free election and a free democratically controlled parliament such as we have at present. May I be permitted to quote a short passage from a statement made in 1774 by a very famous statesman, Edmund Burke, with relation to the British parliamentary tradition and the operation of the Mother of Parliaments. These were his words -
Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests. . . . Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest - that of the whole . . . where not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole.
As I said before, we in this place are only human, and from time to time we tend, perhaps, to get a little over-heated and to say things that we would not say if we were in a calmer frame of mind. But that is all part and parcel of the British parliamentary tradition. We hammer out on the anvil of this democratic institution what we believe, as a corporate body, to be in the best interests of the nation as a whole.
Parliament depends upon the consent and the support of the people. It has been proved over and over again that this system that we have is the best calculated to preserve liberty. Long may it remain in this country.
– I commend the sentiments expressed by the honorable member for Ryan (Mr. Drury). I believe it is the responsibility of each of us to see that the institution of Parliament is maintained. Would that it could be maintained in the spirit suggested in the statement made in 1774 by Edmund Burke, which was read by the honorable member.
– The press makes it difficult.
– The honorable member for Wilmot will have his opportunity to put that point of view later on in the discussions. It is important to remember that we are wedded by tradition to the maintenance of the parliamentary system in this country. It is proper that the privileges of Parliament should be maintained. 1 believe it is equally proper that they should not be abused, and I remind honorable members that it was this Parliament which, not so many years ago, sent to gaol two citizens of this country, without any trial whatsoever.
– You cannot reflect on a decision of the Parliament.
– It is quite proper to discuss these matters here, because this is a discussion concerning the Parliament, which consists of the Queen, the Senate and the House of Representatives, as representatives of the people.
I commend also what the honorable member for Batman (Mr. Bird) had to say about an extension of the committee system. I believe this would be beneficial to the working of the Parliament and to the legislation which proceeds therefrom, and, consequently, to the people of the country. In these days of majorities in this House and in. another place, the original conception of the Parliament has, perhaps, been lost to sight. Perhaps we have become too partisan in our arguments in this place. It is, of course, quite true that a government with a majority in this place, and with a majority, or the equivalent of one, elsewhere, can bring down legislation and be quite adamant about refusing to accept any amendment of that legislation. As a consequence, Mr. Chairman, I have sometimes wondered what is the purpose of debate in this chamber. Since we know from the moment a bill is introduced that it is going io be passed without any amendment whatsoever, what is the purpose of the debate? Does the debate in those circumstances become simply an opportunity for each member of the Parliament to speak to his own electorate? Does the debate, in fact, contribute towards the production of the Parliament’s legislation? It seems to me that in large measure the legislation is determined before it is brought into this place. It is determined by the Government parties - quite naturally, as it must be - but the debate very rarely has any effect at all on the legislation.
T want to go a little further with regard to the point made by the honorable member for Batman concerning committees. I wish to refer particularly to some of the committees of this Parliament that are in existence, and to some anomalies that exist. I believe, with relation to those committees. We have several joint committees of the Parliament, one on public works, another on public accounts, and, more recently, one on the Australian Capital Territory. It has been the custom over the years that members who volunteer their services and who are elected as representatives of their parties on those committees receive payment for the days on which they are required to meet outside the sitting days of the Parliament. In other words, they receive sessional fees, or sitting fees, and when the committees are called together outside the parliamentary session, they receive also payment of what is known as a Canberra allowance, which is a payment made to recoup them for their outofpocket expenses in> coming to Canberra to take part in the meetings of the committees.
– The same kind of expenses as businessmen receive.
– That is quite true. Those payments are quite proper, and in many cases, perhaps, they are not adequate. Some of the members of the committees to which I have referred, and which have been in existence for some time, receive these payments, but the members of the Australian Capital Territory committee, to which I refer particularly, do not receive a sitting fee or the Canberra allowance when meetings of the committee are called outside the parliamentary session. I suggest to you, Mr. Chairman, and to the Minister for Labour and National Service (Mr. Harold Holt), who is now at the table, that this position should be rectified. I understand that it stems from a decision of the Government, taken, I think, early last year, that there should be no increase at all in the payments made to members for their parliamentary duties. This committee has been appointed since that time, but I point out that it performs a valuable service for the Parliament and for this particular community, and I believe that an allowance should be made to its members to cover their out-of-pocket expenses, so as to bring the committee into line, in this regard, with the other committees of the Parliament I believe that the Parliament should decide what is right and proper for any of its committees, and then should apply that decision to every committee that it appoints, whether it be a committee of this House, of the other place, or jointly of the two. I believe that such a system will commend itself to the Minister for Labour and National Service, and that perhaps it will be brought into operation in this financial year.
Mr. Chairman, the debate on the Estimates for the Parliament gives us an opportunity to refer to matters of major and minor importance, and I will take only a minute of the committee’s time to refer to a minor matter which, I am sure, is important to many persons who work in this place, and which, I am sure, has engaged the attention of many members of the Parliament. I do not know what system is used in the purchase of stationery and such items used1 by the House of Representatives and the Senate, but I am certain that the quality of the stationery provided is far from being satisfactory. How many honorable members, for instance, have tried to get one of the parliamentary envelopes to stick down satisfactorily, and how many have found it necessary to use a piece of sticky tape for the purpose? Has any honorable member tried to use one of the writing pads provided for the Parliament, without having it fall to pieces after a short time? I have before me at the moment one of these writing pads, and honorable members can understand my complaint.
It may be that the system of ordering these items is wrong. It may be that there is a requirement that the lowest tender shall be accepted. If that is the case, I suggest that there should be a standard quality in writing paper, envelopes, carbon paper and similar supplies. This may be a small matter in the eyes of the Government, but it is important to those who work in this building and to members of Parliament. I know it is a fact that if a typist working for a private member wants to type a number of copies of a document, she goes to somebody who is working for a Minister, if she is fortunate enough to know one of them well, and obtains from the officer who works for the Minister better quality paper or carbon paper. I think this is a matter which should be considered, and I hope it will be corrected.
.- I do not intend to introduce new matter into the debate at this stage, but I support the remarks that have been made by the honorable member for Ryan (Mr. Drury) and the honorable member for Batman (Mr. Bird). I should also like to attempt to draw together the proposals that have been put forward by those honorable members for the attention of the Government. It is true, as the honorable member for Ryan suggested, that the institution of the Parliament is of great and fundamental importance to the nation. Therefore, it is of great importance that a proper and accurate evaluation of the functioning of the Parliament should be made. I think it is appropriate to support from this side of the House the remark made by the honorable member for Ryan that a proper and accurate evaluation of the Parliament is not made in all places in the Commonwealth.
It has become the practice in many places - and I refer particularly to a number of our large newspapers - to denigrate the functioning of the Parliament. It has become a widespread practice to denigrate the functions of members of Parliament, or politicians as they are called. I would say, from nearly three years’ experience of this institution, that honorable members on both sides of the chamber discharge their work and responsibilities with at least as high a standard as one finds in other sections of the community. I believe that should be stressed so that more notice might be taken of it by those who profess to fear the type of subversive movement that has been mentioned by the honorable member for Ryan. As the honorable member suggested, those persons, if anything, contribute to the prospects of such subversion by their attitude to the institution of Parliament and its members.
I think that the Commonwealth is fortunate in that it obtains the functioning of a parliamentary institution of this sort for an expenditure of just over £1,000,000, as is shown by the Estimates for the coming year. When the work of the Parliament and those who are covered by the Estimates under this item are taken into account, that is an extremely small expenditure for the functioning of a level of democracy such as we have in Australia. The community should be prepared to confer on the Parliament and those who work in it a great deal more credit than, in fact, it does. The significance of the statements made by the honorable member for Batman are worthy of consideration at this point, because he made practical submissions for the improvement of the functioning of the Parliament. I have participated in three debates of this kind, and similar submissions have been made in the two previous debates. So far, no moves have been made by the Government to put those suggestions into effect. Both honorable members to whom I have referred have shown that there is a considerable area of agreement in any community which is functioning without disturbance and without the conflict of a revolutionary or nearrevolutionary situation. There is a considerable area of agreement in which policy can be decided upon the basis of efficiency and of what is needed to meet the general interests of the community. One need not base this on the proposition of a conservative philosopher like Edmund Burke to see the truth of that statement. The mere fact that there are differences - and fairly considerable differences - in some fields should not prevent us from being able to make a more positive contribution to what goes on in the Parliament; but the effect of some influences which are brought to bear upon us is such that what is said and done here is dictated more for its influence outside than for the purposes for which the Parliament is directing its activities.
I agree with the honorable member for Batman that if more scope were provided for committees on subjects on which there is a considerable area of agreement, the work of the Parliament would be considerably improved. At a time when people are asking for a more positive and constructive Opposition, I have found, during the three years I have been a member of Parliament, that very little notice is taken of the positive suggestions that are made by the Opposition, either in committee or at other stages of parliamentary deliberations. It is no answer to say that there is nothing to be said for those submis sions, and that they do not contribute to the solution of problems inside the Parliament. I believe that situation arises because of the general circumstances in debates in which what is said in this chamber is influenced more by the effects to be achieved outside Parliament than inside it. If that was one effect of the broadcasting of parliamentary proceedings, it would be most unfortunate but, of course, it is not solely the result of that innovation. It has arisen rather because there seems to be a technique developing in the Parliament and around the corridors of getting headlines in the press. Contributions to the debates are planned with the object of getting publicity rather than of making positive contributions to the parliamentary proceedings.
There is a responsibility on the Government - relying, as it has for some considerable time, on large numbers - to take the lead in making more provision for the Opposition to contribute constructively in those areas where there is substantial agreement. I know that it is the purpose of the Government and, probably, of the Opposition, to make out from time to time that there are very serious differences. It suits the purpose of the Government from time to time to make out that honorable members on this side of the chamber are extreme in their differences from those on the Government side. That is very good political propaganda, it seems, but it contributes little, or nothing, to the constructive work of this legislature and, in fact, its effect is rather the reverse.
I experienced that effect only recently when I endeavoured to put before this chamber the facts of a situation as they were conveyed to me and which I believed to be true. I was met with little more than a personal attack from honorable members on the Government side and from the senior Minister, who is now at the table, the Minister for Labour and National Service (Mr. Harold Holt). If one refers to the reports of that debate in “ Hansard “ one will see that that was a personal attack which was completely unjustified. I think that when matters of this sort, which it is the responsibility of members of this Parliament to bring before this chamber, are treated in that fashion, no one has the right to complain that the Opposition is not doing its job.
Whilst, on the whole, the standard of the Parliament as I have seen it during the last three years, has been as high as one finds in the large businesses or other organizations in the community there is, of course, room for improvement and whilst I agree with the remarks of the honorable member for Ryan (Mr. Drury), I also emphasize that it is time that more notice was taken of the type of statement made to-day by the honorable member for Batman (Mr. Bird). Such statements have been made before on many occasions, but have been substantially ignored. I think it is the responsibility of those who have the power to make decisions to decide that in those fields in which it is possible to develop the committee system and in which it is possible to adopt in this chamber a more constructive type of examination of legislation and problems by the committee method, that method should be developed.
– I am one of those who believe that the debates in this chamber should receive more attention. I am not quite certain that I agree with the honorable member for Yarra (Mr. Cairns) that there are not significant differences between those on his side and those on our side of the chamber. I know that there are times when we could get together with a more constructive attitude. But I am not quite certain that the honorable member for Yarra is not drawing moderation from the approach of the general election.
In this discursive debate there are one or two things that I should like to mention. We are talking now of the Parliament. The Commonwealth Parliament represents the six States of the Commonwealth. But it was not always assumed that it would be a Parliament representing only six States.
Section 6 of the Commonwealth Constitution Act states - “ The States “ shall mean such of the colonies of New South Wales, New Zealand, Queensland, Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia, and South Australia . . .
The point that I wish to bring to the attention of honorable members is the possibility of re-extending to New Zealand an invitation to become an Australian State. I would put that on this ground: At the time at which the Constitution was worked out - that is, in the six years or so before it was adopted - we had the idea that the States could exist very largely on their foreign trade. This has been shown to be largely illusory as policies of self-sufficiency in Europe and other places have had their inevitable impact. So the New Zealand economy is now too small to be viable. New Zealand is getting into difficulties which are partly, perhaps, of its own making, but from which it will find it almost impossible to extricate itself in the long run because its economy is too small to be viable in the international world.
For that reason, 1 believe that the time is now coming when we should reconsider the circumstances which were envisaged when the Constitution was laid down. A readjustment of this character could not, of course, be envisaged without the full consent of the people of both nations. I would not believe that that consent would be easily obtained. Nor would I believe that this could be brought about without a movement extending, perhaps, over six, seven, or eight years.
There is a great deal of mutual education to be done before we can envisage the Commonwealth of Australia including the Dominion of New Zealand. But this is something which, in the long run, would be to the advantage of both Australia and New Zealand. We are finding, here, that we need to build up our internal market as our opportunities for external trade are constricted by the force of circumstances over which we have no control. It may be that we can negotiate and get a little breathing space. One must pay tribute to the skill of the negotiators for the Government who are engaged in this process at the moment. They can stave off, they can delay, the inevitable day. But, by and large, we have to learn to live more and more within our own resources.
I am not suggesting, of course, that any violent change is desirable, but I believe that we should place a little more emphasis on the local market. I suggest that we should be gradually - only gradually - moving in the direction of higher selfsufficiency. For this, we need a greater internal market to obtain the economies of size and of efficiency which go with it. The Government is doing a great deal towards that objective by, for example, its immigration and developmental programme. Australia is being made a bigger place. But New Zealand has a population of, I think, 2,250,000. That number represents twenty years of Australia’s present immigration programme. We could put the clock forward twenty years.
Therefore, it would be to our advantage, in the long run, for the Commonwealth to include New Zealand, however painful certain of the readjustments might be. It would also be to New Zealand’s advantage because, if the Australian economy is finding itself a little too small in this competitive world, these same considerations apply with much greater force to the much smaller New Zealand economy which, at present, is suffering such grave difficulties and which, recently, has had to come to Australia for help. So here is something which was envisaged years ago by the founders of our Constitution, which has not yet come to pass, but which the force of economic circumstance is now bringing more and more to the forefront, not only of those things which are politically desirable, but also of those things which are politically necessary.
From the economic viewpoint, therefore, there is something to be gained by both sides. Need I stress that, from the defence viewpoint, with these two British communities more or less isolated, geographically, there is a great deal to be gained from a true Anzac union? I do not believe that this will be done quickly. I do not believe that the vision which lay in the minds of the framers of our Constitution is one which will quickly be brought to reality. New Zealand is, of course, far nearer to the eastern States of Australia than are, for instance, Perth and other parts of the Commonwealth which we normally have no difficulty in recognizing as parts of Australia.
It seems to me that the time is coming, not for us to take this action - because this action will not be taken quickly and should not be taken inadvisedly - but for us to be thinking of the groundwork for the action, to be looking for ways and means of extending to New Zealand again the invitation to become an Australian State, and of obtaining in New Zealand the consent to realize that objective. Honorable members will know that recently there has been a movement for a greater degree of freedom of trade between Australia and New Zealand. Personally, I do not feel that this is enough or, indeed, that it is what is wanted; because, unless there be some identity of political institutions I am afraid that greater freedom of trade will lead only to political friction. This thing can be done satisfactorily only if the two nations come together in their common interest and are able to weld their political institutions so that they can become an economic entity.
I do not put this forward, Sir, as a programme for 1959. I put it forward as something which we should be envisaging and trying to bring about gradually during the coming decade.
– I rise to make a few observations regarding the functioning of this Parliament Before I make those remarks I wish to pay a tribute, as did the honorable member for Ryan (Mr. Drury), to the splendid work of the officers of the Parliament. I think that everybody here must appreciate the tremendous amount of energy, diligence and capacity that the officers of the Parliament bring to their work. Sometimes 1 think that these officers, with the intentness that they show in the performance of their duties, are the representatives of the people in the Parliament. This must pose to most of us the question whether this Parliament is functioning as it should be.
It seems to me that we are in a period - which I hope the coming election will bring to an end - marked by a policy of executive direction from Cabinet circles. This is the policy that the present Government follows.
– That is right. Jack Lang said so.
– I am not saying it because Jack Lang said so, but because in the long recesses between the sittings of the Parliament I move among the people outside, and I have found growing among them great exasperation regarding the functioning of the National Parliament. To those of us who are gravely concerned about the future development of Australia, this feeling in the community poses the question whether we are really a national Parliament, acting as such; or whether we, the individual members, are here merely to look after the interests of our electorates by approaching the PostmasterGeneral, for instance, in order to have an elector given preference for the installation of a telephone, or the Minister for Social Services in order to obtain for another elector some form of relief through the Department of Social Services. I must confess that I am afraid that that is what we are developing into here, instead of developing as a body concerned with the national affairs and the development of this country. I fear that the very attitude of the executive lends itself to the existence of the situation which is giving me great thought and, shall I say, causing me concern as to where we are going as a national Parliament.
I do not believe that the Parliament sits nearly often enough. I believe that the Parliament should be almost continuously in session. I see petition after petition on such subjects as education and social services come before the Parliament. These are subjects which are close to the hearts of the people. The petitions are read by the Clerk of the House, and then are placed immediately in pigeon-holes somewhere, and are heard of no more. As a national Parliament, what we are doing is to disregard completely the views of the -community.
The mere asking and answering of questions on national problems in this chamber is not sufficient. Let me take three main subjects - transport, education and hospitals. We are now coming to the end of this Parliament, which has been in existence for about three years. When the Parliament first assembled, it was known that transport charges accounted for 32 per cent, or 33 per cent, of the total industrial cost structure of the nation. In the three years we have been here we have talked about this matter in a quite casual fashion, but not one of us here, from the most humble member to the Prime Minister, has paid any real regard to what we should be doing on a national level to solve this problem. Instead, we merely content ourselves with looking after the interests of individual electors who want preference in the allocation of telephones and so on.
The question is: Does this Parliament sit for the purpose of reflecting the viewpoint of the community, or does it not? I, for one, feel that it is not sufficient merely to come here and pass legislation already framed in its final form by the executive Government before we pass it, and pay no regard to the real problems that affect the people. It is not sufficient for the Prime Minister merely to answer questions put from this side of the House on such matters as education by saying that such matters are the responsibility of the States. I believe that education, to take that one instance, is a responsibility of every member who holds a parliamentary position in this country. If there is something lacking in the Constitution in this respect, then let us have the lack remedied. That is what we should be about, instead of limiting our representation of our electors to advocacy regarding priorities for telephones, entitlement to social service benefits and so on. Shall we continue to represent the electors in these individual fields of advocacy, or shall we do something realistic about the nation’s problems?
I want to say to the Prime Minister that for a long time I have been exasperated by the incapacity of this Parliament to do anything as a National Parliament, with a national outlook, for the people of Australia. Whatever may be said to the contrary, we here are just as close to the people as are the members of the State parliaments and, whether we like it or not, we have just as much responsibility to the people for the solution of their problems as have members of the State parliaments. If there is something wrong with the Constitution which prevents this Parliament from undertaking its national responsibilities to the people, let us discuss what is wrong and remove the fault. Do not let us confine our activities here in regard to national problems to the mere asking of questions.
The simple fact is that we are not acting in the way we should be acting in relation to the needs of the people. Quite frankly, I feel that the time has arrived when this Parliament, as the National Parliament, should be giving a lead to the community and to the State governments as to what should be done to meet the real problems of a growing nation. After the election of each parliament we come here for a maximum period of three years, which is divided up into sessions as is convenient. What have we discussed and done during the life of the Parliament which is now concluding? We have dealt with matters that had already been finally decided on by the Executive before they were brought into the House. We have also discussed subjects like communism and unity tickets in trade union elections as though these were the things touching most closely the need to develop this nation. What we should be concerned with are questions relating to the financing of the development of the nation, the steps necessary to achieve the highest standard of education in this country, and similar matters. It is of absolutely no use for members of the Government to tell us that the States are the responsible authorities to deal with hospitals, for instance, and are to blame for any neglect regarding the provision of hospitals, merely because the Constitution, as it stands, provides that hospitals are a State responsibility.
As a member of this Parliament, I have just the same feelings about the lack of hospitalization and education and all those things which go to build a great nation as has any State member in this country. I say to the Minister for Labour and National Service that I hope, after the election, there will be a continuity of discussion in this Parliament of the things which are closest to the hearts of the people. Let us discuss, not solely at Budget-time, the question of the impact of transport costs upon the national economy. Let us discuss it not haphazardly but in a full-dress debate so that we can get somewhere and let the people know where we are going. We receive petition after petition concerning problems of many kinds. Let us discuss them and voice our opinions and try to educate the people who are not sufficiently concerned about national development.
– The honorable member can talk about that matter when the appropriate departmental estimates are under consideration.
– I wonder whether the honorable member realizes that when he was elected to this Parliament he came here not to represent only his constituents but to give guidance in schemes for the development of the nation. That is the duty of every member in this chamber. I am not here merely as the honorable member for Blaxland representing only the people residing in my electorate. I have a responsibility also to people who are moving out of Blaxland or who are coming into it, and also to those who will be born in that area in years to come. I have to do what I can to make this country a better place for those whom I represent in this Parliament.
If members are denied the opportunity of discussing in this Parliament the things which lead to the development of the country, then this Parliament will fail in its responsibility to the nation. Honorable members cannot sneak in the way that they should, within several short sessions devoted to dealing with legislation which is cut and dried before it is brought into this place. Surely, each honorable member thinks further than the electorate in which he has been lucky enough to gain a majority of votes. In this year of 1958, we need to have a wider vision of our responsibility than that.
There is little purpose in the honorable member for Ryan (Mr. Drury) saying that he is proud of our parliamentary system, if he is not sure where we are going. He needs to beware that we are not allowing the confidence of the people in the parliamentary institution to slip away. Let us make no mistake about the fact that the people of Australia to-day, from the most humble hamlet to the capital cities, are expressing dissatisfaction with the working of the National Parliament. Parliamentarians were never held in lower esteem throughout the general community than they are to-day; and that is our own fault.
We are too anxious to get away from this place. We are too anxious to say to the States that education is their responsibility. I ask any honorable member in this chamber whether he believes that the education of his offspring or the offspring of his neighbour is the responsibility only of the State government? If that is the attitude of representatives in this National Parliament can we expect to develop a great nation? We do not want to develop a strong community of New South Welshmen. Victorians or Queenslanders; we should aim at developing a community with a strong Australian sentiment which can express itself freely through this Parliament; and this Parliament should give a lead to people in all walks of life throughout the Commonwealth. I hope that after the next election we shall not have to discuss the frustration of the National Government, whatever its party political complexion may be, because of the impact of the Constitution. lt is not sufficient to set up the all-party Constitution Review Committee to bring down recommendations which might be acceptable to the political parties. This Parliament should be a forum in which to discuss the things that are best for the country. If there is a frank discussion of those matters and the people are given a lead from this National Parliament, the parliamentarians will become the idols of the people instead of being placed on the lowest rung of the ladder in their estimation, as they are now. If the people are given a lead from this Parliament, I am satisfied that they will work for the development of the country. If they are offered the right sort of leadership, there is nothing that the people of Australia will not do for their country. But if we, as parliamentarians, do not give that lead we shall fail in the task that fell upon our shoulders when we accepted the responsibility of parliamentary representation.
.- I think most honorable members have listened to this debate with very keen interest. The honorable member for Batman (Mr. Bird) and the honorable member for Ryan (Mr. Drury) made very useful contributions in defence of the Parliament. I do not think that any member of the Opposition could accuse me of previously agreeing with the honorable member for Yarra (Mr. Cairns), but strange to say there were some parts of his address in defence of the Parliament with which I agree entirely.
The last speaker is a trade union leader. There are six sovereign State parliaments in Australia, and the honorable member dealt with duties of those parliaments which are outside the ambit of this National Parliament. As he upholds the demarcation principle in trade union industrial matters, he is inconsistent in ignoring it in respect of the parliamentary system in a federation.
I suggest that when the honorable member paints a picture of the parliamentary institution being in disrepute in the country he is entirely wrong. I admit that the parliamentary institution is under constant attack, as is the case with any decent institution. Either through thoughtlessness or by deliberate design attempts are always being made to break down traditional institutions. There are people in this country who would like to see the parliamentary institution broken down. There is no question about that. It is constantly under attack by the press. 1 agree with honorable members that the press should uphold the parliamentary institution, but that does not mean that it should not criticize the Parliament. If the day ever comes when there is no criticism of the parliamentary institution it will surely die. But sometimes the press criticism is unfair. For example, only the other day a statement appeared in the popular press to the effect that parliamentarians were examining means to increase their salaries, and the salary of a member was stated to be a sum which was wrong by £800.
– It was £900 out.
– I thank the honorable member, it was £900 out. But these are the criticisms we have to take. I do not believe that the parliamentary institution is in discredit, but some events can well be to our discredit. A classic example was provided by something which happened in Queensland some time ago when the Labour government was in office. I am not using this illustration for party political advantage. Our task is to preserve the parliamentary institution. When the Labour party was in office in Queensland under Mr. Gair, pressure was brought to bear on him by an outside body, but he was brave enough to withstand it. Because he did so, to that extent I am in Gair’s corner. If we allow parliamentary institutions to be destroyed by outside bodies not responsible to the electorate, then we are not doing our duty to preserve Parliament.
Parliament passes formal laws, but it is the task of the judiciary to interpret them. I am sure that honorable members on both sides of the Parliament will agree that if Parliament interferes in the interpretation of the laws, it is at fault, because the man who makes the laws should not interpret them. The interpretation of the laws must be left to an impartial body. I know that all of us want to preserve the parliamentary institution, but if Parliament intervenes in the work of the laws courts, then Parliament will be destroyed. The Government of New South Wales interfered in the arbitration system when it restored quarterly adjustments of the basic wage. That was interference in a field which should be left to the judiciary. Yet the New South Wales Government proposes to do the same sort of thing again! It is forecast that it proposes to introduce equal pay for the sexes and three weeks’ annual leave. Whatever the virtues of either of those proposals may be, it is not the task of the Parliament to deal with them. That is the task of the arbitration court. Nothing will destroy the parliamentary system more quickly than allowing such action to pass unchallenged. If we do that, then we may be faced with the spectacle at the next election of one party saying that it will increase the basic wage to £16 a week, and the other party immediately replying that it will increase the basic wage to £17 a week and so on. Interference in the task of the judiciary will mean the destruction of the parliamentary system.
I do not think that the gloomy picture painted by the honorable member for Blaxland (Mr. E. James Harrison) is a true picture. Our task is to preserve the parliamentary institution, and we must all realize that the quickest way to destroy the parliamentary institution is to bring it into disrepute by interfering in tasks outside its jurisdiction. The honorable member for Blaxland said in effect, that he had been frustrated in this Parliament during the last three years. That is the penalty paid by those in opposition. An Opposition cannot play a big part in the government of a country, but to say that this Government has done nothing in fields such as education is not correct. The Government has adopted a new course this year and is making large sums of money available for university education. Already the Common.monwealth Government is acting in some of the fields mentioned by the honorable member. He criticized transport, but I recall that important bills have been introduced in this Parliament. I have in mind bills relating to the Commonwealth Shipping Line and to navigation which were introduced during the present session. This Government has also legislated for the standardization of the rail gauge. The honorable member should keep in mind that democracy works slowly. However, I believe that it works in* the interests of the people much better than, any other system does.
The Commonwealth has its responsibilities and the State governments have theirs. One should not interfere with the other. Why should the State governments interfere in defence, social services or postal matters?” There must be some demarcation between the functions of State parliaments and of the Commonwealth Parliament, and this Government believes that the line of demarcation is sacrosanct. I have been interested in the debate in defence of Parliament. I thing it is the task of all honorable members to maintain the dignity of Parliament.
.- Mr. Temporary Chairman, you have shown such remarkable tolerance to my friend from Hume (Mr. Anderson) that 1 am sure you will permit me to answer him. He commented on the interference in the Queensland Sovereign Parliament by an outside body. The Queensland Government was defeated by a vote on the floor of the House, in which the Australian Country party in that State, as I recall it, voted against the Government. I am sorry that there should be a split in the Australian Country party at this late hour; it may confuse the electors of Hume. But confusion would be worse confounded if we had an Australian Country party government. We have had a lot of experience of such governments in Victoria.
There are several points on which I would join issue with the honorable member for Hume, particularly when he philosophizes on the duties of Parliament. He said that there were fields that were outside the jurisdiction of Parliament. I say that that is not so and that the Parliament must be the watchdog of the people. The Parliament must be the sponsor of the nation’s progress and the guarantor of the continuance of democratic government. The Parliament must accept responsibility for those functions. T speak as an Opposition back bencher. I do not know whether I have had much influence on the progress or the retrogression of the Government during the three years that I have been here, but in the course of the next few weeks I will undertake a pilgrimage aimed at guaranteeing its complete retrogression into the pages of the past - and not very dignified pages in the history of the nation. Several great problems face a democracy as such.
– This Government is one!
– That is so. As my friend, the honorable member for Blaxland (Mr. E. James Harrison), pointed out, we now have the bureaucratic or executive type of government which almost fulfils the requirements of the honorable member for Ryan (Mr. Drury). The people are being denied much say in the affairs of the nation. They are also being denied common justice. The Opposition, vocal though it is, gifted though it is and giving much time to its job though it does, has no influence, and on many great issues is only partly heard. Some issues were raised by the honorable member for Blaxland. He mentioned education. In the past three years, we have discussed education exclusively for only a few hours. Great issues, such as the economic problems that face us at the moment, are not adequately discussed. For instance, what opportunity will be given to us to discuss the impact of lower wool prices on our economy? I presume there will be none!
I agree with honorable members who contend that the Parliament does not meet often enough. I agree that we have not given enough time to the. study of the constitution of the Parliament and its work through the committee system. I admit that the committee system, as it exists in the United States of America, where the House of Representatives has, I think, some 40 or 50 committees, would be hard to bring completely into tune with our system of ministerial responsibility. However, in this Parliament, we have several committees which are now functioning quite adequately. They include the Public Works Committee and the Public Accounts Committee. As one should give justice where justice is due, I pay credit to those who have permitted the Public Accounts Committee to continue with its work, although at times it has raised contentious issues; but I feel that its activities should be greatly expanded.
I can think immediately of one committee that should be established forthwith. There should be a Parliamentary Committee of Civil Rights. This matter was raised recently by the honorable member for
Yarra (Mr. Cairns). He mentioned it in relation to a person who claims to have been unjustly treated. I know not whether that is so, but it is time that such matters were considered by a standing committee of the Parliament. I invite honorable members to turn back the records of the Parliament, and to refer to “ The Australian Senate Practice” by Mr. J. R. Odgers, Clerk Assistant of the Senate. On page 171 of that work, any honorable member who is interested will find that committees have been set up to consider quite a number of cases of individual injustice. That is, ot course, only one aspect and I was nol thinking particularly of one member of the public or of the Public Service who considers that he has been unjustly treated.
I had in mind that a great deal of administrative power is now left in the hands of people who are not responsible to anybody. Recently, I had the case of <i man who wished to return to his homeland to visit his parents. He had been in this country for a little over five years. He told me that he had applied for naturalization, but that it had not come through yet. When he reported to the Department of Immigration to get his passport, stamped with his permit for re-entry, it was denied him. He had paid his return fare, and his ship was sailing that evening. If he left the country, it was almost certain that he would not be able to come back to it. I rang the Government department responsible - the Department of Immigration - and was informed by an officer there that if I were given the evidence, I would understand. I said. “ What, is the evidence? “ He said, “ 1 cannot tell you “. I said, “ Who makes this decision? Do you? “ He said, “ I did not in this case. Some other officer did.”
That is a denial of democratic justice. Such a condition of affairs should not be allowed to exist. It is no reflection on the person responsible for making the decision. He was charged, by his higher officers, with the responsibility for making the decision. It was done by delegation of the authority of this Parliament. It is our responsibility. Those are things to which we must pay regard. This man may not be entitled to come back to this country if his case were considered judicially but, on the other hand, he might be entitled to return. I believe in freedom of movement, freedom of travel, and freedom of expression of opinion. No matter how outrageous a person’s political opinions may be, he should be permitted to come and go as he wishes. That is what I believe, and I think the majority of the Australian people feel the same way.
This Parliament has a very high responsibility to protect the civil rights of the people. Generally speaking, the Commonwealth Public Service performs its duties with a sense of responsibility. But if responsibility is vested in certain people to make decisions about a person’s individual and fundamental human rights, that person should have a right of appeal. In relation to these administrative matters, a body would have to be set up by this Parliament to see that all persons were dealt with justly.
I believe that a struggle is being waged for a democratic way of life, not just a form of democracy as we see it at election time. There is no democracy in the Parliament of South Australia because the Opposition there cannot win an election, no matter how many people vote for it. Government is becoming extremely complex. The system demands such expert knowledge that it is becoming increasingly difficult for members of Parliament to take an active part in discussions with experts. The sittings of Parliament should be longer. Honorable members should have more resources placed at their disposal than at present. There should be a system whereby Parliament can closely examine the workings of every government department; it should do so with the object of protecting civil liberties. We should keep in the closest touch with the country. I agree with the remarks made by the honorable member for Blaxland. This Parliament is as close to the people as the State governments and municipal councils. The people know us just as well as they know the members of State parliaments. When the proceedings of this Parliament are broadcast our voices go into the homes of the people, and they probably feel that they know us better than they know their other representatives. They may well switch off their radios when some honorable members opposite are speaking, but I am confident that they like to hear honorable members from this side of the chamber.
That is the human struggle. The other struggle is the struggle by commerce and industry for more power. These historical struggles are of the same moment as those that took place 300 years ago against the kings of England and their belief in the divine right of kings. The people who exercise power in the community must be responsible to the people over whom they exercise that power. Parliament is the instrument whereby this power should be exercised and supervised. The amount of money now being discussed in this debate is well spent, and should be increased if the resources available to honorable members can be increased.
I remind honorable members of the difficulties under which the library staff have to work. The library is short of space and short of staff. The library of the Congress of the United States of America has a very large staff - about 180 persons - whose job it is to supply reference material to members of Congress. Members of that staff probably do more than honorable members would like to see our library staff do. They probably prepare speeches, and I for one would object to such action in this country. But if we are to face the problems associated with the complexity of legislation we must consider very seriously the proposition that the library should be better staffed and better housed. That is an important point to consider if the resources available to honorable members are to be developed.
I should like to join issue with the honorable member for Mackellar (Mr. Wentworth). Until the honorable member spoke in this debate there was a remarkable atmosphere of unanimity. But then the honorable member took up the cause of unity with New Zealand. A perusal of “ Hansard “ will show that the honorable member has always fought vigorously against this Parliament having real unity with the States. He is one of the more outspoken protectors of the ancient, conservative rights of the States to confuse and confound the National Government of this country. In my opinion, the suggestion of unity with New Zealand is something like spending millions of pounds on space travel when we do not have even a standard gauge railway from Sydney to Melbourne. Consider the relationship of the Territory of Papua and New Guinea with the Commonwealth. One must have a taxation clearance if one wishes to go to New Guinea. A taxation clearance is necessary if one wishes to go to a place that is entirely under Commonwealth control. One must also have a customs clearance. The people of the Territory must pay customs duties. We should at least consider the possibilities of removing some of these disabilities before we ponder the problems of integrating New Zealand into our staggering economy. The people of New Zealand would be reluctant brides when they considered the position of this country. New Zealand’s employment situation is far better than ours. She is far ahead of this country in social service benefits. Her security and stability is much better than this country’s. Perhaps we should import some of the spirit of the New Zealand Labour Government into the benches opposite. Then we might get somewhere.
Finally, I remind honorable members that Parliament itself is the expression of the people’s will and should be the guardian of their liberties. If anything reflects on Parliament, we should do something about it. There have been a number of comments in the newspapers lately, some of them in error, about Parliament and honorable members. We should set up some system to deal with this sort of thing. Perhaps we should have a public relations department. If broadcasting of Parliament and the movement of honorable members around the countryside has made the people more aware of what goes on in this place, I for one am pleased. We must ever be on guard against vested interests. Many people would profit if this Parliament were not able to function effectively. I have mentioned the library, and other honorable members have mentioned other aspects of Parliament. Parliament will need countless resources at its disposal if it is to tackle the many problems that will face this country in the future.
– This discussion has produced some thoughtful speeches, which will repay study when the written record of the debate is available to us. I do not want to speak at any length, but I feel that there are three particular matters on which I should like to comment. First, I would express the indebtedness that I feel the Parliament as a whole owes to the honorable member for Ryan (Mr. Drury) for the thoughtful and imaginative way in which he presented to us again the function of Parliament as an institution and its importance to our living democracy. It is well that we should remind ourselves - and indeed, the people who send us here - just how significant this institution has become over the centuries in preserving freedom, in guaranteeing the rights of individuals, and in determining the course of social justice in a civilized community.
The honorable member made the practical point, in addition to some of the more theoretical observations, that far from being the costly, extravagant institution that some of our critics, particularly those of the press, would have the public believe, the cost of Parliament to the community is infinitesimal in relation to its consequence, both to the economy and to democracy as a whole. He has done some arithmetic on the matter, and has pointed out - and I take leave to repeat - that this year’s vote for the Parliament represents about 2s. for every man, woman and child in the community - less than the price of a packet of cigarettes or a bottle of beer - and that the cost to the individual taxpayer amounts to about 5s., or, as I pointed out at the time, half the price of a ticket in “ Tatts “ and about the price of a modest bet on the totalisator at one of our race-courses. So no one can reasonably complain about the cost of Parliament as an institution. One may have some cause to complain about some of the burdens that the Parliament, functioning in its wisdom, imposes on the taxpayer in some other directions, but at least the institution does not warrant some of the irrational and somewhat unreasonable criticisms that have been directed against it. The critics - and I refer in particular to the more virulent of our press critics - cannot have it both ways. After all, we in this place are the representatives of the people. Having regard to the fact that each of us was chosen by the people in his own electorate, each of us was presumably the best choice offering in his electorate in the view of the voters. Since I have never, that I can readily recall, read of any newspaper that claimed that we are overpaid, and have heard of very few electors who made that claim, presumably we are the best material that was offering for what was regarded as a reasonable wage and reasonable working conditions in this place.
– The best that money can buy!
– If, as is suggested somewhat cynically, we are the best that money can buy, we are the best that the community was prepared to bring forward at the time and send to this Parliament. So, in criticizing the institution and the members that are part of it, the community and those organs of public opinion in the community are, in effect, criticizing themselves. But, Sir, I do not want to elaborate in that strain. All I can say is that when it comes to members doing something for themselves in this place, the time has never been ripe or right in the view of the press, in my memory of the Parliament, which goes back over a long period. We are left, therefore, to our own judgment and good sense to decide what is a reasonable thing in all the circumstances.
I come now, Sir, to two matters of particular substance raised in the discussion of these Estimates. The honorable member for Batman (Mr. Bird), in a very constructive contribution, recommended that the Parliament should make more effective use of the committee system if we are to get better value out of the parliamentary institution. I think that there is much substance in that suggestion. I also believe that, over recent years, the trend has been in that direction. There is far more committee work done now than there used to be, both officially and unofficially. It is official in the sense that it is done by standing committees of the Parliament such as the Public Accounts Committee, the Public Works Committee, and the Foreign Affairs Committee, of which it can be said, in passing, that it is unfortunate that we have not yet been able to reach a basis of agreement on which all sections of the Parliament can combine in it.
Those are examples of the standing com.mittees of the Parliament which function in the manner that I have indicated. But it has been our experience that, in recent years, and particularly in the life of this Parliament, more than normally, use has been made of other valuable committees, some constituted for particular purposes, such as the committee recently appointed by the
Senate which is currently examining a topical industrial matter. There is the very important committee which has worked extremely zealously and, I believe, well during the life of this Parliament on a review of the Australian Constitution. One could give other examples of committees of this kind. I have in mind, also, the fact that within the Government parties - and I imagine that much the same sort of thing is happening in the Opposition - we have a whole range of committees of the combined Government parties investigating a wider range of topics even than that covered by the committees appointed by the Parliament itself. It may be that we could with advantage add to the number of parliamentary committees, and that is a matter which the leaders of the parties perhaps could usefully examine together, if not in the life of this Parliament, then in the life of the one shortly to be elected.
Having, I hope, made the point that a more extensive use is being made of the committee system, and that the Parliament and the country have benefited as a result, I go on, Sir, to a further comment, which is prompted by statements, more particularly from back-bench Opposition members, indicating a feeling of frustration on their part and a sense of ineffectualness in getting over to the Government the points that they wish to make. It is understandable, but not without significance, that those comments have come from honorable gentlemen opposite who have not had ministerial experience. I emphasize that, because I am quite certain that, regardless of the party to which he belongs, no man who has held the office of a Minister in this place would minimize the effectiveness of Opposition comment and its impact on Government thinking, on administrative action, and on future policy planning. I say that in all sincerity. At one time, I spent eight years in opposition myself, and I can well imagine the feelings of others who believe that they are not making any effective impact on the course of a government’s actions and policies or on the trend of administrative control. That, I assure them, is not the case.
A logical, reasonable, well-presented argument based on facts, whether it comes from the Opposition or a Government back-bencher, has an impact on the Minister concerned - if he expects to hold his position for any length of time, at any rate - and it certainly has an impact on the members of the Public Service who sit at the officials’ desks. Ministerial advisers see, on the Opposition side of the chamber, the alternative government. They know that if the Opposition is elected to office, they, as members of the Public Service, will be expected to give effect to policies of the kind indicated by statements made by Opposition members. So that there will not be too abrupt a transition at any time, officials themselves attempt to influence the course of thinking and of events by seeing that notice is taken of views expressed by all sections of the Parliament and that the Minister concerned gives due weight to those views.
I have previously told honorable members that what they say in the debate on the motion for the adjournment of the House is brought directly under the notice of the Ministers concerned by my office. lt was suggested last year that remarks made in the Estimates debate also should be brought to the attention of the Minister concerned, and, so far as I am aware, that has been done. Certainly, I shall see to it that it is done in relation to anything said in the course of the debate on these Estimates. But I think the point is worth emphasizing, because no opposition should ever feel, or be allowed to feel, that what it says and thinks is of no consequence in the political life of the country, however small the numbers of the opposition may be - and I also have had the experience of being in opposition when the numbers of the opposition of the day were just as small compared to those of the government as are the numbers of the present Opposition compared to those of the present Government. The views of the Opposition do have an impact and they are noted by the Ministers and the officers concerned.
It would be well for honorable gentlemen opposite to bear that in mind when they consider the role of an opposition in relation to the Parliament. I know it has been said many times that the role of an opposition is to oppose. That may be true in a very limited sense, Sir, but surely the effective role of an opposition is to analyse, to seek to amend, to seek to reconstruct and, where occasion calls for it, to show its objectivity by concurring in policies to which no exception can be taken. If an opposition conducts itself along those lines, not merely will it have an effective role to play in the life of our democracy, but also it will add to the effectiveness and value of our Parliament as an institution.
Remainder of proposed vote agreed to.
– I propose to take advantage of this opportunity to pursue a subject which I was not able to cover completely in my remarks on the Budget. I refer to the Commonwealth Public Service. I do not want you, Mi. Lawrence, or members of the committee to feel that I am antagonistic to the Public Service as an institution or to its members as individuals; but Parliament should be aware that there are shortcomings in the set-up of the Public Service.
Let us go right back to the days when the Commonwealth Parliament and the federal system were established. Something entirely new was being built. The anticipated annual expenditure was only a few million pounds. At that stage, in the infancy of federation, it was never expected that a Budget providing for the expenditure of £1,300,000,000 would be presented. In addition, there existed the circumstance that a parliament and a public service which had no permanent home were being established. The Parliament was temporarily in Melbourne and the Commonwealth departments were domiciled in one or other of the oldest States, or in both of them. It was inevitable that the systems that were introduced at that time would be coloured by the circumstances that existed then.
I have gone very carefully into the Public Service Act, which I say right now is not working satisfactorily in the present-day circumstances of the Commonwealth. I have looked at it and wondered why certain provisions were put into it.
The only way in which I can find the reason is by visualizing the picture in those days. I see in front of me this picture: The Parliament was in Melbourne. There was a natural fear - which still exists, I think - that one major State would dominate the other, through its influence in the Government, the Parliament, or the departments-
So, as far as I can see, to start with, a system was devised to make certain that whichever State might hold the dominating influence on the government of the day, it would never at any time be able - to put it crudely - to wreak its will on the Public Service.
The Public Service was established on lines similar to those of the United Kingdom - a responsible and continuing service. Undoubtedly the aim was to safeguard against a possible danger. Whether the contingencies that were feared ever arose or seemed likely to arise, I do not know; I was not there, but more than 50 years have now passed, and I do not think for one moment that those dangers are likely to arise.
I do not think that we shall ever be in a position wherein New South Wales, “Victoria, or Western Australia for that matter, will be able to dominate the Public Service, or that the government of the day, or some individual in it, will be powerful enough to decide that this or that section will be the controller or the main adviser of the government. I do not think that that day is here or is ever likely to come. For that reason, I say that an overhaul of the Public Service Act is necessary, and I am perfectly satisfied that in an overhaul of the act we will find ways and means whereby the service itself can be improved.
I talk to the man right down at the “bottom of the scale in the Public Service, and I learn from him how anxious he is to do a better job, but somehow or other along the road he is circumscribed, either “because of conditions in the act or regulations, or because there are circumstances which just do not enable him to exercise the ability he would exercise under what so many of us call a free enterprise system. He just has not that opportunity. If that state of affairs exists in the lower scale, it must exist in the higher scale. Obviously, there must be a control of the service, but whether the control of the service that we have at the present time is the best we can advise, I do not know. I am inclined to believe that something better can be devised.
I know that the Government has appointed a Cabinet committee to go into this question, but I believe that something more is necessary, and I am still a con fident believer in the system which was applied in the United States of America. There existed in that country somewhat similar conditions. It was a young country. Its public service had grown rapidly - so rapidly that it had outgrown its clothes, its furniture, and its home, and something had to be done to get it to fit into its proper place. So the now-famed Hoover Commission was appointed. It set about tackling the public service from beginning to end. Without interfering to any major extent, without disrupting the functioning of the service, it brought in recommendations which, according to all the reports from over there that I constantly receive, have proved of inestimable value to the country in general and to the service itself. The commission has done one thing which I think is necessary in this country. It has built up the confidence of the people in the public service. Instead of leaving the public service as a section of the community which, to put it mildly, was the butt of common joke, it raised the service to a position of some standing. The typical newspaper cartoon of the public servant, with a cup - or a dozen cups - of tea, has gone. The remedial measures of the Hoover Commission have lifted the dignity of the service to a standard which I think can be reached in this country.
I believe a committee of the kind I suggest could include experienced representatives of business interests. It could include, if you like, members of Parliament, and also members of the Public Service itself, because we must have somebody with experience of the working of the machine. Looking at the matter from the widest viewpoint, the job could not be done easily or quickly. It must be done exhaustively. But I believe that the end result would be of great benefit to this country. To start with, we would be able to preserve the dignity of the Service. We would remove from members of the Service the fear of constantly being made the butt of traditional jokes. We would give them an opportunity to do what they, as normal individuals, want to do - that is a 100 per cent, job in the interests of the community as a whole. This would be one benefit flowing from the scheme I suggest. If we then wished to get down to the consideration that is so vital in this place, that of pounds, shillings and pence, 1 believe that a tremendous saving could be effected.
I have advocated this scheme for a long time, and I shall continue to do so, because the more I see of the present set-up, and the more I hear, the more I am satisfied of the basic need for this investigation. On many occasions, under the present system, we find scapegoats who, in the long run, are not really the responsible ones. They are probably merely victims of circumstance who have to take what comes. Such a system gives no justice to our fellow men. I again make my plea for a comprehensive examination. It has to be done extensively in all fields, because the Public Service enters into, for instance, trade and commerce, as well as the carrying out of public duties for the community. For this reason, any committee appointed should include representatives of commercial interests. It should also include experienced members of the Public Service, and, I should say, members of Parliament, either past or present. It should consist of persons who have some knowledge of how the parliamentary system is required to work and how parliamentarians inform themselves so that they, in turn, can inform the public, so preserving confidence in the Public Service.
.- I take this opportunity to direct attention to what seems to me to be a strange inconsistency in the administration of the Prime Minister’s Department, with regard to grants in relation to what is called State education. The position is that the Government, through the Prime Minister’s Department, administers what might be called a system of grants in aid of education in the States, but only with regard to universities. I understand that the Government will not consider making similar grants with relation to other forms of education. One might think the justification for this different treatment would lie somewhere in the Commonwealth Constitution, in the division of powers between the Commonwealth and the States. But surely this is not the case, because section 96 of the Constitution provides the kind of power that is used to make grants for State universities, and it would appear to be clear enough that this power could also be used to make grants in relation to other forms of education in the States.
The explanation for this different treatment might lie in history, as do the reasons for so much of what is done or not done in matters of this kind. The entry of the Commonwealth into the provisions of finance for State universities was, historically, the result of a war-time situation. After the war the Commonwealth accepted certain responsibilities for reconstruction training. Under this system ex-servicemen were given an opportunity to have a university education. As a result of this scheme, the universities in each of the States expanded in order to provide the necessary additional facilities. When the scheme came to an end they either had to reduce their capacity, their services, their staff and their courses, or find additional finance to maintain themselves at the existing levels or to grow. The universities turned, first, to the States. As a result they received a certain amount of assistance, but it was insufficient. The Commonwealth then came in in order to make up the deficiency. This provision of funds for universities may be said to have that kind of historical justification.
No one, of course, can dispute the legitimacy of this expenditure. No one can say that this way of spending money has not an extremely high priority. At the same time, however, one is reminded that the Commonwealth will not make a similar move with regard to secondary or primary education. I realize that what can be said in this respect about education can be said about many other fields of expenditure. A case that can be made for education can also be made for the construction of roads and for a great many other services that are performed in the States. The point I make, however, is that the Commonwealth has accepted a particular kind of responsibility for establishing a level of education in State universities, and that university education will be frustrated in its function and cramped in its operation if something is not done to raise the standard of secondary non-technical and technical schools and primary schools in order to meet the situation existing in the universities.
I fail to see the logic of, or the justification for, the attitude adopted by the Government in the administration of these grants, when it readily accepts its responsibility for State universities, but not for the other fields of State education which must fit into the situation existing in the universities.
– And must supply university material.
– That is so. I believe that the Government will agree that of all the categories of expenditure that have high priorities at the present time, none has as high a priority as expenditure on education. Whilst this issue has significant political implications at the present time, when teachers’ organizations all over the country are recognizing, properly, the need for the Commonwealth to assist in the provision of finance, by grants in aid or by some other method, for primary and secondary education, I am seeking an answer on the ground of logic. What is the justification for this separation, this difference of treatment, when the Commonwealth accepts responsibilities for State universities, but will not accept responsibilities in relation to primary and secondary education?
– Or technical education.
– Or technical education. We have seen, in recent times, that the Commonwealth’s provision of additional finance for universities has received general acclaim. There can be no doubt about the general acclaim that would meet the provision of funds by the Commonwealth for these other fields of education. If the elected government is to meet the needs of a community such as ours, it should accept the priority of expenditure that the community would set. Surely, there is an overwhelming case for the Government to accept such responsibility.
I raise the question now to give the Prime Minister an opportunity to explain why he makes a distinction in this matter; why the Commonwealth provides funds for State universities when the right honorable gentleman will not consider the provision of funds for primary and secondary education. Is the difference based on constitutional grounds, on the historical grounds that I have mentioned or on some other grounds? I believe the people of Australia are waiting for the answer to these questions.
.- I wish to relate my contribution to the debate on the Public Service to some state ments I made during the debate on the Estimates last year when I referred to the Public Service Act itself and particularly to section 25 (2), which insists that the permanent head shall be responsible for the operation and the business of his department. That puts the permanent head in a very strong position in relation to the Minister administering the department, because the act itself empowers the head of the department to derive tremendous strength from the statute. Secondly, 1 emphasize that the Public Service Act does not give to members of the Public Service Board life tenure, which I think they should have. In relation to the permanent head of a department, they are in a weak position because they have to come up for appointment every five years. Support for this view is to be found in the findings of the last royal commission, which inquired into the Commonwealth Public Service. That was in 1920.
What I am about to say is not in criticism of public servants or of the Commonwealth Public Service. When I spoke last year on this matter, two members of the Opposition distorted my remarks and misrepresented them as a general criticism of the Public Service. What I criticized is the Public Service Act as it has been handed down to us since 1920. I agree entirely with the honorable member for Moore (Mr. Leslie); and I hope that I will not embarrass him by supporting what he has said.
I repeat that I have the highest admiration for members of the Public Service. Many of them have given magnificent service to Australia and the Australian people. In my opinion, the act under which they work makes their task difficult. The Prime Minister (Mr. Menzies) said recently that this was a matter for the Government and the Parliament. Some people have taken that statement to mean that it is a matter for Parliament, but, obviously, it is a matter for the Government to bring before the Parliament. I am grateful that the Prime Minister is at the table now while I am making this comment. The individual public servant is not at fault so much as the system under which he works. It is the responsibility of the Parliament to give the Public Service an act which assists members of the service and enables them to give of their best. That is of the utmost importance. There can be nothing more important to Australia than the Commonwealth Public Service because more power is vested in the service as time passes and more decisions have to be made by its officers.
In October, 1957, the Prime Minister announced the formation of a Cabinet subcommittee to review the functions of departments. To be precise, I shall read from the right honorable gentleman’s statement. He said - . . it is a responsibility of the Government and particularly of the Prime Minister, to decide what functions should be associated with what departments and what Ministers.
I agree entirely with that statement, but unfortunately the press took it up and, I think, completely misunderstood it - probably, in some cases, deliberately misunderstood it - to mean that this was an inquiry into the whole of the work of the Public Service. That was quite wrong. The Prime Minister also said in his statement -
The subsequent and different question- which is the one I am attempting to deal with - which concerns the administrative efficiency and internal organization of any department, is one which does not require a political decision, but administrative skill and judgment.
This “ subsequent and different question which concerns the administrative efficiency and the internal organization of any department “ is one, of course, which ought to be dealt with by some outside body. It is apparent that, in relation to many questions of detail in government, what is really taking place is that Ministers are asking permanent heads and senior departmental officers for suggestions. The Ministers in most cases are bound to accept and act upon those suggestions, because they are so terribly busy and have enormous terrain to cover. They cannot be expected to have any independent information of their own. How could they? I think that one or two Ministers with a particular type of brain and an inquiring mind do take a tremendous interest in the working of the department under their administration, but I should say that it would be beyond the capacity of many Ministers.
Honorable members are asked to accept this procedure and have been accepting it for 40 years under governments of all politi- cai colours as a substitute for a searching inquiry into the Public Service. In the United Kingdom, which has a public service much greater in size than that of Australia, with functions covering the full range of government which, in Australia, are divided between the Commonwealth and State public services, the Government has seen fit to hold formal inquiries into its public service at ten-yearly intervals. We appointed a royal commission in 1920, but I think that in all relevant matters the act itself was at variance with the recommendations of that commission. I think that as a first step, if we did accept the recommendations of that royal commission, we would be making a contribution towards a solution of the difficulty.
I now believe that a single royal commission charged with the duty of exploring the Public Service from top to bottom in all its aspects could not do the job anywhere near rapidly enough. It would probably take ten years to complete the job. That would mean that the changes in the Public Service itself would be ahead of what the royal commission was doing. Instead, I strongly urge that the Government adopt the United Kingdom practice of having limited royal commissions to inquire into various important aspects of Public Service administration. The Government could appoint a royal commission - or a body with the powers of a royal commission - to inquire into broad aspects of Public Service administration common to all departments. They would be the organization of departments, staffing, promotion, discipline, leave, gradings, salary fixation and the role and status of women. Those are just a few of the topics which could be investigated.
If I remember rightly, the commissions of inquiry in the United Kingdom are composed of men who have given distinguished service to their country. They might include a business man, an engineer or a legal man. The membership of the commissions is changed from time to time because, inevitably, after many years of contact with the Public Service, members begin to acquire the Public Service mind, and that is not conducive to the good working of the commission.
If the Government were to set up a series of limited royal commissions which would cause no disturbance whatever to the normal functioning of the service, they would ensure that, over the years, regular reports were furnished upon different aspects of public service activity. In England, the last royal commission was held from 1953 to 1955. Under the British parliamentary system royal commissions have been more successful, probably, than under any other type of democratic government. It is obvious that when a royal commission adduces evidence and makes decisions, the good sense of the people involved begins to tell them what to do and they act even before the government begins to act. In other words, whatever the royal commission finds, if it seems right that something ought to be done, that thing is done. That is the great advantage of royal commissions, particularly in places such as the United Kingdom, and, I hope, Australia.
I feel sure that the Prime Minister and all honorable members will agree that the public service of the United Kingdom has a reputation unsurpassed throughout the democratic world. That this is so has been due in no small measure to the readiness of the United Kingdom Government to arrange, by means of a series of royal commissions, regularly to let some light into the system of the public service. T believe that we owe this to our Public Service and to Australia.
.-I support the plan put forward by the honorable member for Yarra (Mr. Cairns) in relation to education and the Commonwealth responsibility in that field. The Education Act 1945 defines the functions of the Commonwealth Office of Education as follows: -
The functions of the Commonwealth Office of Education shall be -
to advise the Minister on matters relating to education;
to establish and maintain a liaison, on matters relating to education, with other countries and the States;
to arrange consultation between Common wealth authorities concerned with matters relating to education;
to undertake research relating to educa tion;
to provide statistics and information relat ing to education required by any Commonwealth authority; and
to advise the Minister concerning the grant of financial assistance to the States and to other authorities for educational purposes.
It has been generally accepted by the Government and the people that the Commonwealth has a responsibility in the field of university education. This has become common knowledge. The Prime Minister (Mr. Menzies) has acknowledged it himself and has taken the steps in that direction. As I recall it, the establishment of the Murray Committee was not a result of definite requests from the Premiers themselves. I understand that the step was taken following the Prime Minister’s own survey of the situation and because of his own knowledge of the field, and I appreciate that. I think it was an important contribution.
My experience has been in secondary and primary education. Perhaps the right honorable gentleman will acknowledge that in this field I have something akin to the knowledge that he had in the university field, and that, therefore, I can put a case strongly to him. As there is a definite need for university education so there is also, perhaps, an even more pressing need for secondary education. Understandably, there is a great deal of discussion about the aims and the needs of education systems.
I have just received from the Library acopy of the Rockefeller report on education in the United States of America, which is entitled “The Pursuit of Excellence. Education and the Future of America “. It defines the tasks of education, and it says -
Our success or failure in this task is of crucial’ importance not for ourselves alone. All over the world peoples are striving for a new and fuller meaning of life. No challenge is more important than to give concrete meaning to the idea of human dignity. The task is all the more complex because the answer will be found less in what we say than in what we do. It will be found partly in the scale of our achievement, but even more importantly in the quality of our lives.
It is the object of the educational system to give to life that quality which can lead a person to live a fuller and better life, not only for himself but for the nation generally. Education is not simply the acquisition of knowledge. Its objective should be to see what kind of thinking can be produced at the end of the passage through the educational system. Of course, education is living, itself. If we deny secondary education to young children to-day because of lack of facilities, it is denied to them forever. The child will not pass that way again.
It is only necessary to turn to the recent report on the needs of secondary education in New South Wales to see that this field needs the same sort of constructive attitude as that which was taken in the universities field. This is even more important from the point of view of the individual because more individuals are involved, and because the growth of industrial activity and the increase of automation will make the unskilled person even less at home in the community than he is at the moment. So, it is important that we should consider immediately the demands of secondary education.
Secondary education will not expand simply because we need more people with technical skill. Secondary education will expand because people want it and need it for their children. The charts which have been published in the New South Wales report show that there is a continual growth in the percentage of children who proceed through the higher forms of the secondary schools. This is a social change. The time will come - and it is not very far off - when as many rooms will be needed in the secondary schools as are needed in the primary schools.
Of course, the secondary school is a much more expensive school to build than the primary school. It is a much more complex school. It needs a much higher ratio of staff to pupil. It needs a greater attention to the details of libraries and other facilities. All this means that secondary schools are rapidly becoming beyond the resources of the States. Indeed, we may well say that they have probably always been beyond the resources of the States.
Currently, in Australia, we are spending nearly £100,000,000 a year on education. About 1,250,000 children are enrolled in the State schools, probably 300,000 or 400,000 in the non-State schools, and another 350,000 are at school age in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. The States have reached the end of their resources. A high school costs, perhaps, £100,000 to build, even scaled down, as has been necessary in the last few years.
Teacher training is expensive. Here is a field in which, at least, we could take immediate steps. We could bring teacher training under the auspices of the Universities’ Commission or bring it into the field of the Murray Report and relieve the States of that burden. If we simply undertook the building of schools we would save the States a considerable sum of money in interest and payroll tax. It is not impossible for the Commonwealth to venture into the field of education on the same terms as it entered into university education.
There are three things that I can think of for the Commonwealth to attend to immediately. The first of these is in relation to the buildings themselves. In the Universities Act I think that the actual buildings to be constructed were detailed, also their costs and the contribution to be made by the States. If we can do that in respect of university buildings, we can do it in respect of high school and technical school buildings. Then there is the training of teachers. If you can train doctors and lawyers and engineers, and produce graduates in arts for other fields, you can produce graduates, through teaching scholarships, to carry on the teaching of the children of this country, which is of the greatest importance. Unless we can increase the supply of teachers we shall find the education system of this country suffering from an even greater degree of strangulation than at present.
Then there is the supply of equipment. The Commonwealth has at its disposal much greater resources than has any of the States with which to provide necessary equipment for schools. For instance, the provision of television facilities as an educational aid in schools is more likely to come within the resources of the Commonwealth than of the States. The same applies to the provision of libraries so as to ensure that schools have available to them the greatest possible amount of literature. The simple matter of the publication of the historical records of Australia, copies of which ought to be in every school in the land, particularly secondary schools and technical schools, is obviously something that lies more within the ability of the Commonwealth than within the ability of the various States. Copies of all Commonwealth publications should go to schools, as of right. Every school should be on the mailing lists of Commonwealth publications.
These are some of the fields into which the Commonwealth can venture without trespassing in any way upon what some people seem to regard as a sacred right of the States. The Commonwealth Office of Education, and the legislation under which it was established, should be used as a means of undertaking these activities.
I want to refer briefly to education in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. A few weeks ago, during a visit there with two other members from this side of the chamber, I was very much impressed with the apparent progress that it has been possible to make in the education field with the shoe-string resources which have been granted to the Territory authorities for this purpose. There are at least 350,000 children of school age in that Territory. Most Australians are not conscious of the fact that this number is the equivalent of the number of children in schools in Queensland. It is almost as large as the number of school children in Victoria. So in Papua and New Guinea we have ahead of us the task of creating a system that will be the equivalent of the education systems in the States, which have been developing over more than a century. The performance of this task will entail solving the problem of rapidly raising the people in the Territory from a primitive educational standard to a standard roughly equivalent to the educational standards on the mainland. It is important to raise them to such a high standard, because to give them only a little touch of education would merely make them ambitious but frustrated.
I have asked questions in the House regarding the number of people employed in the education service in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. To-day, I have received the answer to one such question that I asked on notice. The question reads as follows: -
The answer that I received showed that only one officer was employed exclusively on curriculum research, one officer on library development, one on text-book preparation one on school broadcasts, two officers on psychological and similar services and two on vocational guidance. It also showed that only seven officers are employed on teacher training.
– Order! Education in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea has nothing to do with the administration of the Prime Minister’s Department.
- Sir, I direct your attention to the requirements of the Education Act in relation to the Commonwealth Office of Education. One of these requirements is to advise the Minister on matters relating to education, and to undertake research in such matters. I am pointing out that here we have an unparalleled field in which these education officers can practise.
– Order! I rule that the matter comes under the administration of the Department of Territories.
– But it concerns the Commonwealth Office of Education.
– Order! I have given my ruling.
– What I have said simply amplifies the position I have outlined before. The Commonwealth Office of Education, established for these functions, has not been used to perform them. With the resources of the Commonwealth behind it the Commonwealth Office of Education has not been used to meet needs which are our direct responsibility. Nobody can deny that. So I put to the Prime Minister for his consideration that the field I have mentioned is one of the fields in which the Commonwealth Office of Education can be employed in the future. The same remark applies to the Commonwealth territories generally.
Sitting suspended from 5.59 to 8 p.m.
– I should like to draw the attention of the committee to the needs of the National Library, which is the nation’s foremost cultural institution. Perhaps, some honorable members and many of the people are unaware of the existence of its collections of books and records and their value, or of the research capacity which the library makes available to scholars, government departments and members of this Parliament. At the present moment, the National Library is in need of adequate housing. It is scattered around Canberra in nine or ten buildings, each of which houses remarkable collections in various fields of knowledge. We find that probably one of the world’s best collections of government papers and printed publications is accommodated in a sub-basement of the administrative block. The time has come to give the National Library an adequate and worthy home. This should be constructed on the basis of accessibility of the material and its security, and the dignity of the building itself, having due regard to the importance of this institution to the nation’s culture.
These are important matters. The staff of the library numbers 104 and its annual expenditure is £205,000. The library includes a national film library, the films in which rank as one of the best collections in the world. But this section is at present housed in a building which is not owned by the library itself. It is a weatherboard structure and is entirely inadequate from the point of view of the security of the documents it contains. I hope that all honorable members will support me in encouraging the Prime Minister and the Government to take some constructive step as soon as possible to house the National Library in a manner worthy of its contents and of its function in the life of the nation.
.- I wish to refer to the item of expenditure last year under Miscellaneous Services in respect of the Prime Minister’s Department - “ Empire Games, 1958 - Grant towards expenses of Australian contingent, £8,000”. The value and importance of sport is becoming increasingly realized in the community in these post-war years. I do not think that any one would challenge the statement that sport has a tremendously beneficial effect on youth. It provides inspiration, and the example of champions in training is a great lesson to youth in its example of devotion to training, a readiness to sacrifice time for the accomplishment of first-class achievement and the knowledge that one cannot triumph without readiness to suffer.
– Order! I point out to the committee that the pro posed votes in respect of Miscellaneous Services are not before the Chair. However, with the concurrence of the committee, I suggest that items under Miscellaneous Services be discussed in conjunction with the estimates of the appropriate department as they come before the committee. In that event, the honorable member may proceed to discuss the item he has mentioned as it comes under the control of the Prime Minister’s Department. Is that agreeable to the committee?
Honorable Members. - Hear, hear!
– International contests are now becoming more frequent with the development of air travel, and, undoubtedly, they are having a great effect in raising greater interest between various countries. In pre-war days, athletes travelled from one country to another by ship and lost much of their form. A great deal of time was lost also. Consequently, contests were not of the high standard of times and distances that the world is now witnessing. Various international contests have been arranged, such as the Olympic Games, the European Games and the Asian Games. These last were attended by my colleague, the honorable member for Chisholm (Sir Wilfrid Kent Hughes), who commented on the very high standard of the athletes. Last but not least were the British Empire Games.
Although the Olympic Games which were held in Australia were allotted £575,000 by the Government, the outstanding efficiency of the organization, the fantastic and memorable spectacle of the games themselves, and the results as they were flashed all over the world undoubtedly gave Australia a marvellous return. In the years immediately preceding the Olympic Games in Melbourne, I was one who had some doubts as to what might happen, but those doubts were dispelled and one could not help but be proud of the organization which was responsible for the games.
As the years have gone by a completely different perspective on sport has developed. Athletes have been recognized in the Queen’s honours list, and the propaganda value to the countries they represent is freely acknowledged. Of course, we must not let this perspective become distorted. I am not one who subscribes to the sort of statement which is made frequently, after some outstanding athletic achievement, that it is worth more than all the visits of politicians to these countries. That is too wide a generalization. We must not forget that it is the work and efforts of politicians or, perhaps, the statesmen, who make it possible for sportsmen to engage in international competitions.
I have no hesitation in supporting the provision of assistance on a government level to these international contests. However, I am not at all in favour of government interference with or control of sport to any extent. I certainly do support any government interest that can be given to sport because the publicity value to the country of outstanding performances such as those of the Konrads, Herb Elliot, John Landy, Thomas, Power, Betty Cuthbert, Marlene Matthews, Russell Mockridge, Stewart Mackenzie and dozens of others one could mention over the past few years, have brought immense prestige to Australia.
When teams go abroad it is necessary to have some government assistance and interest. This Government granted £8,000 for the Australian team to attend the last Empire Games. As donors of that money, Australians have the right to ask that some value should be gained from the expenditure. Unquestionably, so far as the winning of gold medals is concerned, we can congratulate ourselves as a nation and particularly the performers on their achievements. But also of great value is the warm and lasting feeling of sportsmanship and friendship, of high regard for the other fellow and a spirit of tolerance which reaches beyond the rigid application of technical rights. Any announcement of policy which the team must follow should be reasonable and logical and not of a flat dogmatic character. In this respect I wish to refer emphatically to the recent Empire Games.
A very definite appeal was made by me for Government support for the Finland Games, and it was given and is an indication of my sincere desire that funds should be made available for such purposes. However, when we are told that this money is to be given for the benefit of good sportsmanship and for the development of co-operation and understanding between nations, we have a right to demand that those to whom we give the money shall be very careful in deciding who will represent us not only on the athletic side but also on the diplomatic side. It is unfortunate that those who asked for money to send an athletic team to the Cardiff Games were not more careful in deciding who would represent us at the summit of the team. Although our competitors acquitted themselves splendidly, the selection of those in other spheres was not nearly so fortunate. The excuse is sometimes made that this incident or that incident can be explained or that something has been misrepresented. However, when we have a continuity of these unfortunate incidents, we can be assured that something is wrong in the approach.
I feel that, as a government, we should do all that we possibly can to assist every athlete of outstanding merit to take part in the next Olympic Games at Rome. The success of our athletes is of tremendous importance to us, but the effect of their successes is nullified if the contact on the managerial side is not of the same standard. The efforts of our athletes at Cardiff were nullified in that way. Although we should give to the limit in support of the Olympic Games - I am delighted to see the amounts in the Estimates - factors other than athletic prowess should be watched so that the spirit of the sporting field will not be entirely lost in the desire to win gold medals.
.- I wish to refer to Miscellaneous Services, Division No. 214 - Prime Minister’s Department, Items 15 and 16. These items refer to grants for the Surf Life Saving Association and the Royal Life Saving Society. The amount of the grant to each of these bodies has not been altered for some years. When it was originally made it fulfilled a need for both societies. At that time they were in great difficulties, but in the five years or more since the grants were made, the financial position of both organizations has deteriorated. The Surf Life Saving Association is in a position similar to that of the Government - it is budgeting for a deficit. Despite its financial difficulties, the association is giving great service to the people on all beaches throughout Australia.
– Have you any surf in South Australia?
– At least we have surf life saving clubs functioning on the beaches of South Australia and giving a service to the people. Of course, they participate in the grant that is made annually by this Parliament. We have had a Royal Life Saving Society functioning there for many years. In fact, it was functioning before the Surf Life Saving Association was formed.
Both the Surf Life Saving Association and the Royal Life Saving Society play a major part in safeguarding the people who use the beaches. The Surf Life Saving Association comes into greater contact with the public than does the Royal Life Saving Society, because it patrols the beaches. The policy of the national council of the Surf Life Saving Association is to insure the life of every active life saver. This accounts for 50 per cent, of its income and is a reasonable course for the association to follow. Its administrative costs are practically nil, the only paid person associated with the organization being a typist. Recently, because of its financial position, it resolved that it would seek permission from the branches in the various States to ask the Commonwealth Government for £3,000 in addition to the grant of £5,000 that it is already receiving. The £5,000, of course, is spread throughout the whole of the Commonwealth.
I recall the numerous occasions when the former member for Phillip, Mr. Fitzgerald, spoke in the House on this very matter. Time and time again he sought assistance for the surf life saving clubs, particularly, of course, those in his area. However, I should like to point out that the need is just as great for the Royal Life Saving Society, of which the honorable member for Balaclava (Mr. Joske) is president in Victoria. I am sure that he would support me in making this plea. Although the Royal Life Saving Society is not on show on the beaches, it conducts the teaching of life saving in the still-water pools in the various schools throughout the Commonwealth. Unless some additional assistance is given to these bodies, they will be compelled to reduce their very efficient services.
There is no way of really assessing the value of these organizations. Throughout the summer we hear frequent reports of the number of lives saved on the beaches.
I am sure that the Prime Minister (Mr. Menzies) will agree that the £5.000 already granted is money well spent. I hope that, after giving this matter the consideration that it deserves, he will review the grant, which has not been altered for many years, and increase it so that these organizations can continue to function effectively.
The honorable member for Corio (Mr. Opperman) spoke about the grants made to our Olympic Games and Empire Games teams. I must confess that I did not hear all of his speech, as I hurried away when I knew that this section of the Estimates was about to be discussed. 1 endorse the honorable member’s suggestions on this matter. Parliament should give every assistance possible to our sporting representatives. As I have said before, in many respects our swimmers, runners, and other sporting personalities are better ambassadors for this country than some of us in this place, and I include myself. The good fellowship and understanding that our representatives engender abroad is of tremendous benefit to Australia. I know from personal contact with overseas sporting visitors that they return to their homelands full of enthusiasm for our way of life. I urge the Parliament to do everything possible to see that as much assistance as possible is given to our future Olympic Games and Empire Games teams. Australian swimming bodies, about which I have some knowledge, are perhaps more fortunate than other sections of the sport world in that they are able to conduct carnivals and competitive events and thereby raise a reasonable amount of money to send their representatives abroad. But other sections, such as athletes, are not able to raise sufficient money to send their representatives abroad. In those cases, I think the Parliament should do all in its power to assist.
Let me again make a plea to the Prime Minister to give every consideration to the appeal of the Surf Life Saving Association of Australia and the Royal Life Saving Society of Australia to increase the present grant of £5,000 by £3,000.
– There will, no doubt, be quite a few matters raised in this debate which will deserve careful attention, and they will receive it. But I rise at this stage because, before the sitting was suspended, some very thoughtful speeches were made on two matters which are, I think, of otustanding interest. The first matter was raised by the honorable member for Moore (Mr. Leslie), who was followed in that field by the honorable member for Macarthur (Mr. Jeff Bate). The matters raised by those honorable members related to the Civil Service, and the constant need to ensure its efficiency and to keep on improving it as an instrument of government.
The honorable member for Moore adverted to a proposal - which has been made several times - that we should have in Australia something of the nature of the Hoover commission in the United States of America. This is, indeed, a very topical matter, because only a few days ago - during last week - I received a deputation of a very representative kind, representing manufacturing, commercial, primary industry, building interests, and others - a wide range of interests. A proposal was made by that deputation that a committee be established. Whether it would be a commission of the Hoover kind was not finally to be determined, but the proposal was that there should be an overall examination by a committee. The deputation met me privately, but there have been widespread reports about what was said. In particular, I am supposed to have been a little off-handed. On the contrary, we had a most valuable discussion, which lasted two or three hours, and which was followed by very close, detailed discussions between some members of the deputation and the chairman of the Public Service Board, who exposed to the deputation all the various examinations that were going on. I am sure that the members of that deputation, as they said to me at the time, were appreciative of what they were told, and felt that there were many aspects of this matter that were not, perhaps, sufficiently well known.
Therefore, perhaps it is desirable that I should take up the time of the committee a little by speaking about this matter. The first thing to be understood is that the Commonwealth Civil Service, as we call it in the broad, is a vast, comprehensive machine that covers a myriad of activities and, of course, which operates in almost thousands of places in the Commonwealth. It is not a very simple thing to examine, unless the examination is conducted by people who are familiar with what is done, with the ramifications of the service, and with the rules that have been established, partly by statute and partly by practice, over half a century. I say that by way of preliminary. Anybody who approaches the problem of the Commonwealth Civil Service, so considered, must first of all remember that it embraces, starting at one end of the numerical scale, the Post Office, which accounts for just about half the total employment by the Commonwealth Government. The service stretches through all the administrative departments, through a great variety of activities, until finally you come to the people who are doing normal day-to-day work on the Snowy Mountains scheme. The onlooker tends to lump all these people together as civil servants. It must be very gratifying to some of them to be so described.
In approaching the problem of the efficiency of a great organization of that kind we must distinguish between two things. The first is: What functions are being performed? The second is: Assuming that those functions should be performed, is the administrative efficiency at a reasonable level? Those are the two major questions. What are the functions that are being performed? Government departments do not rush into a lot of functions on a frolic of their own. They perform functions bcause some government or some parliament has told them to perform those things. Over the last twenty years - going back to, say, the beginning of the last war - there has been inevitably an enormous increase in the functions to be performed by government. Many things have been done since the war which, perhaps, nobody would have thought of before the war. But they are done because they represent government policy, controlled legislatively by Parliament, and, therefore, representing in a broad sense the current will of the people. Speaking as the head of this Government, and, I would think, speaking on behalf of anybody who has been in any government in this country, I suggest that it would be rather odd to transfer to somebody else the responsibility of deciding what functions the Government could perform. As a purely political problem - not political in a miserable sense, in the slighting sense in which people use it - no government can abdicate its responsibility in those matters. If there are to be revisions of functions then governments must accept responsibility for those revisions. That is why, in the case of my own Government, a committee of the Cabinet was established some time ago. That committee has done a great deal of work in its field. But 1 cannot say that I have the slightest sympathy with the idea, however comfortable it may be in a personal sense, to off-load that responsibility onto two or three people who are outside of government, who are not responsive to public opinion, and who do not know what the process has been by which governments to-day undertake responsibilities that our grandfathers did not think of. So much for functions. I do not dismiss the problem. We are working on this problem, and we will continue to work on it. I will say something more about that in a moment.
The other aspect of public administration is this: Assuming that the functions should be performed, is the administration efficient and adequate? I know that it is rather fashionable to say that civil servants do not know their business. But it is noteworthy that quite frequently eminent civil servants are led off into other fields of activity. They cannot be so bad after all! But, Sir, we have had in the Commonwealth for many years’ a body expressly charged with maintaining the efficiency of public administration - the Public Service Board - and that board has contained within itself, but with offshoots in all the various departments, an Organization and Methods Section.
Organization and methods! This is an expression well known in private industry, and the last time I said to a distinguished man in private industry, “Have you any reason to believe that the Organization and Methods Section in the Public Service is inferior to that in a factory enterprise, in a newspaper office, or in a great commercial institution? “ his answer was, “ No, I would not say that for one moment. I think that on the whole the Organization and Methods Section of the Civil Service is first class.”
In order to test that, may I point out that we recently appointed, at the suggestion of the Public Service Board, a distinguished outside man, familiar with outside industry, Mr. Gerald Packer, to be an adviser to the board. He has advised the board on many occasions, and in particular he devoted a great deal of attention to the organization and methods work that was being carried out. His report on it was that it was of the first quality.
That is the first thing I want to say about organization and methods. The second thing is this: The Public Service Board has not just rested on this matter. It conducts, constantly, schools of administration for civil servants. It constantly posts its own people into similar training courses in outside industry, and it constantly has attending its own classes people from outside industries, so as to get the highest possible degree of contact and mutual instruction. It has, in fact, behaved in a very enlightened fashion on this problem.
Well, I turn from that, because I do not want to be inordinately long on this matter. We have had a look at certain individual problems. So far from resisting the idea that there ought to be some outside view, we have encouraged it. For example, some months ago we found ourselves not very happy about the general organization of transport. There were criticisms; there were suggestions that it might be run in a more economic fashion and that some overlapping between departments might be eliminated. Therefore, we called on the services of an outstanding authority on transport in this country, Mr. L. A. Schumer, whose name will be well known to many honorable members, and who has had a long practical experience in transport and in the administration of transport. He is now working, and has been working for some time, in that field.
Some questions cropped up about the News and Information Bureau, and I do not say this in any critical fashion, for I have no reason to be critical. We wanted to satisfy ourselves that that section of the Government service was being used to the most effective extent on behalf of the country. So we did not just rest content with some internal resources; we secured the services in that field of Mr. Eric Kennedy, who, as honorable members know, has a long experience of these matters and is a distinguished consultant in this field. He is examining that particular section of our activity.
Sir, I mention those matters only to show that we have not been just wooden or difficult on this matter. We have seized whatever opportunity presented itself to get good outside advice in relation to a matter which no outsider could possibly master for himself without months and perhaps years of work.
That brings me to the problem of the Hoover Commission. I do wish it could be more widely understood that, from a purely political point of view, the appointment of a Hoover commission here would be marvellous. It would last for years. It would be investigating department after department after department, for month after month after month. It would be calling on the Public Service Board to provide it with the information which the Public Service Board now has. But the whole problem would be off my plate. No longer would I be reading or listening to statements about the Civil Service. I could say, “ Sorry. All that is being attended to by a high-powered commission “, and if the high-powered commission took three years, well, so much the better - three years of peace and perfect quietness on this front. That would be, politically, not without its marks, but I am happy to say that we have resisted that temptation, because the truth is that what we want is efficiency, and not merely some form of investigation. If we are to have efficiency then we must strengthen, so far as we can, the internal methods of the Public Service Board and its authority. We must examine as closely as we can the functions to be performed by Government, and wherever wc have an opportunity of securing from outside, from wherever it may be, some useful, critical advice, then we should secure it and we should take it.
So I say with reference to the last observation that fell from my friend the honorable member for Macarthur, that I have illustrated the kind of thing that we have been doing. I merely want to add that we arc perfectly prepared and anxious to extend that practice, as we will extend it step after step in looking at various problems and various departments. In other words, I want a practical solution of this matter and not some apparently high-powered organism which will occupy a lot of time and a good deal of whose report will be out of date by the time it is had. This is a day to day, honest, practical problem, and we venture to think that we have been approaching it in that, sense.
Now, Sir, I do not want to say any more about that matter, because I want to turn to the thoughtful contributions made on the question of education by the honorable member for Yarra (Mr. Cairns) and the honorable member for Wills (Mr. Bryant). However, I do not intend for one moment to repeat the speech that I made when this subject was raised as a matter of urgency, I think, by the honorable member for Wills some time ago, and when we had a very valuable debate on this matter. The honorable member for Yarra has presented a question which, if I may say so, merits a thoughtful answer, in the light of the limited consideration that 1 have been able to give to it since he made his speech. What he said was that he felt there was an inconsistency of approach on the part of the Government between what it did with respect to universities and what it did not do with respect to primary and secondary education, secondary education being particularly emphasized by the honorable member for Wills. Sir, in a sense, that is true.
The honorable member for Yarra asked me whether the reasons for this difference of approach were constitutional or historical or of some other quality. They are not constitutional, of course, because nobody has ever doubted - at least, it has never been doubted since the High Court of Australia gave a certain famous decision - that, under section 96 of the Australian Constitution, the Commonwealth may make a tied grant to the States. We make a grant to the States as, indeed, I have pointed out on an earlier occasion, for universities. As the honorable member will recall, the measure that we introduced after the Murray Committee’s report was the States Grants (Universities) Bill 1958. These are States grants. Constitutionally, of course, we can make a grant to a State in respect of practically anything, attaching such conditions as this Parliament thinks fit. So I do not put it forward as a constitutional problem, and I never have done. I have illustrated, through the universities procedure, how we do it.
But, Sir, it is partly a historical reason, and the honorable member for Yarra was quite right when he pointed out that after the war the Commonwealth Government of the day very wisely provided the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme. That involved thousands of people out of the Services going to universities for training, and it made all the universities burst, because they could not accommodate the number of people they had. Therefore, the Commonwealth had to come to their aid in that matter. When the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme fell away, it still remained true - beautifully true - that there were far more people in Australia who wanted university training than ever before. That was one great reason why the Commonwealth had its choice of saying, “The reconstruction training scheme has finished. That is just too bad. We are sorry “ - which would have been a terrible thing to do to the universities; or, alternatively, of saying, “ Very well, we will, in the homely phrase, come to the party “.
That is one historical reason. There is another historical reason which I would add. and I am sure that the honorable member for Yarra will appreciate it at once. We instituted the Commonwealth scholarships scheme. It had been adumbrated before we came into office, and we put it into operation; I am not denying that this was, in reality, a piece of joint effort on behalf of our predecessors and ourselves. The Commonwealth scholarships scheme is a scheme under which no fewer than one-third of the new entrants to universities in Australia have their fees paid for them, and, in many cases, some living allowance. That is very good from the point of view of the individual, but the average student at a university costs the university money. He is not a source of profit. Financially speaking - and only financially speaking - he is a source of loss, because his fees by no means meet the overall cost of running the university. Therefore, the very fact that we provided these thousands of scholarships was itself a contribution to the deficit of the univer sities, though it was a positive contribution to the well-being and the future of the student.
So those two reasons meant that we must do something about the universities, because we had, in those two respects, achieved a particular relationship to them and. I venture to say, a particular responsibility towards them. At the conference between the State Premiers and Commonwealth representatives in August, 1953, the Premiers raised this matter of the universities and pointed out how profoundly embarrassed they were. They were already, of course, finding a lot of money themselves. They said, quite plainly, ““We do not see how we can possibly meet the total bill “. They raised the matter at that stage. I mention that because it is the only time I remember when the State Premiers raised the question of Commonwealth payment for education as a specific subject. They raised it then in respect of the universities. Speaking for myself. I thought there was a great deal of force in what they had to say, and I have, indeed, been profoundly impressed for years now by the nature of this problem and the intensity of its financial burden. At that stage, I took the responsibility myself of appointing a committee to investigate the universities, and of inviting Sir Keith Murray, when I was in England, to act as its chairman. The committee was appointed. It made its report. The report was adopted in toto by the Government and, I am happy to remember, approved in toto by this Parliament. By that stroke a new chapter in the history of the universities opened.
AH that is historical, if you like, but it explains how it is that we came into this field and how it is that we have taken great responsibilities in it. But, Sir, it must still be remembered that, even in the field of the universities, we are not making unconditional grants, except for some of those special grants that were provided for under the report which were unconditional, and which I described in this chamber at length some time ago. For the general grants to the universities for maintenance, there is a condition. We provide a portion of the cost. The States themselves still have to provide the bulk of the running costs of the universities. Therefore, this is not a case in which the Commonwealth has stepped in and accepted an entire burden not placed upon it by the Constitution but normally resing upon the States, which have responsibility for education. A point that is overlooked, I venture to say, is that, in effect, though not in form, that is what happens in primary and secondary education.
It is quite true that in the case of the universities our aid is specific. The purpose is named in the grants act. This is a grant to the States for universities, and there is a schedule. There are the amounts. There are the conditions in terms of finance, and if they are obeyed, then the money goes. We have no such specific grants in the case of other forms of education. Nor have we ever been asked to make such grants. The reason for that, of course, is plain enough. The States themselves cherish - and, I think, properly cherish - their authority over their own education structure. If a government in Queensland or in Western Australia feels that a scheme of education, or an organization of education, that is good for New South Wales or Victoria is not appropriate to Queensland or Western Australia, then I say that is all right. That is an exercise of judgment, and I for one do not want to see the day when the States move out of this field and allow it to come under central control. I am sure that that is the reason why the State Premiers, though they did raise the question of the universities, have never asked for specific grants - although many other people have - in relation to education generally.
As I pointed out when the House last debated this matter, on a proposal by the honorable member for Wills, who raised the question in all its aspects, the Commonwealth has been, for many years, providing a very substantial share of the total revenues of the States, and of the total spending capacity of the States. Let me just remind honorable members that I pointed out in the debate on 6th May of this year - a debate promoted, as I say, by a proposal of the honorable member for Wills - that over the term of years with which I was dealing, the States had in fact, in total spendable moneys in their hands, £2,725,000,000, and that they had, over that period, spent £500,000,000, or 20 per cent, of the total, on education. The point I made, very simply, was that a great deal of this money came from the Commonwealth, without obligation. We have given the “States the whole benefit of the loan market. We have, in fact, subsidized the loan market in their hands to the extent of hundreds of millions of pounds over that period. We have in fact made tax reimbursements that far exceed the amounts provided by the formula on which all the States had agreed in 1947.
So our withers are unwrung on this matter. We have gone the second mile and the third mile and the fourth mile on this question, and in the result the States have had £2,725,000,000, of which £500,000,000 has been spent on education. I do not say good, bad or indifferent about that. All I say is that the States themselves have the right, and they jealously maintain that right, to spend their own money as they think fit, and to exercise their own judgment. In the result, some States have spent a little more on education than others have done, and, so far as I am concerned, they could not spend so much on primary or secondary education that I would be heard to complain about it, because I know of nothing more significant in the country than this kind of training, starting from the very beginning and going through to post-graduate research. But, Sir, my whole point is that this is not a matter on which we intervene. It is a matter for the States, and I dare say that if I had time - and I have not, because this matter was brought up only this afternoon - to work out the figures, I would find that the Commonwealth’s percentage of contribution towards primary and secondary education in the States is at least as great as its percentage of contribution to university education in the States. That, Sir, I venture to say, is something worth thinking about.
The last thing I want to say to the honorable member for Yarra is this: He mentioned the historical reasons. I have, in my own fashion, sought to develop them, because 1 think they are very real, but of course there are practical problems. One of the things you learn in this political life of ours, this odd, vagrant, battered existence we lead, is that if you are going to find more money than you were previously finding, when you get to the last resort you have to face the practical problem of where to get it. That, in the language of our distinguished ally, is the 64-dollar question.
– Mr. Chairman, the Prime Minister (Mr. Menzies) has made an important statement in connexion with education and concerning the basis of the Commonwealth’s contribution to tertiary education, that is, education in the university field. I think it is important that the committee should understand clearly what is implied, rather than stated, in the Prime Minister’s speech.
When the Murray report was before the Parliament, the Prime Minister took the view that assistance to the States in the field of education should be limited to the universities. To-night he has, in a sense, taken up the same position, rather as a practical approach than as a constitutional question. But I think it is fair to say that previously he rather emphasized, too, the constitutional question. To-night we have had it made clear - as, I think, it always was reasonably clear - that in the field of education the Commonwealth Government’s power to assist the States with regard to secondary or primary education is exactly the same as it is with relation to universities. It is simply a practical question of whether the financial assistance should be given, and in no case, Mr. Chairman, does it involve any interference with State responsibilities, nor does it involve the Commonwealth taking over responsibilities in that field. In other words, if in the field of university education the Commonwealth assists the States financially without taking over the universities, it could do exactly that in the field of secondary and primary education.
This is an extremely important point that has emerged to-night following the interventions of my colleagues, the honorable member for Yarra (Mr. Cairns) and the honorable member for Wills (Mr. Bryant). Both those honorable gentlemen belong to the education committee of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Labour party, and they have given considerable attention to this subject.
I think it is clear now that the only question involved is that of financial assistance. We do not need anything more than Section 96 of the Constitution, which gives the Com monwealth power to make grants to the States by way of financial assistance on any terms that are thought fit. As the Prime Minister has said, this follows an old decision of the High Court, as a result of which, for the first time, assistance was given to the States for road-making and other work in respect of roads. It was argued by counsel that roads have nothing to do with the Commonwealth. It was contended that roads, except in the territories, belong to the States, and that the Commonwealth cannot give assistance in that field. That argument was summarily rejected. Similar considerations apply to other fields in which financial aid can be given. There is no special matter which is outside the scope of possible Commonwealth assistance.
I also pointed out previously, and I think it is true, that in the field of education there is a special power which exists in the Constitution as a result of the referendum of 1946. The Commonwealth Parliament, irrespective of any other consideration, has legislative or constitutional power in the matter of providing assistance in the form of benefits to students. The Commonwealth has been doing this. It did it in the field of the great Commonwealth Scholarships Scheme and in many other respects, some of which have been referred to by the Prime Minister. It could do it in that field as well. I only wish to make that perfectly clear, because I think that in all the statements that the Prime Minister has made publicly and that he made during the debate on the Murray report, the right honorable gentleman rather raised doubts about it, indicating that financial assistance could be granted only where the Commonwealth was assuming responsibilities or taking them away - stripping the States of them.
– You will not find that in any speech that I have ever made.
– Not in clear language perhaps, but that was the implication in the Prime Minister’s references; the clearest possible implication.
– You will not find it there in any form. This was a good debate until you started on this sort of thing.
– Not at all. The Prime Minister wants to misrepresent the position. I want to clear it up.
– You are misrepresenting my views, grossly.
– I am not misrepresenting the Prime Minister’s views. I say that to-night was the first time that it has been frankly stated that no special provision for university, secondary or primary education-
– I stated it categorically when I introduced the States Grants (Universities) Bill.
– You may have stated it then; but we have had debates in this chamber in which you did not state it, and you contradicted statements made by other speakers to that effect.
– Rubbish!
– Do not be self-conscious and talk about rubbish. I only want that to be made clear so that there will not be any doubt in the public mind about it. Whether it should be done in a number of cases is a matter for political decision by this Parliament. As to the other point in relation to the great aid given by the Commonwealth to the States, as the Commonwealth claims, the real truth so far as reimbursement is concerned is that it is reimbursement. The money so reimbursed came from the people of Australia. Under uniform taxation, far more is collected than the Commonwealth could ever use or would use; and from that pool of funds, money has to be given - and it is intended to be given - back to the States. Therefore, one cannot make comparisons such as the Prime Minister has made in that connexion.
– But the States get far more than they are entitled to get back under the formula.
– It is not a question of amount but of principle. With regard to Commonwealth uniform taxation, I say that reimbursement to the States is not a gift from the Commonwealth to the States at all. It may have that legal quality, but that is not the real spirit of it. Those are the two main points in this situation and they apply to the other matters mentioned in this debate.
The honorable member for Kingston (Mr. Galvin) referred to the assistance to lifesaving societies. Where is the authority to make those gifts? If any other authority were needed, you would simply turn to section 96, and make the grants to the States on condition that the contribution was made to the life-saving societies. Under the Constitution, there is no limit to the power of the Commonwealth to grant financial assistance to the States. Therefore, it is open to Commonwealth action. A purely political question is involved and no confusion should be created or sought to be created by saying that as power in respect of education is not granted to the Commonwealth, it is purely a State matter. The truth is, so far as financial assistance is concerned, that for any purpose, whether the Commonwealth has the responsibility or not, grants may be made as financial assistance to the States under the existing Constitution, and in many respects they may be made in a way which is satisfactory to the States. And it behoves the Commonwealth, in its stronger financial position, to make them more readily than used to be the case.
.- I share the disappointment of my leader, the right honorable member for Barton (Dr. Evatt) with the remarks of the Prime Minister (Mr. Menzies) on the subject of education. I presume that we have all been speaking on the division of the Estimates relating to the Prime Minister’s Department which deals with the Office of Education, lt is well to realize that in 1945, the Parliament passed an Education Act and that under it. the Office of Education was set up with six functions. T wish to refer to three of them -
To advise the Minister on matters relating to education:
To establish and maintain a liaison, on matters relating to education, with other countries and the States:
To advise the Minister concerning the grant of financial assistance to the States and to other authorities for educational purposes.
One of the worst features of this Government’s nine years of office has been that the Education Act has been allowed to remain practically a dead letter because the Office of Education has not been given the man-power or the funds to carry out its functions. All it has been enabled to do has been to carry on the Commonwealth scholarships scheme and to give aid to universities. On this side of the chamber, we raised the relevant question: How are you to provide the best students, irrespective of their financial means, for the universities, and how are you to provide adequate staff and equipment for students, particularly in those years which fall between the leaving age of schools and the entry age for the university? The Prime Minister served the very good purpose of saying unequivocally this evening that there is no constitutional objection to the Commonwealth giving assistance to education. One is grateful that he should be so unequivocal to-night, because as recently as 6th May last, the right honorable gentleman stated -
The fact is that education, except in Commonwealth territories, remains a function of the States.
– So it does. Does not the honorable member know that?
– All the dunces and undergraduates behind the Prime Minister understand his remarks of 6th May. None of them applauded his remarks this evening.
– My poor boy!
– When he was speaking on that occasion, the Prime Minister was referring to the glib remark which falls from those behind him and from himself in reply to questions in the House, that the Constitution provided that education should be a function of the States. Of course, the Constitution never mentioned education at all. Those who regard the Constitution as the law of the Medes and the Persians, which changeth not, not only say that the Commonwealth cannot deal directly with education but go on to say that only the States can deal with it at all. At least we can be thankful that to-night the Prime Minister has made it quite plain that if there is a will there is a way for the Commonwealth to assist education.
– The Prime Minister has been making it clear for years; before you were ever heard of.
– The excuse that the right honorable gentleman relied on tonight was that the States have not requested assistance for education. It is said that the University Committee, from which the Murray report emerged, was set up at the request of the States. There was no claim that it was set up at the request of the States when the Prime Minister announced the constitution of the committee.
– I did not say it was set up at the request of the States; on the contrary. If the honorable member had been in the chamber before dinner he would have known that.
– I do not wish to misrepresent the Prime Minister.
– I set it up myself. I said that to-night.
– To-night, the Prime Minister suggested that at one of the Premiers’ conferences, the States had mentioned expenditure on, and the cost of, university education. Some years later, in December, 1956, the Murray Committee was constituted. When its report was presented, no reference was made to the request or suggestion by the States; that is, the Commonwealth, at its own sweet will, set up this committee. Then we are told that it carried out the committee’s report completely. It did not completely carry out the committee’s report. The committee suggested that there should be a considerable increase in the number of Commonwealth scholarships and in the value of those scholarships. There will not be any increase in the number of new scholarships awarded each year, and there will not be a great increase in the value of the scholarships.
– You are not forgetting, I hope, that although the ordinary scholarships are not being increased in number there are post-graduate scholarships which are being provided for.
– There are 100.
– If that is not an increase, I should like to know what an increase is.
– You are referring to the Murray Committee’s third recommendation that ample provision should be made for post-graduate scholarships; 100 such scholarships are being granted this year, but the scale of the scholarships has not been announced. My other statements, which have not been denied and which the right honorable gentleman presumably admits, are that there is no increase in the number of scholarships as we have known them in the last few years, and there is no great increase in the value of the scholarships.
The scholarships are made available subject to a means test which has scarcely varied over the years and a student only gets a full living allowance if his parents are on the basic wage or less. If the parents’ income is £800, for instance, the student only gets a maximum allowance if there are three other children under sixteen years of age. The amount of assistance that is given by way of allowance is quite small. It is true that there has been an increase in the number of people holding scholarships - that is, the number of people whose fees are paid at the university. That is because students who received scholarships early in the history of the scheme to do medicine or arts and law will be at the university for six years, and there are others coming in. But the number receiving living allowances has remained stationary for the last few years and will remain stationary under the amendment announced in this Budget.
The real difficulty, surely, is this: Not merely are there no increased opportunities for people who are going to the university; but there is still no opportunity for people to finish their secondary education. And it costs as much to feed, clothe and otherwise support a child who is reaching the school leaving age of fourteen, fifteen or sixteen years as it does to support a child at the university.
– Who told you that?
– My children are reaching that age.
– Mine have reached it.
– Apparently, as in so many other things, the honorable member has not learned from experience. The big trouble about the Commonwealth’s attitude to education is that it is still making no contribution to the provision of full school education so as to give children who are qualified by capacity the opportunity to reach the school leaving or university matriculation stage. That is to say there is an economic weeding out of children before they go on to the university.
It is true now, as it has always been true this century, that if a student is bright enough he will get his fees paid and, in some circumstances, will receive a scholarship in cash as well as in kind. But it is not sufficient that only the brightest students should get a university education. There is in all industrial countries, and in Australia as much as any, a necessity for people to develop into skilled technicians and skilled tradesmen by getting the education which they are capable of using. It is not sufficient that a good education should be the prerogative of the intellectually brightest and of the economically most fortunate. Everybody who is able to pass the examinations can be used if he is given the proper secondary and technical education.
– I know that the honorable member does not want to fall into an error of fact. He has stated that nobody whose parents got more than the basic wage has any hope of getting a living allowance. Will he forgive me if I interrupt merely to say that I understand that an only child in a family with an income of £800 a year will at present get £196 a year if living at home and £313 a year if living away from home?
– That is, I take it, under the amendment which you announced outside the House a week ago?
– It is under the present proposals of which you know.
– I am glad to have this information. It is certainly not the position in the current calendar year as the Prime Minister will notice if he looks at the answers which he gave me to questions on the notice-paper earlier this year. I asked the right honorable gentleman another question a week ago. It is still on the notice-paper and he has not answered it, although, apparently, he can get information that he seeks within five minutes. A week ago I asked how many people were receiving full allowances, part allowances and no allowances, and what was the cost to the Commonwealth, in each of the last few years, of the scholarships, on the one hand, and of the allowances on the other. He did tell me, the last time that I had such a question on the notice-paper, that the number of people receiving full allowances was declining slightly whereas the number of people receiving scholarships was rising a little because people who had been at the university for some years were still there.
Do not let us overlook the proportion of students which goes to the university, and the proportion which does not, because it cannot, complete a school education. The Prime Minister was a very distinguished graduate and alumnus of the University of Melbourne.
– And also, I may tell you, of at least two State schools.
– What a cursus honorum: Jeparit - Wesley - the University of Melbourne - and honorary doctorates from Bristol and some other red brick universities!
In all these matters, the Prime Minister well illustrates that the brightest student could and still can get a good university education. But the Opposition wants to see that everybody who has the capacity to undertake a secondary or technical education is given the opportunity to complete it. The Prime Minister has said that the Commonwealth can do it if it wants to do it, under section 96 of the Constitution. The Government has been in office for nine years and has made no attempt to assist such students. There has been an act of this Parliament for thirteen years, under which they could be assisted, but the Government has made no attempt to implement the act.
Why does not the Government, at least, appoint a committee, off its own bat if the States are too jealous to suggest it, to inquire into the needs - capital and revenue - of education in the States and into the financial needs of the students, at secondary and technical level in the States? The argument which is always used against such a proposition is that the Commonwealth will take over education. That is not suggested by the act. It is not suggested by anybody on this side of the chamber. But what is suggested is that there should be a participation by the Commonwealth. That is to say that there should be the same cooperation between the Commonwealth and the States in secondary and technical education as we now see can occur very satisfactorily in providing for the capital and revenue needs of the universities.
– Order! The honorable member’s time has expired.
.- It is always interesting to listen to the honorable member for Werriwa (Mr. Whitlam) on such occasions. He produced exactly the same well-documented, plausible speech on the question of education to-night as he has given us on other occasions on other subjects. For those people listening-in who are not familiar with the technique of the honorable member for Werriwa, I point out that the honorable gentleman can produce exactly the same plausible speech on the subject of roads, exactly the same plausible speech on the subject of hospitals whilst, on the subject of housing, he is particularly plausible in attempting to show up the meanness of the Commonwealth Government. People outside who are not familiar with his tactics ought also to hear him on the subject of States grants, on which he waxes very eloquent when the occasion arises. When he has finished making plausible speeches on all these things, he starts to work on the question of the Commonwealth’s responsibility to make more money available for social service pensions and benefits, repatriation benefits and war service homes. To my mind, it is really all a lot of humbug.
I think that the Prime Minister (Mr. Menzies) has made out an excellent case on the subject of financial assistance to the States. We give the States grants without any strings tied to them. Not only do we give them grants in accordance with an agreed formula, but we give them enormous supplementary grants over and above the amounts required by the formula. We could meet the Opposition’s objections quite easily if, instead of giving grants to the States, we here dealt with all the activities in the nation under various headings and usurped the powers of the State parliaments.
I think a great deal of the time of this chamber is being wasted on what is sheer propaganda about education just because that subject happens to be particularly popular at the present moment. But when you get down to analysing the amount of money that this Government makes available to the States it is readily seen that the States have ample money for education if they wish to divert to the purposes of education some of the funds they receive from us. But that point is ignored by honorable members opposite and, as I have said, each time the honorable member for Werriwa rises in this chamber he makes the same plausible well-documented speech on whatever subject may be before us. He will make the same speech on war service homes and on the other items covered by the Estimates.
I think that the Government’s record in the provision of finance for the States is well known and well respected.
.- I want to raise an entirely different matter under the Estimates for the Prime Minister’s Department, because I feel that listeners at least will now know where we stand in respect of education and where the Government stands. I feel sure, too, that having weighed the two sets of arguments put before the Parliament and the nation tonight people outside will know that we of the Labour party definitely intend, when we become the government, to broaden financial help from the Commonwealth for State education systems, irrespective of the constitutional obstacles which the present Government insists stand in the way of such increased help. The Labour party’s policy contains specific references to this matter.
I am glad that the Prime Minister (Mr. Menzies) is in the chamber, because I wish to raise now a matter that I have raised with him. unsuccessfully, in correspondence. I should like to put to the Government now a suggestion, or an appeal, for Commonwealth financial assistance for crippled people who have to be sent overseas for specialized treatment which is not now available here. The Prime Minister is conversant with the matter which I am about to discuss, because 1 placed the whole story before him in a letter dated 4th July. 1958.
My appeal is on behalf of people in Australia stricken with severe spinal injuries, unusual brain or heart diseases, or other comparatively rare physical crack-ups which, in the opinion of specialists, may be cured or healed even partially as a result of specialized treatment in the United Kingdom, Europe or the United States.
– Order! Will the honorable member please relate his remarks to the items before the committee, because I think that the matter he is discussing should be discussed when we have the proposed vote for the Department of Health before us.
– The matter I am discussing does not come specifically under the Estimates for this department, but I want to raise it during the debate on this department.
– The . honorable gentleman may not debate it under this department.
– So I may not debate the suggestion at all?
– The honorable gentleman is out of order in raising the matter now.
.- It is very refreshing to hear the Prime Minister (Mr. Menzies) speak in such a precise manner about the need for the Commonwealth to provide more generously for education, a need about which we have been speaking constantly in this House over such a long period. There is no question but that the Prime Minister ha9 indicated tonight his preparedness to concede the point that so many people have been making for a long time - that under the provisions of section 96 of the Constitution it is competent for the Commonwealth to so assist the States. This is in marked contrast to the attitude evinced by the right honorable gentleman only a short time ago when the Opposition submitted the subject of education as a definite matter of urgent public importance for discussion by the House.
I think that most honorable members are prepared to concede that during, say, the last twelve months the subject of education has assumed prominence in debates in this chamber. As a direct consequence of strong agitation on the subject outside and representations made here by the Opposition on behalf of education authorities throughout Australia, the subject has become one which the Prime Minister is now prepared to debate. lt was not very long after I became a member of this Parliament that I raised the Question of federal aid for education. I did so one evening at 8 o’clock. I was looked on as a young idealistic schoolboy who was going to deal with some lofty plan quite beyond the practical considerations occupying this Parliament. It was on 6th May last that the Prime Minister, speaking in the debate initiated by the honorable member for Wills (Mr. Bryant) on the subject of education, said of that honorable member - t rather envy the easy way in which he sets the Constitution on one side on the ground that it is out of date. The fact is that it still exists. The fact is that education, except in Commonwealth territories, remains a function of the States.
The honorable member for Wills was endeavouring to establish the principle of the Commonwealth’s responsibility in respect of education. Now, on 26th August, the Prime Minister has at least given us a precise and concise statement about this matter.
– He has made a retraction of his earlier statements.
– He has made a retraction, as the Leader of the Opposition points out. So that it may go into the record to enable people who read “ Hansard “ to understand how it can be applied to this particular matter, I propose to read to the committee section 96 of the Constition. It reads -
During a period of ten years after the establishment of the Commonwealth and thereafter until the Parliament otherwise provides, the Parliament may grant financial assistance to any State on such terms and conditions as the Parliament thinks fit.
Of course that section is applicable to education! A short time ago the Prime Minister went to the United Kingdom, where he was fortunate enough to meet Sir Keith Murray, whom he later appointed to be chairman of a committee to investigate the position of the Australian universities. Sir Keith came to Australia and carried out a very excellent inquiry into the needs of the universities. I think it is time we sent the Prime Minister to the United Kingdom again, where he might be able to find somebody else who will inspire him with the idea of establishing a similar committee to inquire into the general education needs of the States, which anybody in this chamber at all aware of the situation will be prepared to concede are being met in a most unsatisfactory way.
I think it is a deplorable fact, Mr. Chairman, having regard to the large variety of activities for which the Commonwealth Office of Education is respon sible, and having regard to that organization’s tremendous potentialities and its enormous capacities in the education field, that this year we see an actual reduction in the amount of money allocated by the Commonwealth, not for State educational purposes, but for educational activities for which this Parliament is responsible. Is not that the case? Can anybody deny the truth of that statement? The fact is that in the financial year 1957-58 £199,000 was expended by the Commonwealth for educational purposes, or, at least, was intended to be expended for such purposes. Actually only £181,000 was expended. Because the Commonwealth underspent the money made available last year, the vote is to be reduced this year to £185,000.
The honorable member for Werriwa has already indicated to the committee the wide variety of activities for which the Commonwealth Office of Education is responsible. There is no question that it has very important things to do in the near future.
As recently as last November I raised, in this chamber, a suggestion made by Professor Crisp of the Canberra University College, that the Commonwealth should be prepared to extend the Commonwealth university scholarships scheme to secondary education. In reply, the Prime Minister said nothing could be done towards this end.
I asked him if it was a fact that in 1949 the then Prime Minister, the late J. B. Chifley, through one of his Ministers, Mr. Dedman, requested that some agreement be prepared and tabled in Parliament as a first step towards extending the university scholarships scheme to secondary education. The Prime Minister said that he knew of no such proposal or of any decision to go ahead with such a scheme. Professor Crisp asserted that it was a fact, as indeed it was.
This Government has failed to do anything about extending the university scholarship provisions to secondary education and the net result is that, in this year of grace 1958, universities are starved for student reinforcements. It is significant that although the Murray committee was not charged with any responsibility to investigate secondary education it arrived at certain conclusions on this matter which are worthy of mention. At page 22 of the report of the Murray committee on Australian universities, this passage occurs -
Though we made no close inquiry into the arrangements for secondary education we were sufficiently impressed by the evidence presented of wastage of talent at the secondary school level, due to early leaving, to suggest that this problem merits close attention. For example, the 1954 Commonwealth Census revealed that only 45.8 per cent, of fifteen year olds, 20.5 per cent, of sixteen year olds, and 9.4 per cent, of seventeen year olds, are in full-time education of any sort. We were told, too, that in New South Wales a study of the records of pupils leaving school on reaching the statutory age of fifteen years, indicates that a considerable proportion of them possess the general mental ability which one encounters among undergraduates successfully studying at university.
A little further on, the report continues -
On the other hand, statistical evidence suggests that 16 per cent, of any age group of the Australian population have intellectual ability above the minimum generally considered necessary for success at university.
Further on, the report reads -
There is room for much improvement in the percentage who continue at school after the age of fifteen years and reach matriculation level. It has been suggested to us that special bursaries should be provided to enable more children to remain on at school to matriculation level.
Those are the remarks of the Murray committee in respect of university education. It went a little further than its mandate and having delved into secondary education, arrived at those conclusions. In these circumstances we are able to observe in the estimates before the committee at the present time that there has been a very substantial reduction in the estimates of the Commonwealth Office of Education, although the Murray committee drew attention to the apparent need to extend the bursary or scholarship scheme from the university sphere to education in the secondary school sphere.
It is clear that this Government is quite irresponsible in respect of these matters. There is plenty of evidence to substantiate the contention that the States are experiencing great difficulty in their endeavours to provide adequate educational opportunities for the young people of Australia. Most honorable members are aware of the fact that the school leaving age is not at all adequate, judged by world standards.
Many members are fully appreciative of the fact that in New South Wales it is fifteen years and in Tasmania sixteen years. In all other States it is as low as fourteen years. This, of course, is a most unsatisfactory position.
When we consider the size of school classes we find that many exceed 50 and some are as large as 60, whereas the recommended maximum is 30. It is obvious that in these circumstances the youngsters are not receiving a fair go. It was Professor C. McRae who said -
If a teacher’s class numbers more than 30 the teacher simply cannot give education as it is now conceived.
What is the position in Victoria? In that State 34 per cent, of primary classes exceed 45 in number, and in secondary schools 25 per cent, have more than 45 pupils. That is far in excess of the maximum of 30 recommended by educationists in most parts of the world. In New South Wales 48 per cent, of classes in primary schools exceed 40, and in secondary schools again 40 per cent, of the classes exceed 40 in number. The position is similar in all other States.
It is useless for the Prime Minister or anybody else to say on behalf of the Government that the States have not asked for more money for education. Of course they have asked for more money for this purpose. They have asked, also, for more money for housing, hospitals and public works. Year after year they have made their claims at the Premiers’ conference. On the last occasion when education was debated in this chamber, no honorable member on the Government side contended that the fact that the States had not asked for grants under the provisions of section 96 of the Constitution was a deterrent in this matter. Last May, the contention was that the Commonwealth was spending sufficient money on education. If honorable members were appreciative of a general deficiency in educational facilities in all the States, they would do whatever they could to overcome them. I remind honorable members of the inadequate buildings for schools. Youngsters are being taught in hallways, on verandahs and in weather sheds. Many State schools have no medical or dental clinics. The playing areas in many cases are very limited. All these things underline the responsibility of the Commonwealth Government for education.
The first thing that should be done is to encourage a greater flow of students from secondary schools into tertiary education. This could be achieved by extending the legislation provided by the Chifley Labour Government and in the manner suggested by Professor Crisp. This would ensure that secondary school students should be assisted by way of scholarships in precisely the same way as one-third of the university students are at present assisted with Commonwealth scholarships.
Advantage could be taken of the very generous provisions of the Commonwealth Office of Education Act to implement the request of educationists throughout Australia, that is to establish a committee to inquire into the educational needs of the various States. How can we be satisfied, before we have determined the needs of a State and the extent of its education deficiencies, what cost will be involved? Is it not fair to determine the needs of the States’ education programmes in a similar way to that used so effectively by the Murray committee with respect to universities? We could look at primary education and secondary education in the same way.
-Order! The honorable member’s time has expired.
.- I wish to refer briefly to the reply of the Prime Minister (Mr. Menzies) to the points that I raised previously. I hope that the right honorable gentleman was not being unkind in suggesting that when I raised the question of an inquiry into the Public Service, I was adopting a topical subject that had been discussed by a recent deputation to him.
– You would not do that!
– Quite right; I would not do that. I remind the right honorable gentleman that I raised this matter a number of years ago - long before the Chamber of Commerce or whoever raised the matter on this occasion thought of the subject. I do not propose to say anything further about the Prime Minister’s remarks. I am sure that every one will welcome the news of the action being taken by him, by the committee which he has set up and by the other people whom he has mentioned in dealing with the functions, the organization and the management of the Public Service. I am not altogether unaware of some of these activities, as he will know, because of my duties in another sphere. Of course, the effectiveness of the action being taken will be judged by the results obtained, and results will be awaited with some interest. Those results will reveal whether a deeper inquiry is needed.
I appreciate the right honorable gentleman’s remarks regarding the Hoover commission. I agree with him that a practical solution is required. If I may say so, the practical solution is right at hand and lies in suitable amendments to the Public Service Act. It cannot be denied that this act places control of the Public Service almost out of reach of the Ministers, who are really the heads of the departments and responsible to this Parliament, and puts it in the hands of the permanent heads of the departments and the Public Service Board, either separately or jointly. The restoration of an adequate degree of ministerial control would remove much of the cause for criticism of the Public Service and would give the public servants an opportunity to prove that they are anxious and willing to do the job that I believe they are capable of doing.
I turn now to the question of education and the comments made by Opposition members. The Prime Minister said that the States had not made any specific request for assistance in the field of education. The Prime Minister, of course, left it to Opposition members to conclude why the States would not make any such specific request. If the States asked the Commonwealth for a certain grant for education purposes, the Commonwealth would have to say, “ We are willing to give you the money you need for education, upon which you place such a high priority, but would you tell us from what other activity the money is to be deducted? If we allot £73,000,000 of the £273,000,000 granted in tax reimbursements, specifically for education purposes, then you must make up your minds what you will do with the £200,000,000.” The obvious retort of the States would be, “Who the hell is running the States; you or us? “
– Order!
– I beg your pardon, Sir. The States would say, “We are sovereign authorities; we will decide how the money will be spent “. The States know that they could not really make a request for a specific amount for education. They know that the amount would have to be taken from money which would otherwise be made available for some other activity. If you have a yard of cloth, you must make up your mind what you will make with it; it cannot be stretched. The States and the Commonwealth are in precisely that position. However, the States are in a very happy position, because the Commonwealth is charged with the responsibility of finding the yard of cloth and then must hand it to the States to cut up according to their ideas.
The amount allocated to education out of the money that is not ungenerously provided by this Government depends on the State government’s idea of the priority and the importance of education. The action of the New South Wales Government in purchasing a private enterprise will shortly be emulated in Western Australia. In New South Wales, a sum of money was paid to private individuals, but not one additional watt of electricity was produced. In Western Australia, not one additional bus will be put on the roads. Actions of that kind mean merely that money is spent without producing any tangible result; it cannot then be used to build schools, to train teachers or to provide school amenities. If the Government feels that education should have first priority, it should let the buses run as they do now while it builds schools. I would readily agree with any State Minister who said that, second to health, education is the most important State activity, because every year wasted is a year lost for ever in the life of a child. It is the job of the States to give priority to education and to allot the biggest proportion of their money to this activity. I am most unhappy when I consider the amount of money spent on education by the States; it is utterly inadequate.
– It is particularly bad in New South Wales.
– I do not know all the circumstances in New South Wales. I do know that the amount spent on education is inadequate. If 20 per cent, of the money available to a State is spent on education, then obviously, that State assesses the importance of education as being 20 per cent, of the total of its responsibilities. In education, we are dealing with the future of children, and we cannot dilly-dally with this question. The responsibility for education clearly rests with the States. I will support any Premier who has the courage to say to his electors, “We have received only X pounds from the Commonwealth; of that amount we have decided to allot so much to education because the Commonwealth has told us to do so “. But any Premier willing to do that should come to the Commonwealth and say, “ You tell us how much of this money you think should be spent on education and how much you are definitely allocating to education “. I appeal to honorable members opposite to put this matter before the public clearly so that they may devote their energies towards securing an alteration of the existing circumstances, or an alleviation of their troubles. If people continue to send reams of paper to members of Parliament about the education problem they are only wasting their time. They should direct their energies into State channels, and then they might achieve something.
– Rubbish! Where would the States get the money from?
– The honorable member for Hughes comes from New South Wales, and I can believe that nothing is ever achieved in that State under its present Government, but something could be achieved in the other States.
Some honorable members have spoken about inadequate school buildings. My mind goes back 40 years, when we argued about this same problem. My mind goes back to the early days when I was a member of a progress association that was trying to get a school erected in our district. Eventually we succeeded, after I wrote an apparently convincing letter to the department and mentioned that the population of the district was growing and that the people were young and virile. The Department of Education saw the writing on the wall and gave us a school building. We had problems then just as we have them to-day. Honorable members opposite do themselves and the electors little service by not assisting people to do the right thing in attempting to overcome an undoubted difficulty under which they are suffering to-day.
.- The first comment I make in connexion with this important matter of education is to point out to the honorable member for Moore (Mr. Leslie) that if honorable members on this side of the chamber had not been able to bring this important matter before the Parliament we possibly would not have secured the admission that we received from the Prime Minister (Mr. Menzies) this evening. During the last debate on education the Prime Minister referred to the constitutional difficulties, and this evening he wanted to deny what he said during that debate, which took place on 6th May this year. On that occasion, the Prime Minister said -
Referring to the honorable member for Wills (Mr. Bryant)- sets the Constitution on one side on the ground that il is out of date.
I suggest that the Prime Minister was implying on that occasion that there were constitutional difficulties about providing financial assistance to the States for educational purposes. This evening the right honorable gentleman has admitted that it is possible to assist the States in this broad field of education. The honorable member for Moore has suggested that the Commonwealth Government would have to find the money for education at the expense of some other department. I want to make it clear to the honorable member and those who support him that there was no difficulty about securing finance after the Murray committee had submitted its report to this Parliament. That committee suggested that certain amounts of money should be made available to the universities in each State, and this Government immediately found the money. There was no difficulty in providing that finance nor any difficulty in finding finance for the erection of the filling factory at St. Mary’s. With regard to St. Mary’s, £28,000,000 was found immediately after the recommendation had been submitted to Cabinet by those who were expert in these matters. So it is not a question of finding finance. We know that if a committee of inquiry were allowed to investigate conditions in primary and secondary education in every State of the Commonwealth, finance would be immediately made available, and could be made available, if the committee’s recommendations suggested that it was necessary. So finance does not enter into the question at all. The Prime Minister has now admitted that there is no constitutional difficulty, because under section 96 of the Constitution it is possible for the Commonwealth to make grants to the States in this broad field of education.
I want to reiterate the points that have been made by other honorable members on this side of the House. Education authorities in every State to-day are facing a crisis because of a shortage of funds. That point of view was also expressed by the Murray committee. That committee stated the position clearly when it said that because of the increase in population in Australia, primarily in the immediate post-war years, additional responsibilities have been thrust upon educational authorities in every State. I quote from page 21 of the Murray committee report, which states -
For come time Australian educational administrators have been beset with the problem el providing schools and teachers to accommodate the swelling tide of primary and secondary school pupils, the product cf the high birthrate of the immediate post-war years, augmented to some extent by immigration.
The Murray report shows that in 1939 the total enrolment in Australian schools was 1,103,406, whereas in 1956 the figure stood at 1,787,516. So it is apparent that there has been a rapid increase of the number of students attending both primary and secondary schools in Australia in the immediate post-war years. Whilst the Government has been prepared to recognize the increase in school population under the uniform tax reimbursement formula to the extent of 2i per cent, per annum, we know that the school population has, in fact, been increasing at the rate of 5 per cent, per annum. This Government has made no attempt to compensate the States in any way for the rapid increase that has taken place not only by natural increase but also as a direct result of our immigration policy.
I come back to this question of financial assistance. Honorable members have raised it in this chamber on several occasions. I regret that the honorable member for Hume (Mr. Anderson), in a very short statement on this important matter, suggested this evening that Opposition members have raised the question of Commonwealth assistance for education out of some ulterior motive. For the benefit of the honorable member, I should like to point out that I and other Opposition members who have raised the matter in this debate have personal knowledge of education problems generally, and some of the Opposition members to whom I refer have in recent years served in the education departments of some of the States. I suggest at once that the honorable member for Hume has no direct knowledge of education problems. Opposition members who have preceded me in this debate have a direct knowledge of the difficulties facing the education departments in all States.
The honorable member for Hughes (Mr. L. R. Johnson), only a few minutes ago, mentioned the marked increase in the number of enrolments in secondary schools. As I have said, there are some members on this side of the chamber who can speak with authority on this subject. Those who have some knowledge of these matters know that once enrolments in any class reach the high levels that now exist in schools throughout Australia individual teaching and coaching are practically impossible. I am sure that there must be some Government supporters who can appreciate the difficulties that are being experienced to-day in secondary schools throughout Australia as a result of the greatly increased enrolments.
It has been pointed out by the Leader of the Opposition (Dr. Evatt) that the submission of this matter for the Government’s consideration did not originate with Opposition members in this Parliament. The question has been submitted to the Government and to the Prime Minister himself by interested bodies through the Australian Teachers Federation. Only a week ago, members from this side of the chamber met in Sydney a deputation of representatives of interested organizations. The deputation was sponsored by the New South Wales Parent-Teacher Educational Council. It indicated to us that it had previously met the Prime Minister and had asked him, in the first instance, to consider providing in the Estimates for the 1958-59 financial year a special grant to meet the greatly increased cost of education that the States have to bear. These organizations then submitted to the right honorable gentleman a second recommendation that the Government should consider appointing immediately a committee similar to the Murray Committee to inquire into the needs of primary, secondary and technical education on a nation-wide basis. Opposition members completely agree with the submissions that were made to the Prime Minister in Canberra earlier this year by the representatives of interested organizations. However, I fail to find in the Estimates any provision of the kind suggested. We believe that unless this Government or some other government is prepared to appoint a committee of inquiry of the kind suggested by the Australian Teachers Federation and other interested organizations to investigate this question of the needs of primary, secondary and technical education the difficulties that we are facing to-day will increase greatly in the years that lie ahead.
I remember pointing out in this chamber on 6th May last that our secondary school population had increased so much in recent years that for every three students attending our secondary schools in 1958 there will be four in 1964. In only six years from now, the school population will have increased by at least one-third. The added demands will have to be catered for against the background of inadequate facilities, teaching staff and school buildings. Unless this Government is prepared to recognize the importance of education from a national stand-point as a sound national investment, and unless it is prepared to tackle the problem, these difficulties that we are facing to-day will greatly increase in the future. So I ask the Prime Minister to consider most seriously the appointment of a committee of the kind suggested to him by the deputation that I have mentioned. The Opposition is not at the moment concerned about who will constitute the committee. I have no doubt that there are available in this country sufficient educationists prepared to assist to the degree that the Prime Minister might require in a committee of this kind.
We cannot afford to lag behind other countries in this important field of education. Other honorable members already have pointed out how seriously we at present lag behind other countries in this respect. It is an appalling state of affairs in which only 45 per cent. of the children of fifteen years of age are receiving a fulltime education, as is the case in Australia. It certainly does not improve the situation when we realize that in 1956 more than 50,000 engineers were trained in the technical schools in Soviet Russia, compared with a mere 6,500 in the United Kingdom. I cannot even hazard a guess at the small number of engineers trained in Australia in the same year, but I have no doubt that it was considerably less than the figure of 6,500 for the United Kingdom. When we turn to tertiary education, we find, again, that Soviet Russia is far ahead of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia and the other Western countries, just as it is in secondary education, because it has been prepared to face up to the problem, while we in Australia have accepted a situation in which the States are starved of funds for education.
The Prime Minister, earlier this evening, referred to grants to the States in the field of education. I said by way of interjection then, and I repeat now, that some of the States can be penalized if they spend too much on the broad field of education. In this connexion, I refer to the report of the Commonwealth Grants Commission. We in Tasmania know that we have been penalized by the commission in previous years for our high expenditure on social services, and particularly on education.
–
Order! The honorable member’s time has expired.
.- Mr. Temporary Chairman, I want to make just a few brief remarks on the estimates now before the committee, with particular reference to education and to some of the remarks made by the honorable member for Bass (Mr. Barnard) on this matter. In the first place, the honorable member talked in terms of the cost of educating the children that we gain from the natural increase of the population, and also the children of migrants. I feel that Opposition members, and also a great many people in the community, have a completely wrong understanding of the proportion of the additional children due to natural increase and the proportion represented by the children of migrants. The natural increase of the population is responsible for 75 per cent. of the additional children and the other 25 per cent. is made up of the children of immigrants. Sir. I feel that we should get this matter in its right perspective lest we fall by the wayside in believing that immigration has produced yet another substantial problem within the community. The honorable member for Bass has talked in terms of a committee of inquiry. In that respect, he merely followed the line taken by many other Opposition members, who suggested that the Government should appoint a committee of inquiry in much the same way that it appointed the Murray committee to inquire into the universities.
Honorable members may recall that the final words of the Prime Minister (Mr. Menzies), at the conclusion of his speech a short time ago, referred to the question of costs. He asked how these additional grants by the Commonwealth to the States were to be financed. I feel that that is a legitimate question, in relation to which the Leader of the Opposition (Dr. Evatt), and every other speaker on the Opposition benches, has refused to make any comment. I believe that it is a very pertinent question.
This year the Commonwealth Government is making available to the States, in tax reimbursements, special financial assist-‘ ance, and special grants, the sum of £225,000,000, and it is the responsibility of the States to determine just how that money is to be spent. We on this side of the chamber who come from Queensland criticized the former Labour Government of that State for years and years because of its lack of consideration for education. Without the slightest doubt, there has been a tremendous improvement in Queensland in twelve months, under the present Australian Country party-Liberal Government. That surely indicates that if a State government desires to bring about an improvement in facilities for education, it has the means with which to do it.
The Prime Minister also mentioned that this Government has provided about £2,700,000,000 to the States in the period during which it has been in office. The States have spent approximately £500,000,000 of that amount on education. I believe that it would have been quite competent for the States to have increased that expenditure to £600,000,000, £700,000,000, or such other amount as they determined. We gave them, within that figure, not only financial assistance from our Consolidated Revenue, but also very substantial amounts from loan funds, heavily subscribed to by the Commonwealth Parliament to make up the short-fall in Commonwealth loan raisings.
I believe that this question of how we are to raise additional moneys for the States for education should be determined. The Opposition is not prepared to help us at all in this regard. Perhaps in their policy speech for the general election honorable members opposite will indicate that they are prepared to make an additional payment of £50,000,000, £100,000,000 or £150,000,000 per annum to the States. I therefore ask, as the Prime Minister asked: “ How will they raise the money? “ We all know perfectly well that this year we were faced with alternative propositions. Our choice was to increase taxation or issue treasury-bills. Is the Opposition prepared to say to-night in this place, “ We will raise the additional amount, be it £50,000,000 or £150,000,000, by extra taxation”? Or is the Opposition prepared to say, “ We will issue additional treasury-bills to that amount “? It seems to me that those are the only alternatives facing the Australian Labour party if it proposes to carry into effect the suggestions that its members have made to the committee. I suggest that as honorable members opposite have endeavoured to place so much emphasis on our responsibility for education, they should answer these questions before the debate is finished.
The Prime Minister did not indicate under any circumstances that we had not the same type of power in relation to primary or secondary education as we had in relation to university education, but I remind honorable members that the States have never made a request for assistance for primary and secondary education. I think it is a reasonable thing that the States, having the full responsibility, should make their request to the Commonwealth before the Commonwealth barges in, appoints a committee of inquiry, and undertakes the responsibility of finding additional money, if that should be recommended by such a committee.
I believe that the approach for the appointment by this Government of such a committee should in the first place come from the State governments. They will then put themselves in the position of being cross-examined in relation to what they are spending, what their requirements are, and why it is not possible to make more money available for education, as has been done in Queensland, out of the amount they receive at the present time. If the community looks at this problem in the light of the things that have been said by the Prime Minister in this debate and in a debate in May last, considering everything that has been said, the community will inevitably come to the conclusion that the Australian Labour party, in this debate, is doing nothing other than endeavouring to gain a slight political advantage on this question of education.
.- I should like to take this opportunity, first, of summarizing the position that the Prime Minister (Mr. Menzies) has reached now with regard to the Commonwealth’s constitutional power on education, and the most important step he has taken to-night. I should like also to answer the honorable member for Petrie (Mr. Hulme), who is, I should think, the most conservative of the accounting and economic minds on the other side. This most conservative gentleman is in the happy position this year, 1958, of defending a Budget which relies upon £110,000,000 of created credit- £110,000,000 of fiduciary issue. I find it a pleasure to be in the chamber with such a conservative honorable member having to face up to such a step as that. I did not think that I would live to see it.
I think I should first answer the question of the honorable member for Petrie as to where we would get the money for education, by reminding him that that is precisely the question that conservative gentlemen like himself have asked over the last century whenever any advance in social services has been proposed. It is always, “ Where would you get the money for pensions? Where would you get the money for education? “ But such conservative gentlemen, when proposing to spend £28,500,000 upon a munitions filling plant, which was built because it was of great urgency, and which last year did only £40,000 worth of work, find no difficulty in raising the money. But not for education, and not for pensions.
Before I turn to answering the Prime Minister’s question, I want to refer to the position that he took. In relation to the provision by the Commonwealth of finance for secondary and primary education, the rignt honorable gentleman, to my knowledge, has always taken the position that there was a certain constitutional difficulty which prevented the Commonwealth from coming into this field. Before he has the opportunity to speak and explain away this view - or try to - I want to remind him of the position he took up in this House on 6th May, 1958, when it was proposed by the honorable member for Wills (Mr. Bryant) that the Commonwealth should provide money for primary and secondary education. On that occasion, the Prime Minister said -
But I should like to say to the honorable member that I rather envy the easy way in which he sets the Constitution on one side . . .
If that is not making a submission that there is a constitutional difficulty in the way of the Commonwealth Government providing money for primary and secondary education, then I have never heard such a submission. The right honorable gentleman went on to say -
The fact is that education, except in Commonwealth Territories, remains a function of the States.
That is to say, there was, except in Commonwealth Territories, a constitutional difficulty in the way of the Commonwealth coming in. If it does not mean that, then I ask the Prime Minister to tell me what it does mean.
The Prime Minister, as I said, has now taken a most important step. He went through the reasons that I had given earlier in this debate as possible explanations for the Government’s refusal to come into this field. He put them on one side. He said that it is not a constitutional difficulty because section 96 allows the Commonwealth to come in. Where there’s a will there’s a way, and the way is section 96.
The constitutional difficulty disappears. The right honorable gentleman reviewed the historical difficulties that I had mentioned, and he is left now with two reasons why the Commonwealth cannot come into this field. The first is that the States have never asked for assistance; the second is that there are some practical difficulties in the way. It only requires a State to ask the Commonwealth to give it assistance for education, under section 96 of the Constitution, and the Prime Minister will be left with only the practical difficulties in the way, and those difficulties are, of course, so trivial that I suggest the right honorable gentleman would have no difficulty in putting them on one side.
I turn now to the remarks of the honorable member for Petrie. He said, “ Where will you get the money?” The honorable member for Moore (Mr. Leslie) put the matter in this way: If the Commonwealth says to the States, “We are going to give you some money for your secondary schools “, it will also have to say, “ But we will have to give you less money for some other requirement “. I point out to the committee that the Commonwealth will provide this year over £7,000,000 for State universities, and that it did not say to the States, “We will give you £7,000,000 for the universities; therefore you will have to take £7,000,000 less in some other direction “. That was not said, so why should it be said in the case of secondary and primary schools?
I refer again to the question raised by the honorable member for Petrie, who sees difficulties in providing money for education, but no difficulty in providing money for defence. Let me answer the honorable member in this way: The provision by the Commonwealth of money for education, as for pensions and other social services, requires, first, that the financial policy of the Government be soundly based. That is the first requirement. This Government has lived on inflationary finance. It has created a situation in which, by its own illadvised financial manipulations, it has assisted to destroy confidence in those persons who would lend to the Commonwealth money to finance its activities in those fields in which loan moneys are normally used. The policy of the Chifley Labour Government, as was pointed out so clearly last week by the honorable member for Fremantle (Mr. Beazley), required that the Commonwealth rely upon taxation and loans to obtain its revenue. This meant that it was necessary that those who subscribed to Commonwealth loans should be confident that the value of their bonds would remain at something like face value. A primary consideration of the Chifley Government was that the value of Commonwealth bonds should remain at about face value. Unless this is so, we cannot expect to get loan moneys. Therefore, the Commonwealth at that time supported the loan market.
When the Commonwealth was pursuing this policy, at no time did the Commonwealth Bank have to buy bonds in the market to anything like the extent to which it will be expected to do so this year. Right up to the peak period in 1952-53, at no time was money poured into the market, to maintain the value of Commonwealth bonds, to anything like the extent that the Government expects will be necessary this year. The Government’s financial policy has caused such a lack of confidence in Commonwealth loans that of the £327,000,000 of loans to be redeemed this year, it is anticipated that between £80,000,000 and £110,000,000 will not be converted. To meet this deficiency the Government plans to put £110,000,000 worth of fiduciary notes into circulation.
If the honorable member for Petrie, with his conservative financial bent, finds himself ready to support a policy of this kind, and to say that we cannot afford to provide money for education, then I ask him to come to grips with this question, and to explain the contradictions in his own argument. I suggest that we must have a government in office that will prevent the trading banks creating credit by their own process, and from putting that created credit into government bonds to such an extent as they have been doing.
I refer now to the point made by the honorable member for Fremantle, who said that the holdings of Commonwealth bonds and State Government securities by the trading banks has increased since 1951 from £67,000,000 to £151,000,000. This has resulted from the fact that the trading banks have been allowed to buy these bonds if they so desire. On the other hand the trading banks have been able to invest, directly and indirectly, in hire-purchase activities, and the level of such investment at the moment stands at £294,000,000.
– Order! The honorable member should return to the matter before the committee.
– All these questions are related to the point raised by the honorable member for Petrie, who asked how we can finance education grants. I suggest that if we draw these narrow distinctions that appear to exist in departmental thinking, then it is no wonder that we cannot find an answer to the question asked by the honorable member. This is fundamentally a question of public financial policy. If we permit the trading banks to create credit to the extent that they have done, and to spend that money on government securities, in financing hire purchase and in their own advance system, and if, on the other hand, we create £110,000,000 ourselves to give it to the bond-holders who will not convert, how can we expect to get money for education and other purposes without excessive inflation? We have about £1,000,000,000 worth of inflated expenditure as a result of this credit creation process that the trading banks have been permitted to carry on. It is no wonder that there is inflation. Unless the Government can control that volume, it cannot possibly find more money for education, pensions or anything else. The Government’s priorities are such that, rather than spend more money on education and pensions, it will allow the trading banks to create credit, so that expenditure in various other directions will be vastly increased. You can spend money in the defence sector, but you cannot spend money on education, and you cannot provide more than a miserable few shillings for age and invalid pensioners.
The answer to the honorable member for Petrie is simply this: The Government must introduce a sound financial policy, as distinct from the one that it follows now, which is unsound and biased in favour of the trading banks, and which involves inflationary finance for the purpose of filling the gaps in the bond market. If a sound financial policy is not introduced, the Government will never be able to provide money for education or any other worthwhile purpose. Until the Government comes to grips with its financial policy, the question of the honorable member for Petrie will remain unanswered. I suggest that he consider the matter in that light.
– I do not want to detain the committee, nor do I propose to follow the honorable member for Yarra (Mr. Cairns) into the airy fairy realms of his own financial theory because really, I have never heard anything more ridiculous in my life. There is not an ounce of practical sense in it. In one breath, the honorable member said, “ You should be raising more money on the loan market and would be doing so if you had not lost the confidence of investors “. He does not seem to realize that this country has received a degree of confidence from investors in these recent years without parallel, and that the urge to expand and the demand foi capital resources have been so great that inevitably, in those circumstances, the rate of interest has risen. The honorable member does not seem to realize that the rate of interest has risen because of this overwhelming demand arising from high confidence.
The Australian Labour party’s only proposal that I have ever heard about the loan market is that the interest rate it too high. I wonder what would happen if the supporters of the Labour party had their way and said, “ Whatever happens otherwise, we are going to reduce the rate of interest on Commonwealth bonds “. We would not raise £1 on the market. That would be the triumph of the strange theory that we have just been listening to.
– What has this to do with your argument?
– It has a great deal to do with it. I will not cover the debate on the Budget again but I will look forward to some future state of life to see what honorable members opposite do if and when they get into office. That will be the day, but it will be a bad day for the people of Australia. I shall be retired and, for all I know, dead; but I hope to have a look from on high at what goes on.
But if I may return to the estimates for the Prime Minister’s Department and, in particular, to the matter of education, I just rise to put the record right on two points. One is quite minor, but I think I should mention it. The honorable member for
Werriwa (Mr. Whitlam) asserted very roundly, when I said that we had carried out the recommendations of the Murray committee in toto, that that was not true - that we had not carried them out in relation to Commonwealth scholarships or in relation to the allowances to be made to Commonwealth scholarship holders or the means test to be applied to them.
I would suggest to the honorable member that, in a quite moment, he should read the report of the Murray committee. In particular, if he looks at page 66, he will see that the Murray committee made a recommendation in respect of each of those matters - that it should be considered by the universities commission. That was the recommendation of the Murray committee; and in point of fact, pending the creation of the new universities commission, we referred this matter to the existing universities committee. It made a recommendation on each of those matters which we have adopted completely.
Now, Sir, the other matter to which I wish to refer is this bogus allegation that has been made about my great conversion on the constitutional point. I have never heard more disingenuous statements in my life than those to this effect: “At last, the Prime Minister has admitted that, under section 96, grants may be given to the States for education purposes.” Of course, that statement is too silly for words; and how it is arrived at I am at a loss to understand.
After all, I remind the committee that I have had the satisfaction over a number of years now of introducing into this Parliament, long before the debate of May of this year, and seeing carried through, bills to provide grants to the States under section 96 for education purposes, to wit, their universities. How anybody in his sane moments looking at that could be heard to say, and induce other people to believe, that I think we cannot do it is, I repeat, too silly for words.
But, Sir, when we had the debate in May on the motion of the honorable member for Wills (Mr. Bryant), the honorable member for Hughes (Mr. L. R. Johnson) thought he was going to score a great debating point and quoted what I had said in a speech when I was Leader of the Opposition in this chamber in August, 1945. I look back on the speech with some satisfaction, because it was the first time that a motion had been submitted in this
Parliament on the question of education, and I had the honour of submitting it. In the course of it, I said this, and the honorable member for Hughes quoted the words as though they were a real killer -
Either by appropriations under section 81 of the Constitution, as to which I agree there is some constitutional doubt, or by conditioned grants to the States under section 96, as to which there is no constitutional doubt, the Commonwealth could make available substantial sums in aid of educational reform and development.
Then, of course, he went on to say that I had run away from that proposition; but by the irony of circumstances - I do not know whether the honorable member was here when that debate finished - the next business before the House was the States Grants (Universities) Bill which I handled. That was the very next business; it was introduced within a few minutes. If the honorable member thinks that universities belong to education and schools do not, I fail to understand him. The whole problem was whether we could make conditioned grants. I will not debate a constitutional problem with the honorable member for Yarra now. I am merely putting the record straight. The very next business in the House was the States Grants (Universities) Bill and the bill was -
A bill for an Act to make provision for the grant of Financial Assistance to the States in connexion with universities, and for other purposes.
Then, having had the advantage of hearing the lucubration of the honorable member for Hughes in which he quoted me I said this - having said that I had heard his remarks - and I hope that it is plain enough -
He will be very glad to know, I am sure, that this bill, like earlier bills in this field, gives effect to the views which he was good enough to quote from the speech I made in 1945. I then pointed out, as he was good enough to remind me, that the Commonwealth should, under section 96 of the Constitution, make grants to the States for specific purposes.
I then went on to elaborate a bill which made a grant to the States under section 96 for educational purposes, to wit, the universities. I apologize to most honorable members for taking up their time about it, but I feel I should answer this ingenious campaign in which honorable members opposite have tried to make out that what I have been saying for years - years before fortunately we had ever heard of the honorable member for Yarra - when repeated by me to-night, represented a sudden conversion as though I had seen the light on the road to Damascus. The whole matter is perfectly plain. It is a great pity indeed, if honest people outside who are interested in this great problem should have their minds confused by misrepresentation or by mere propaganda.
.- I wish to mention some features of the Commonwealth Scholarships Scheme merely because the Prime Minister purported to correct me in respect of some of my remarks on that scheme earlier this evening. I shall refer to sections of the Murray report dealing with this matter. First of all, paragraph 236 of the report states this -
We conclude that the number of scholarships offered should be increased without delay. Accordingly, we recommend that the Commission should be asked to make specific proposals about the number required.
The concluding portion of that paragraph refers to the commission -
The fact is that the number of scholarships to be offered is not being increased. A couple of weeks ago, outside the House, the Prime Minister made a statement amplifying a reference in the Budget to the Commonwealth scholarship scheme. I believe that the full text of that statement was as follows: -
Mr. Menzies said that the Government was not at this stage increasing the number of Commonwealth scholarships because university accommodation was already under great pressure, and the Murray Committee had reported heavy failure rates. However, the Universities Commission had been asked to keep the need for additional scholarships under review. An increase in applicants for scholarships, and in the universities’ capacity to cope with more students, would warrant the question of extra scholarships being re-examined.
Thus the committee reported that the number of scholarships should be increased without delay and suggested that the Universities Commission should see what number of scholarships should be offered in the immediate future. I think that I do not unfairly summarize the Prime Minister’s reason for not increasing the number of scholarships by saying that it was that the universities could not at present hold more scholars.
The next point on scholarships in the committee’s report appeared at paragraph 237. It stated-
We very much hope that the Commission will continue its investigations into this matter and that, if these confirm our views, it will be enabled to take steps, whether by easing very substantially the scales of the means test or by some system of hardship loans, to remedy the present position.
It is true that next year there will be a modification of the means test and a slight increase in the amount of the allowance. It is a subject upon which many members on this side of the chamber have spoken in recent Budget debates and in recent Estimate debates and upon which many members on the Government side have, by interjection, supported the remarks of members of the Opposition.
On the last occasion on which I spoke on this subject the honorable member for Perth (Mr. Chaney) and the honorable member for New England (Mr. Drummond) mentioned that the means test had not been altered during that period and, accordingly, the number of people receiving the allowance, as distinct from the free tuition, was dropping. Let me cite the extent of the scholarships and the allowances. Last year, as shown at page 1556 of “Hansard”, the Prime Minister gave me answers which showed that the number of students who were receiving Commonwealth scholarships rose from 7,372 in 1952 to 9,635 in 1956. The number receiving full living allowances in 1956 was 1,071, which was smaller than the number receiving full allowances in the previous two years. That is, only one in nine or ten of the scholars received full living allowances and the number has been declining. The number receiving part living allowances has also been declining. The number in 1952 was 1,369, in 1953 it was 1,521 and in 1956 it was 1,416.
Let me refer to the modification of the means test which is being made. I have no doubt that the honorable member for Fawkner (Mr. Howson), who is interjecting, could have had a university education without the aid of a scholarship or allowance. But, as the Murray report points out at paragraph 48, 16 per cent, of the population would be eligible for university education according to intelligence tests, while only 4.4 per cent, of persons in the seventeen to eighteen year old group enter upon tertiary education. The inference is plain that only one in every three or four of the people who could profit from university education get it in this country and the reason is very largely that no assistance is given by the States or the Commonwealth to people who reach the school leaving age and whose parents cannot afford to keep them there until they reach the university entrance age.
– They make more money at other things.
– I readily concede that that is one of the reasons. But it is in the interests of the country that students who are sufficiently bright to complete their secondary or technical education should be enabled to do so and that their standard of living should not suffer too greatly by comparison with those who leave school for the good wages paid to unskilled teenagers. We should provide a contrary lure. We can do that by providing secondary and technical scholarships for students under the 1946 amendment to the Constitution and by making grants to the States under section 96 of the Constitution for better educational facilities.
I wish to refer to the means test which is applied to these scholars. The maximum living allowance will be increased, at the beginning of next year, from £195 to £221 for scholars living at home, and from £299 to £338 for scholars living away from home. Maximum allowances will only be paid where the family income is £675. They used to be paid and they will continue to be paid until the end of 1958 if the family income is £650. From 1959 the permissible family income will be £25 more per year if the student is to be eligible to receive the maximum living allowance. That is not a “ very substantial easing of the means test “. 1 said in my first contribution to this debate that a student only received the maximum living allowance if his family income was the basic wage and I reiterate that. That is the fact. According to a letter from the Director of the Office of Education dated 19th August, the maximum allowance will be abated by £2 for every £10 by which the family income exceeds £675 as from 1st January next, instead of £3 for every £10 exceeding £650. as at present. The reduction in the abatement rate will merely account for the increase in the basic wage or the decrease in the value of money during the currency of this scholarship scheme.
I think I stated earlier to-night that a scholar would now receive the maximum allowance if there were three other children in the family only if his parents’ income were not more than £800 a year. I should have amended that to say that he will receive the maximum allowance if there are three other dependent children and if the parents’ income amounts to no more than £875 a year. At present it is no more than £850 a year.
I now refer to the last recommendation of the Murray committee on the Commonwealth scholarship scheme. It is in respect of the assistance afforded to post-graduate scholars. The committee referred with approval to the fact that the Universities Commission thought that there should be no means test relating to post-graduate scholarships, that the living allowance should be very much higher and that there should be an increased allowance for postgraduate students who are married. That is the longest of the committee’s recommendations and I shall not read it in further detail. The Prime Minister’s statement outside the House on this subject was that the number of post-graduate scholarships to be provided each year would be up to 100. He did not reveal in that statement, nor did the Treasurer say in the Budget, nor have we been told this evening, whether there will be any means test for post-graduate scholars or what the scale of the scholarships will be or whether there will be any further allowance for married scholars. That is just one of those statements about which we are told nothing. The full liberalizations, the full increases, about which the Prime Minister has orated so orotundly to-night, will cost £125,000 in this financial year.
One only has to quote the amount, Sir, to show what a trivial figure, even by a State or municipal scale, is being expended in extra allowances to encourage the able youth of Australia. We say, Sir, that it is about time that the teenagers of this country were given the incentive, as well as the opportunity, to achieve the educational standards of which they are capable.
– Why did not Labour do it when it was in office?
– There was a recommendation of the Commonwealth Office of Education to the Chifley Government at its last Cabinet meeting regarding a scheme of Commonwealth scholarships for university students on the one hand and for secondary and technical school students on the other, and when this Government came to office it implemented the first recommendation and scrubbed the other.
.- I have received a great deal of pleasure from watching the Prime Minister (Mr. Menzies) batting so skilfully on such a sticky wicket.
– He was bowled several times.
– Yes, but for some reason or other he did not leave the crease. He received scant support from other batsmen, too.
I want to deal with the points raised by the honorable member for Moore (Mr. Leslie) as they applied to me personally. The honorable member said that we were attempting to gain - this was probably the term he used - some party political point or advantage from this discussion. I point out to him that in my first speech in this House two and a half years ago I raised the question of education, and said that I regarded it as one of my personal ambitions to do something about it. I propose to continue on that line until the day comes when the schools blossom like the buildings of St. Mary’s.
Other points were raised by the honorable member for Petrie (Mr. Hulme). He made three points with which I want to deal. The first dealt with immigration. Secondly, he asked where the money for education was to come from, and thirdly, he claimed that the Government had given great assistance to education. I think that I shall start with the last point, the Father Christmas act, about what we do for the States. I turn to the figures on page six of the appendices to the Budget Papers, and to the last column, showing the totals. I note that in the last eight years the total amount provided by the Commonwealth as loan moneys has been £720,500,000. Some of that money has come from other sources, except from the direct Loan Consolidation and Investment Reserve. The total is £1,375,900,000. In other words, more than half the loan raisings from which the States build their schools have come from Commonwealth revenues. If we turn to the figures for those eight years we shall find that something in the region of £100,000,000 has been spent by the States on buildings for education from loan funds. What does that mean? It means that in those eight years the Commonwealth has supplied the State governments with practically all the money that has built those schools. The money was provided by the Commonwealth from revenue, and the States were charged interest on the amount.
– I call the honorable member for Lyne to order.
– I should think so, Sir. He has his back to the person who is speaking, and that is very undignified conduct on the part of the person who has represented us at the United Nations.
For this year, if we take the full amount of £100,000,000 as having come from Commonwealth revenue, the States are footing an interest bill of at least £5,000,000. Five million pounds is an awful lot of money to the States. It is almost equal to the capital invested in school buildings each year in a State the size of Victoria. It would build nearly fifty high schools. These are simple, relevant facts. The Father Christmas story about what we have done for the States leaves me cold. As the honorable member for Yarra (Mr. Cairns) says, this financial policy is completely strangling the States, and the legislative responsibility for their present condition rests with this Parliament and, because of its numbers and the way that it uses them, with this Government. That is a fact which cannot be denied, and I think that it is a fact that the people of Australia should realize. They should appreciate that this fantastic policy by which we are raising money, lending it to the States and charging them interest on the amount is strangling State public works.
Other figures on page seven of the appendices to the Budget Papers - I presume that most honorable members opposite will be able to read them if they have not lost the documents - show the relationship of the loan raisings and the way in which the debt has been passed to the States. The Commonwealth has been doing this out of revenue. Compare the schools in Canberra with those in Melbourne, Hobart, Sydney or elsewhere! Compare the facilities in the schools! There is, in reality, no comparison between them. The people of Australia have the right to demand that the principles that apply in respect of schools in Canberra should apply to schools for children in other parts of the country.
I come now to the question: Where is the money coming from? I am not employed by this Parliament to supply the answer to that question, but in the last two-and-a-half years I have seen a couple of excursions into high finance by the present Government. Shortly after we were elected, the Prime Minister came here, and speaking in his smoothest possible manner, with one foot placed comfortably on the seat at the table, he told us about the economic state of the nation and of the financial remedies that he proposed to take to solve the problems. When we added things up, we found that he had raised taxation by a cool £115,000,000. He had not mentioned three months before that he intended to do so. That was indirect taxation, of which I disapprove. A heavy tax was placed on consumer goods, and so on. That was at one extreme. Now we have a Budget which provides for a deficit of £110,000,000, to be financed by various methods. There probably will be a supplementary budget next year. I am putting these points to the prosperous honorable member for Petrie. After all, he said by way of interjection that it was because we were so prosperous that we were able to do the things of which he spoke. I hope that my comments will be noted by his friends, particularly the honorable member for Capricornia (Mr. Pearce).
Let us turn back to the speech of the Minister for Territories (Mr. Hasluck). Being a gentleman, he tried to explain how this figure of £110,000,000 had been arrived at.
–
Order! Will the honorable member get back to the subject before the committee?
– I am answering the questions posed by the honorable member for Petrie.
– You are making a speech on the Budget.
– I am dealing with the question of where the money for education is coming from. Is that not relevant?
– It is not a matter of discussing the whole Budget over again.
– No. It was stated that the Government had to decide on a deficit between £90,000,000 and £120,000,000, so it chose £110,000,000. It could just as easily have picked £120,000,000 and built another 100 high schools. Those are thoughts that come to me, Sir, from considering the statements made by honorable members opposite.
Finally, there is the question of the effect of immigration on our schools. It can be assumed that the immigration policy has resulted in an additional 125,000 children entering our schools. I arrive at that figure by taking the statistical basis that one-eighth of the population of Australia is in State schools. Therefore, if we have brought 1,000,000 migrants here, that probably has resulted in 125,000 additional children going into the schools. If we multiply that number by the £80 or £90 that it costs each year to educate a child, it means that we have imposed an added burden of perhaps £10,000,000 on the education system. That is 10 per cent., at least, of the total cost. Therefore the responsibility lies here. There is no way of avoiding the issue. I am not interested in the Prime Minister’s explanations of what happened in 1946 or 1949 when he was in opposition, or what he said on 6th May. That concerns me not a bit. After all, none of this quibbling, none of this skilful debating, none of the attempts to divert the argument, have built a single school building, nor will they. Therefore, I was interested to hear the points made by honorable members opposite who had had the opportunity since 5 o’clock to make up their minds about what they wanted to say. Neither the honorable member for Moore nor the honorable member for Petrie has supported his leader.
Proposed vote agreed to.
Progress reported.
House adjourned at 11.2 p.m.
page 768
The following answers to questions were circulated: -
ser asked the Prime Minister, upon notice -
What programme has been laid down for the transfer of other Commonwealth departments to Canberra after the transfer of the Defence and Service departments is completed next year?
– The answer to the honorable member’s question is as follows: -
The transfer of the Defence and Service departments planned for 1959 and early 1960 is an initial move for those departments. It will be followed in due course by a more complete transfer, which will round off the Defence and Service departments and embrace also the central administration of the Department of Supply, which is regarded as part of the Defence group. Additionally, there are 7 civil departments, the central administrations of which are located in Melbourne. No definite programme has yet been drawn up for the movement either of the remainder of the Defence group of departments or of the civil departments, nor has the priority of movement as between these been determined. The Government has, however, established a Coordinating and Steering Committee under the chairmanship of the Chairman of the Public Service Board, which will consider the broad requirements of the total move of central administration to Canberra. The committee will, in due course, advise the Minister for the Interior on accommodation and other requirements and also on questions of priority. The speed of the transfers will depend, in the main, on availability of accommodation and, for the present, available resources will be fully occupied in coping with the initial Defence move.
b asked the Treasurer, upon notice -
Will he consider an amendment of the Income Tax and Social Services Contribution Assessment Act to provide that verifiable fares or reasonable transport costs incurred by workers in travelling to and from their place of employment shall be allowable deductions for income tax purposes?
– The amendment of the income tax law to allow deductions for those expenses is a matter of budgetary policy. I have no doubt that the subject will be considered when Budgets of the future are under preparation.
t asked the Treasurer, upon notice -
– The answer to the honorable member’s questions are as follows: -
t asked the Treasurer, upon notice -
– The answers to the honorable member’s questions are as follows: -
m asked the acting Minister for External Affairs, upon notice -
– On the assumption that the honorable member’s question relates to the four conventions known as the Red Cross Conventions of 1949, the answers to the questions are - 1 and 2. Australia’s ratification of the conventions has not yet been deposited but final arrangements in connexion with our ratification are just about completed and I should hope that we should be in a position to transmit the necessary instrument to the Swiss authorities within the next few weeks.
Papua and New Guinea.
k. - On 12th August, the member for Macquarie (Mr. Luchetti) asked the Minister for Territories a question regarding a complaint that under a restrictive trading practice the Colonial Sugar Refining Company Limited will not supply cooperative societies in Papua and New Guinea with sugar.
Particulars now received show that the complaint originated in a telegram received by the co-operative Federation from the Colonial Sugar Refining Company Limited. The telegram stated that sugar could be supplied only through recognized island merchants. A letter subsequently received from the company explains that sugar is sold for export free at wharf, Sydney, lt was further explained that this practice necessitated the purchasing organization providing its own agent to arrange for shipping, &c, and that the Co-operative Federation was free to choose any agent it desired. The Registrar of Co-operative Societies in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea has informed the Administrator that the later correspondence between the federation and Australian millers discloses that there is not in fact any restrictive practice in force, nor is there any monopoly by an agent or group of agents.
asked the Minister for Territories, upon notice -
k. - The answers to the honorable member’s questions are as follows: -
Native Labour Ordinance 1950-1956.
Transactions with Natives Ordinance 1893-1952 (Papua).
Natives’ Contracts Protection Ordinance 1921-1952 (New Guinea).
Native Apprenticeship Ordinance 1952-1955.
Native Crown Servants Ordinance 1941 (Papua).
Royal Papuan Constabulary Ordinance 1939-1940.
Police Force Ordinance 1931-1940 (New Guinea).
Public Service Ordinance 1949-1958.
The regulations made under the Native Labour
Ordinance 1950-1956 prescribe a minimum cash wage of 25s. per month, in addition to the provision of accommodation, medical attention, food, lathing, cooking utensils and other issues, rations and issues for the worker’s family if accompanying him to his place of employment, and return fares to the place of his engagement. Wages for skilled workers vary and a cash wage in excess of the prescribed minimum is paid having regard to the worker’s skill. Provision is made within the wages scale for each designation of worker for yearly incremental advancement. The maximum cash wage at present paid to a skilled native worker, other than an officer of the Auxiliary Division of the Public Service, is £279 10s. per annum. The Public Service (Auxiliary Division) Regulations 1956, made under the Public Service Ordinance 1949-1958 prescribe a minimum salary of £400 per annum for an adult male and £300 per annum for an adult female. The maximum salary prescribed for an officer of the Auxiliary Division is £700 per annum. Natives admitted to the First, Second or Third Divisions of the Public Service are paid the same “ basic “ or “ regulation “ rate of salary as a European employed in the same class of work.
t asked the Minister for Territories, upon notice -
– The answers to the honorable member’s questions are as follows: -
t asked the Minister for Territories, upon notice -
– The answers to the honorable member’s questions are as follows: - 1. (a) One officer, (b), (c), (h) One officer, (d), (e) Two officers, (f) This function is performed by several officers in conjunction with other duties, (g) Seven officers. 2. (a) £2,069. (b), (c), (h), £4,750. (d), (e) £4,500. (f) Nil. (g) £19,000.
t asked the Minister for Territories, upon notice -
– The answers to the honorable member’s questions are as follows: -
Department of the Navy.
y asked the acting Minister for the Navy, upon notice -
– The answers to the honorable member’s questions are as follows: -
As at 31st July, 1958- 1. (a) Naval personnel - 10,748 (includes 26 cadet midshipmen not on pay). Civil personnel - Public Service Act, 1,607; Naval Defence Act: salaried 2,244, wages 4,187; total, 8,038. (b) Naval personnel, 284. Civil personnel - Public Service Act, 651; Naval Defence Act: salaried 61, wages 59; total, 771.
9,749.
Naval Base in Western Australia.
b asked the acting Minister for the Navy, upon notice -
Has any further consideration been given to the provision of a naval base with essential docking facilities on the Western Australian coast?
– The question of dockyard facilities on the Western Australian coast has been raised from time to time. The strategic advantages that would result from the establishment of a naval base with dockyard facilities are fully appreciated.
However, these facilities were not considered to be of sufficient priority for inclusion in the present naval programme. As no additional requirement has arisen no reason is seen for altering this decision.
t asked the Minister for the Army, upon notice -
– The answers to the honorable member’s questions are -
t asked the Minister for the Army, upon notice -
– The answers to the honorable member’s questions are: -
t asked the Treasurer, upon notice -
– No official estimates are available of national income and expenditure in Papua and New Guinea. The national income and expenditure estimates set out in the White Paper which accompanies the Budget relate to the six States plus the Australian Capital Territory and Northern Territory.
Cite as: Australia, House of Representatives, Debates, 26 August 1958, viewed 22 October 2017, <http://historichansard.net/hofreps/1958/19580826_reps_22_hor20/>.