1966-10-12 25 1 6 REPS 1605 0 1966-10-12 Mr. SPEAKER (Hon. Sir John McLeay) took the chair at 2.30 p.m., and read prayers. 1605 Questions 1605 1605 JZP 0 0 FULTON, William Mr FULTON - I ask the Postmaster-General a question without notice. 1 have been informed that members of the Australian Broadcasting Commission's orchestra have not been granted a wage increase of $2 although technicians who work with them have received the $2 increase. What is the reason for this discrimination? Are not members of the orchestra entitled to the $2 increase granted by the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission? 1605 KIF LP 1 0 HULME, Alan Mr HULME - I am afraid I cannot give the honorable member a direct answer. I will certainly look into the matter he has raised. Yesterday I approved an additional payment in relation to journalists employed by the Australian Broadcasting Commission but there are so many categories of employees within the Commission that it is impossible to keep up to date with all of them. I know that there have been discussions between certain groups and the management of the Commission. I will see what details I can obtain and advise the honorable member. 1605 1605 KKB 0 0 JESS, John Mr JESS - Will the Minister for the Army consider attaching selected Citizen Military Forces officers as observers to the Australian Regular Army battalions in Vietnam for a period of, say, a fortnight or more in order that they may gain some experience with these battle units, which would be of great benefit, I am sure, to the morale of the C.M.F.? 1605 QS4 LP 0 0 FRASER, Malcolm Mr Malcolm Fraser - The honorable member will know that, in the normal course of their duties, officers of the Australian Regular Army go to Vietnam on staff and liaison duties for periods of up to two or three weeks at times. I am hoping that within a relatively short time it will be possible to send selected officers of the C.M.F., probably of the rank of captain and major, to Vietnam for two or three weeks to see at first hand the conditions in which our forces are operating. I believe such experience would be of particular value to their units in Australia. It is too early to give a firm decision on this matter but I have every hope that the right decision will be reached. 1605 1605 6U4 0 0 WHITLAM, Gough Mr WHITLAM - My question, directed to the Minister for Immigration, is prompted by the case of a school teacher who has migrated from the United States of America because he no longer wants to work and live in the integrated racial conditions which the United States Supreme Court, Congress and Administration have striven to achieve. What inquiries does the Department of Immigration make into the racist views of the increasing number of applicants in the United States and the decreasing number in South Africa and Rhodesia? In view of the repercussions for Australia in the world generally and not least in the countries of origin, what attitude does the Department take towards those prospective migrants who proclaim their view of Australia as a racial refuge? 1605 KMB LP 1 0 OPPERMAN, Hubert Mr OPPERMAN - I would say that the inquiries made regarding people who are migrating from countries such as the United States of America would cover security, character, general background and fitness to be in this country. I would not imagine that personal views such as those mentioned by the honorable member would be canvassed. Perhaps it is unwise for people to express extreme views, but I should think that the views expressed from time to time by honorable members on the other side of the House are far more extreme than any views held by this gentleman. 1605 1605 DB6 0 0 WENTWORTH, William Charles Mr WENTWORTH - My question is directed to the Minister for the Interior. Can he say definitely on what date the rolls for the forthcoming election will close? Will his Department publicise the desirability of all eligible persons who are not on the rolls making application to be included before that date? 1605 BU4 CP 0 0 ANTHONY, Doug Mr ANTHONY - I cannot say definitely on what date the rolls will close, as it is not my province to announce the date for the issue of the writs. However, I think this will be done in the very near future. It is with the issue of the writs that the rolls are closed. After that date, people cannot have their names put on the rolls. I will take note of the honorable member's suggestion that publicity be given to the need for people to become enrolled. I will see whether we can do something now to encourage anybody whose name is not on the rolls to become enrolled immediately. 1606 1606 JVU 0 0 NELSON, John Mr NELSON - I address my question to the Minister for Territories. Will he say whether the Government intends to withhold assent to the Land Tenure Transitional Provisions Bill which was passed by the Legislative Council of the Northern Territory? In view of the uncertainty, and in many cases actual hardship occasioned to occupants of the land involved, by the delay in giving assent, will the Minister take urgent action to promulgate the legislation without further delay? 1606 JOA CP 0 0 BARNES, Charles Mr BARNES - A decision has not been taken on the .-Bill mentioned by the honorable member Tor the Northern Territory. I also have a great concern for the people on the coastal plains area who at present, in a sense, have a temporary licence for occupation. It is unfortunate that the Bill includes some amendments which, in my view, do not accord with the Government's policy. I am awaiting the decision of Cabinet on this matter. I hope it will be dealt with very soon. 1606 1606 JLT 0 0 ALLAN, Archibald Mr IAN ALLAN - I desire to ask the Minister for Social Services a question. He will be aware that, where a large number of pension cheques are handled by a post office in a relatively small centre, such as Tingha in northern New South Wales, some difficulty is experienced by business houses in providing cash when this is requested by pensioners. This situation is brought about because Tingha, like many other centres of a similar size, is visited by a bank on only one day each week. Can the Minister suggest a means of overcoming this problem? 1606 5E4 CP 0 0 SINCLAIR, Ian Mr SINCLAIR - The honorable gentleman and other honorable members have been in constant touch with officers of my Department and with me since we announced a change would be made to try to encourage all pensioners to receive their pensions by cheque. There does seem to be some difficulty for residents of Tingha, the town mentioned by the honorable member for Gwydir, and residents of other small communities. Consequently, in any circumstances where a pensioner believes that it is to his advantage to continue to receive his pension payment by order book, arrangements are being made for him to continue to do so. However, the order book system., is not completely efficient administratively and it is intended at some, time in the future, although planning is not yet complete, to transfer from an. order book to a type of cash voucher which will be transferable in the same way as the present vouchers .extracted from the order book are. It is hoped that it, will be possible for these to be converted into cash to meet the convenience of pensioners who find that payment by cheque is not satisfactory. At the same time I would say that over '90 per cent, of pensioners are now receiving payment by cheque, and this seems to be meeting their needs in terms of availability of pension money. 1606 1606 KID 0 0 LUCHETTI, Anthony Mr LUCHETTI - I ask the Prime Minister: Does he know that serious discontent exists in certain Commonwealth Government departments because of long standing grievances relating to annual leave and the payment of wage and salary increments? Will the right honorable gentleman, as Leader of the Government, take immediate action to provide annual leave benefits to Commonwealth employees on the same basis as those enjoyed by workers employed by the State of New South Wales? Finally, will he, at this belated hour, give effect to the principle of equal pay to male and female workers engaged in similar work classifications? 1606 009MC LP 1 0 HOLT, Harold Mr HAROLD HOLT - Dealing with the latter part of the question first, I point out that the Government's view on this question of equal pay was stated by me when I was Minister for Labour and National Service. It was reaffirmed by my colleague, the present Treasurer, when he held the portfolio of Labour and National Service, and I think it has been reaffirmed also by the present holder of that portfolio. There should be no ambiguity about our position, but I shall see that a copy of the Government's official statement on this matter is made available to the honorable gentleman. He asked about annual leave and about wages and conditions. I do not know specifically what he had in mind in respect of wages and conditions, but if he gives me a little more detail 1 shall try to let him have a full answer. Some time ago I received a deputation of representatives of the Public Service organisations and I undertook to bring the views of that deputation, which was pressing for four weeks' annual leave for Commonwealth public servants, to the Cabinet. A Cabinet submission has been prepared which goes fully into this matter. I should expect it to be considered shortly and a decision to bc reached for announcement before the Parliament rises. 1607 6U4 0 0 WHITLAM, Gough Mr Whitlam - And before the present Bill is passed? There is a Public Service Bill on the Senate notice paper. 1607 009MC 0 0 HOLT, Harold Mr HAROLD HOLT - But not dealing with annual leave. 1607 1607 KIW 0 0 MACKAY, Malcolm Dr MACKAY - Is the Minister for Defence aware of any solution to a major problem arising out of two proposals from the Deputy Leader of the Opposition; first, that Australian troops be withdrawn from Vietnam and, secondly, that Australia send a large team of civilian workers to that country? Will he endeavour to ascertain whether the latter proposal has complete disregard for Australian lives or whether it anticipates a guarantee of safety either by the Vietcong or the United States and allied enlisted men whom we would have deserted- 1607 6U4 0 0 WHITLAM, Gough Mr Whitlam - Mr. Speaker, I rise to order. You were not here during the last few weeks when other questions were asked purporting to be based on statements I had made. It is not difficult from " Hansard " or from other sources to verify what I have said. I would expect you, Sir, to insist that a person basing a question on a report should be ready to verify that report. During your absence another question was based on a report which was said to be a report of something I had said on television, and the next day the newspaper from which the questioner had been quoting expressed regret that it had misreported me. The technique that has been developed by some honorable members opposite is to take some summary of remarks, place an interpretation on it and then ask a Minister to comment. It is not a matter in respect of which a Minister has any responsibility, and the questioners are not in a position to verify the ostensible reports, in relation to some of which in fact the newspapers have later expressed regret for having been inaccurate. 1607 10000 0 0 SPEAKER, Mr Mr SPEAKER - Order! I point out to the honorable member for Evans that he has directed attention to a statement and has quoted from it. Under the Standing Orders it will be necessary for him to vouch for the accuracy of the statement. 1607 KIW 0 0 MACKAY, Malcolm Dr MACKAY - I verify that I have seen, in the ordinary and accepted means of communication- 1607 10000 0 0 SPEAKER, Mr Mr SPEAKER - Order! The honorable member has a straight out obligation, that is, to vouch for the accuracy of the statement, or not. 1607 KIW 0 0 MACKAY, Malcolm Dr MACKAY - Yes, I vouch for it. 1607 BV8 0 0 CALWELL, Arthur Mr Calwell - Mr. Speaker, I raise a point of order. An honorable member cannot vouch for a statement by merely asserting that he vouches for it. 1 submit the honorable member has to prove to your satisfaction that what he says, is true. I would not believe a word he says. 1607 10000 0 0 SPEAKER, Mr Mr SPEAKER - Order! I point out to the honorable member for Evans that it is to the House that he is guaranteeing that he can vouch for the accuracy of the statement. 1607 KIW 0 0 MACKAY, Malcolm Dr MACKAY - I saw it on television and I still vouch for it. 1607 10000 0 0 SPEAKER, Mr Mr SPEAKER - Order! Does the honorable member persist with his guarantee as to the accuracy of the statement? 1607 KIW 0 0 MACKAY, Malcolm Dr MACKAY - Yes. 1607 10000 0 0 SPEAKER, Mr Mr SPEAKER - I call the Minister for Defence. 1607 KEN LP 1 0 FAIRHALL, Allen Mr FAIRHALL - This seems to be where we came in last week. I hope we can get through this situation without a repeat of last week's performance. 1 have not seen the report to which the honorable gentleman refers and therefore I should like to have the details of it. I hope honorable gentlemen opposite will remember what has been said today when they ask questions of Ministers in the future because if they are required to verify the statements on which they base their questions there will be a lot fewer questions asked in the House. All I can say is that I am generally aware of the vast variety of interpretations given by the Labour Party of what purports to be its policy. 1608 BV8 0 0 CALWELL, Arthur Mr Calwell - Nonsense. 1608 KEN 0 0 FAIRHALL, Allen Mr FAIRHALL - There is no nonsense about it. The honorable gentleman himself has contributed something like 10 variations on the same theme. 1608 BV8 0 0 CALWELL, Arthur Mr Calwell - Nothing of the sort. 1608 KEN 0 0 FAIRHALL, Allen Mr FAIRHALL - I can only say in answer to the question that the House and the people of Australia must be completely confused on what the Opposition proposes. There have been various reports, some of them undoubtedly authenticated by the newspapers themselves, containing photostats of the texts from which statements have been made. These indicate that, immediately on election to office, the Labour Party would bring home the whole of the Australian force. 1608 BV8 0 0 CALWELL, Arthur Mr Calwell - No, no. That is wrong too. You do not even read. 1608 KEN 0 0 FAIRHALL, Allen Mr FAIRHALL - Yes I do. 1608 BV8 0 0 CALWELL, Arthur Mr Calwell - I do not think you can read. 1608 KEN 0 0 FAIRHALL, Allen Mr FAIRHALL - The honorable gentleman may correct me and I will accept the correction gladly because I will be happy to know if I have misinterpreted him, but he did propose to bring home all the national servicemen. 1608 BV8 0 0 CALWELL, Arthur Mr Calwell - That is right. 1608 KEN 0 0 FAIRHALL, Allen Mr FAIRHALL - This inevitably involves the complete withdrawal, or at least the regrouping and perhaps retraining, of the whole Australian component in Vietnam. 1608 BV8 0 0 CALWELL, Arthur Mr Calwell - That is completely wrong too. 1608 6U4 0 0 WHITLAM, Gough Mr Whitlam - And the whole component will be coming out between March and June under your own programme. The Australian generals in Vietnam told me this. 1608 KEN 0 0 FAIRHALL, Allen Mr FAIRHALL - Here is another statement by the Deputy Leader of the Party who quotes the dates on which Australian servicemen will come out of Vietnam. As I am completely unaware of any agreement with the United States on this, it means the Labour Party proposes to reduce our troops without any by-your-leave and without proper consultation with our ally, the United States. I hardly think this is the code of behaviour anyone in Australia would like its Government of the future to follow. The only thing I have to say is that the Labour Party is completely confused as between the military effort and the effort of civil reconstruction which essentially must follow it. There can be no guarantee of peace and security for the agencies of reconstruction, unless it is military security, until the matter in Vietnam is settled by victory or by agreement. 1608 1608 JPJ 0 0 BIRRELL, Frederick Mr BIRRELL - My question is directed to the Minister for Trade and Industry, is it a fact, as reported in the Adelaide " News ", of Thursday, 6th October 1966, that some motor vehicle companies have asked the Government to revise the 95 per cent. Australian content rule when annual sales of a model reach a level between 7,500 and 20,000 units? If this is a fact, has the Government yet made a decision on this most important matter? If it has not yet made a decision, will the Minister now provide a ray of hope and encouragement for the many thousands of workers in the Australian motor vehicle industry by giving a firm assurance that the Government does not intend to alter the prevailing conditions and so import further unemployment into this country? 1608 009MB CP 0 0 MCEWEN, John Mr McEWEN - Reports on this matter have led to a misunderstanding of the position. The reports quite frequently state that the Government required some motor producers to achieve a 95 per cent. Australian content in their products by a certain date, and certain other motor producers a different content. The position is that for many years the motor industry has been assisted by a variety of means. One of the principal means has been to permit assemblers or manufacturers of motor cars in Australia to import important sections of cars without payment of duty, notwithstanding that duties were prescribed in the tariff schedule for some of these items. The forgiving of duty was done under the by-law system. This has proved a valuable method of encouraging the establishment of this great industry. But a point of time was reached at which a very big proportion of components was being imported duty free, notwithstanding that the tariff schedule provided for duties. The Government decided to regularise this position and it told the companies that they could continue to import their components duty free for a period of five years if they declared that by the end of that time they would have a 95 per cent. Australian content in their products. This is desirable. It will provide employment and save exchange. It is desirable in every respect. This meant that for the first time one motor company would know the circumstances in which another motor company was importing items, and whether it was paying duty or not paying duty. Quite a number of motor vehicle assemblers and manufacturers took advantage of this proposition. Now that there has been, not what I am prepared to call a recession in the motor industry but a relapse from an extremely high level of production and registration to a level some 20,000 units or more a year below that previously high level, some of the companies have said that they are quite content to go on but others have said that they see themselves having some trouble. In these circumstances what we have said is: " Right, come and talk to us. If you can establish that the engagement you entered into is difficult for you to live up to and that without prejudicing the general objectives of the Government we can have a standstill period and extend the time within which you will reach the 95 per cent. Australian content, we will be quite ready to consider granting such an extension." At the present time officials of the Department are active in discussions, with a view to eliciting the facts, with the motor companies that are asking for this modification of the engagement which they voluntarily entered into. 1609 1609 KEP 0 0 FALKINDER, Charles Mr FALKINDER - I direct this question to you, Mr. Speaker. I ask whether you have examined or thought about the situation that existed previously when we had a number of Parliamentary UnderSecretaries. Are you prepared to give a ruling before you retire, as I also shall be doing, as to the validity of the position of Under-Secretary? 1609 10000 0 0 SPEAKER, Mr Mr SPEAKER - I think this is a matter that is outside the administration of the Speaker and, therefore, it is out of order to direct such a question to him at question time. 1609 BV8 0 0 CALWELL, Arthur Mr CALWELL - On the same point, Mr. Speaker, will you consider the ruling given by your predecessor that UnderSecretaries have no position in the Parliament under the Constitution and therefore could not be called upon to answer questions; and if they took salary for service as Under-Secretary they would be liable to have their seats declared vacant? 1609 10000 0 0 SPEAKER, Mr Mr SPEAKER - I would say this: My great reverence and respect for the late Archie Cameron's judgment would indicate to me that I would be 99 per cent, correct today in agreeing with what he said on this matter. 1609 1609 K9M 0 0 JOHNSON, Leslie Mr L R JOHNSON - I direct a question to the Minister for Defence. I preface it by saying that from my recent observations in Saigon I know that the flags of some 14 nations are flying to indicate that they provide civilian aid to South Vietnam. Is it not a fact that most of these nations have no troops in Vietnam to protect their civilian personnel? 1609 KEN LP 1 0 FAIRHALL, Allen Mr FAIRHALL - It may also be that the nations whose flags fly in Saigon are acting under the military protection of nations who do have troops there. 1609 BV8 0 0 CALWELL, Arthur Mr Calwell - What has that got to do with it? 1609 KEN 0 0 FAIRHALL, Allen Mr FAIRHALL - It has a fair bit to do with it. I merely say that the Labour Party is getting its priorities completely mixed. 1609 JSU 0 0 BRYANT, Gordon Mr Bryant - The Minister is in trouble. Two marks out of ten. 1609 10000 0 0 SPEAKER, Mr Mr SPEAKER - Order! 1609 KEN 0 0 FAIRHALL, Allen Mr FAIRHALL - I am not in any trouble, Mr. Speaker. I merely say that the Labour Party is putting the cart before the horse. The country must be pacified before we can build with any security. 1610 1610 KET 0 0 KING, Robert Mr KING - My question is directed to the Minister for the Interior, and I preface it by reminding him that in many polling centres at election time great difficulty is often experienced in securing satisfactory personnel to man the booths, ls it true that, as a result of a ruling given by the Commonwealth Electoral Officer, in future such personnel will not be reappointed if they are over the age of 65 years, and that in exceptional circumstances this may be extended to 70 years of age? If this is so, will the Minister 'consider altering the instructions to allow the Divisional Returning Officer the authority to reappoint personnel of any age, providing that those to be appointed have the qualifications and ability that would be beneficial to all concerned? 1610 BU4 CP 0 0 ANTHONY, Doug Mr ANTHONY - There is no .prohibition on polling clerks being over the age of 65. It is the responsibility of the Divisional Returning Officer to obtain personnel who will provide the highest standards of practical efficiency on polling day. Although the job of polling clerk is not difficult, it requires long hours of concentrated work and does tax the stamina and eyesight, of the polling official. It is for this reason that the Divisional Returning Officer tries to obtain younger people if possible. However, where qualifications are equal, preference is given to ex-servicemen or to persons in indigent circumstances. 1610 1610 KDV 0 0 JONES, Charles Mr JONES - I direct my question to the Minister for Civil Aviation. Is he aware that on 6th July 1965 the Newcastle City Council wrote to the New South Wales Regional Director of Civil Aviation and sought the provision of air space necessary for a civil airport for Newcastle on the Hexham site and that since that date the Lord Mayor, aldermen and the Town Clerk have written, phoned and personally interviewed the Regional Director asking for a reply and a decision? Why has not the Council received a reply to these representations, and are there any sound reasons for not granting the necessary air space so that Newcastle can have a civil airport independent of the Royal Australian Air Force base at Williamtown? Does the Department of Air object to the granting of this air space because the site of the proposed civil airport at Hexham is close to the R.A.A.F. base at Williamtown? Will the Minister have the Council's request investigated immediately so that it can have a reply to its correspondence of 6th July 1965? 1610 KVR LP 1 0 SWARTZ, Reginald Mr SWARTZ - It has not been possible so far to conclude the matter in relation to proposals for an airport at Hexham. It is a fact that the Council there has written to my Department in Sydney and raised the matter on several occasions. It is a fact also that my Department has replied to the Council. I believe that two or three letters have been written to the Council. The first was in the form of an acknowledgment, and then followed a letter advising that the matter was still under consideration but that no decision had been made regarding the proposals which had been submitted. The honorable member also has written to me direct regarding this matter, I think at the request of the Chamber of Commerce in Newcastle. The reply that I gave him a couple of months ago indicated that we were still negotiating with the Royal Australian Air Force regarding the control of air space in this region. I am afraid that situation still applies today. This matter is not easy of solution because quite a large R.A.A.F. base is established there and quite an amount of civilian traffic is operating in the region at the same time on a commercial basis, as well as general aviation. Consequently, I am afraid that I cannot give the honorable member an answer at the present time. Negotiations are still proceeding and. as soon as it is possible to do so, I will advise him of the decision. 1610 1610 L0N 0 0 WHITTORN, Raymond Mr WHITTORN - I address a question to the Minister for Trade and Industry. Is there any accuracy in the report which indicated that Australia was willing to consider reducing tariffs on imports of Japanese industrial goods in return for concessions on primary produce sent from Australia to Japan? Can the Minister tell the House what manufacturing goods would be involved in an agreement of this nature? 1611 009MB CP 0 0 MCEWEN, John Mr McEWEN - The position is that Australia is engaged in negotiations with all countries which are parties to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, pursuant to the Kennedy Round of negotiations. The character of these negotiations is that each country will negotiate with any other trading partner with which there is scope for negotiation, but no finality will be concluded bilaterally. If any progress were made it would be endorsed only in a total sense within the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and, therefore, any concessions given by any country as an outcome of negotiation, even with one country, would be concessions given to every one which was a party to it. The whole concept of this is that Australia, seeking concessions, must be willing to give concessions. I make two points here: First, I secured a decision at a meeting of the Kennedy Round countries that Australia was absolved from the general rule of a uniform tariff cut. We, New Zealand and South Africa have been absolved from that rule, so we are under no obligation. But we have said that we will pay for it. I have said repeatedly, as I Say now, that we will not make tariff concessions which prejudice existing Australian industries - that is flat and unqualified - but there are a number of items on which we can reduce tariffs. I refer to industrial items which we do not produce in Australia and which there is no prospect of producing in Australia. Many of these items have been identified for us by the Tariff Board. A list of the items covered by the inquiry is available to any honorable member who wants it. Some are items in respect of which we can offer to reduce tariffs without prejudicing an Australian industry. There is another category of tariff items in respect of which we give a certain level of preference in our tariff schedule as a result of existing trade treaties. If the existing trade treaties are altered as an outcome of the Kennedy Round tariff negotiations, we shall be free to make reductions in some of those cases where we have given preferences already. But that would be the outcome of what some other countries did, not the result of our initiative. I repeat to the House and the country that it is not the intention of this Government to make tariff concessions which will prejudice existing Australian industries. 1611 1611 JZX 0 0 COLLARD, Frederick Mr COLLARD - I should like to preface my question, which is addressed to the Treasurer, by referring to the reply given by him yesterday in which he said that he felt that some incentives could be given to the production of gold by way of a subsidy on an international basis and, further, that while some time could elapse before this happened, he felt that it would eventually happen. I now ask the Treasurer: Will he, for the purpose of ensuring that there is no further decline in Australia's gold mining industry between now and the time when a determination in relation to an international incentive is arrived at by the International Monetary Fund, take immediate action to provide an increase in the present subsidy to both large and small producers with a view to helping to offset the rather substantial increase in the costs of production which has occurred since the Gold-mining Industry Assistance Act was amended some 16 months ago? If he will not do this, then how does he substantiate his argument that any currency should be tied to gold? 1611 009MA LP 1 0 MCMAHON, William Mr McMAHON - Dealing with the last part of the honorable gentleman's question first, let me say that there is no logical connection between his question and my statement yesterday. I believe there is a strong case for an increase in international liquidity and I believe also that there is a very strong case for tying any increase in liquidity to gold. After all, gold is the. foundation of international finance at the moment, and we think it should stay that way. As to the part of the honorable gentleman's question relating to the subsidy, this is a matter of Government policy and as yet I have received no request about it. 1611 1611 JSE 0 0 BRIDGES-MAXWELL, Crawford Mr BRIDGES-MAXWELL - I address to the Minister for Trade and Industry a question which follows to some extent that asked by the honorable member for Balaclava. The New Zealand-Australia Free Trade Agreement has now been in operation for some period. Can the right honorable gentleman state whether any dislocation has occurred to Australian industries, in particular to the dairy, pigmeat, bean and pea industries'.' I ask this question in view of the fears expressed by members of the Opposition last year and engendered by them in those industries. 1612 009MB CP 0 0 MCEWEN, John Mr McEWEN - The New ZealandAustralia Free Trade Agreement has been in operation for more, than nine months now, and figures of trade for the first eight months of this year are available. Notwithstanding all the scaremongering that went on earlier for political reasons, the position is that no pigmeat has been imported from New Zealand in that period. This arises from the fact that there was and still is a quarantine restriction. Not one pound of pigmeat has been imported. But, because of the rumours that were circulated. I was fortunate enough to have the President of the New South Wales Branch of the Australian Pig Society write to me a month ago saying - We were worried about the outcome of this Agreement and we would have been upset if we had been prejudiced. In the circumstances, I think it is fair to lel] you, Mr. McEwen, that in Sydney recently we have had inquiries as to whether Australia can supply pigmeat to New Zealand. The Agreement permitted 400 tons of cheddar cheese to come into Australia this year. For the first eight months of the year, the rate of entry of cheddar cheese has been approximately three-quarters of the permitted rate of 400 tons a year. So no danger has arisen there. This is not an arranged question, but it so happens that I have in my hand a letter which I received from my colleague, the Minister for Supply (Senator Henty). He has been very watchful of the interests of the vegetable growers in Tasmania who had their fears aroused in connection with this Agreement. I think that the House, which has displayed great interest in the proposition, will be willing to listen to me for about another 30 seconds. Senator Henty tells me that he approached various processors of green peas in Tasmania. The first factory advised that it had already contracted at the volume for which it contracted last year. The second factory advised Senator Henty that it had doubled last year's contract purchases of green peas. The third factory advised him that it had substantially increased its contract. There were two factory processors of green beans. The first of these advised Senator Henty that its contracts for this year were 50 per cent, higher than those for last year. 1612 KCB 0 0 DAVIES, Ronald Mr Davies - What rubbish. 1612 009MB 0 0 MCEWEN, John Mr McEWEN - This is unpleasant hearing, is it not? It brings out the lying and the scaremongering that you practised before. The second factory processing green beans advised that it had contracted for a 100 per cent, increase compared to its contracts for last year. 1612 6U4 0 0 WHITLAM, Gough Mr Whitlam - Did the Minister say " lying "? 1612 009MB 0 0 MCEWEN, John Mr McEWEN - Yes, I said " lying ". 1612 10000 0 0 SPEAKER, Mr Mr SPEAKER - Order! 1 think the right honorable gentleman- 1612 009MB 0 0 MCEWEN, John Mr McEWEN - I said that there was lying last year. If the Deputy Leader of the Opposition likes, I shall withdraw that remark. What was said last year was wrong, lt was incorrect. In respect of processed carrots, the first factory reported a substantial increase in its contracts. The second factory reported a 100 per cent, increase in its contract purchases. 1612 BV8 0 0 CALWELL, Arthur Mr Calwell - This is question time. The Minister should not make his reply too long. 1612 009MB 0 0 MCEWEN, John Mr McEWEN - There is just one more item - red beet. I am sure that the honorable gentleman is very interested. The first factory processing red beet reported a substantial increase in its contracts. The second factory reported a 100 per cent, increase. I want to be frank about the facts. The only ripple that I see on the surface is some indication that there may be an assault on the Australian paper market in respect of a certain item from New Zealand, and this could generate a counter attack by Australian paper producers, which was possible under the terms of the New ZealandAustralia Free Trade Agreement. I say, as I have said before in this House: This would be a very unhappy byproduct of an agreement designed to be for the good of both countries. 1612 1612 KF5 0 0 GRAY, George Mr GRAY - I direct a question to the Minister for the Army. Will he arrange for troops taking part in the exercise known as Operation Barra Winga to parade through Rockhampton in accordance with the representations that I made to him last month on behalf of the Rockhampton Sub-branch of the Returned Services League of Australia? 1613 QS4 LP 0 0 FRASER, Malcolm Mr Malcolm Fraser -I may owe the honorable member an apology. As he says, he made representations to me on this matter. Through channels in which this was not known and in which it was not realised that I had become interested in the matter, the fact that a march through Rockhampton is to be held has already been announced, I think. This march will take place on 5th November. It will involve about 2.500 troops, comprising two infantry battalions, a mechanised column and a cavalry squadron. There will be a fly past of Army light aircraft at the same time. This event will take place at the end of the exercise, and most of the troops will march through Rockhampton on their way to the railway station.I would like to make just one other point: The Army is most appreciative of the way in which the authorities and the people in Rockhampton have co-operated with the Service since it has been involved in the Shoalwater Bay area. This is something that has made the part that we play much easier than it might have been. 1613 1613 KDS 0 0 FAILES, Laurence Mr FAILES - My question is directed to the Minister for Social Services. I ask: As the system of establishing regional offices of the Department of Social Services outside metropolitan areas has met with approval and success, will the Minister make investigations with a view to opening an office of his Department in the city of Dubbo in the Lawson electorate where it should serve more than the number of people necessary to justify the existence of a regional office? 1613 5E4 CP 0 0 SINCLAIR, Ian Mr SINCLAIR - Like many other honorable members, the honorable member for Lawson has an interest in securing a regional office of my Department not only in Dubbo but in other centres in his electorate. In the past 12 months the Department has extended into quite a number of country centres and intends in the future to open regional offices wherever possible. However, the opening of an office depends on the amount of business within a community. Although there is within a radius of 20 miles of Dubbo a population of about 28,000 people there is not at this time a great deal of inquiry from the officer who attends Dubbo from Orange as business warrants. I will look into the possibility of opening an office in Dubbo in the future but I cannot hold out any immediate prospect. Ministerial Statement 1613 miscellaneous 1613 009MC Higgins LP Prime Minister 1 0 HOLT, Harold Mr HAROLD HOLT . - by leave - Honorable members will recall that, in reply to a question without notice by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Calwell), I said that the Government was planning on the basis that the general election would be held on 26th November this year. I now wish to inform the House that this date has been confirmed. The intention is to dissolve the House of Representatives as at noon on 31st October 1966. The date set for the issue of writs is 3 1st October 1966. Nominations will close on 7th November 1966. 1613 papers 1613 009MA Lowe LP Treasurer 1 0 MCMAHON, William Mr McMAHON . - Mr. Speaker, I present the following papers Taxation - Forty-fifth report of the Commissioner of Taxation dated 1st October 1966. Taxation Statistics, 1964-65. and move - That the papers be printed. I ask for leave to make a short statement. 1613 10000 0 0 SPEAKER, Mr Mr SPEAKER - There being no objection, leave is granted. 1613 009MA 0 0 MCMAHON, William Mr McMAHON - As a result of proceedings in the High Court in the McGrath case, it is not desirable that copies of the report be made available to honorable members and the public until the Parliament has given the necessary authorisation. I have mentioned this matter to the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Calwell) and he has agreed not to oppose the motion in order that the report may be circulated as soon as possible. Question resolved in the affirmative. 1613 miscellaneous 1613 1613 JSY McMillan 0 0 BUCHANAN, Alexander Mr BUCHANAN - In accordance with the provisions of the Public Works Committee Act 1913-1965 I present the report relating to the following proposed work - Development of Airfield Pavements at Coolangatta Airport, Queensland. I ask for leave to make a short statement in connection with the report. 1614 10000 0 0 SPEAKER, Mr Mr SPEAKER - There being no objection, leave is granted. 1614 JSY 0 0 BUCHANAN, Alexander Mr BUCHANAN - The proposal is that the main runway shall be extended by 500 feet to 6,500 feet with a sealed stopway of 200 feet at each end. The main taxiway is to be widened from 50 feet to 75 feet to comply with international requirements and a new loop taxiway is to be constructed between the runway and the existing main taxiway. The two airline companies serving Coolangatta - Ansett-A.N.A. and TransAustralia Airlines - intend to upgrade the services provided by using Electra and DC9 aircraft as soon as possible to cope with the heavy increase in passenger traffic at this popular centre. Construction of the works in this reference is recommended with an addendum that the adequacy of aircraft parking facilities should be kept under review. The attention of the Committee was drawn to the fact that at some peak periods there is some congestion on the parking apron, usually caused by the scheduling of flights by both companies originating from Melbourne and Sydney but arriving at Coolangatta at approximately the same time. A small adjustment of timetables would overcome this problem. In addition, it is felt that the provision of the loop taxiway will offer holding facilities for loaded aircraft waiting to take off while other aircraft landing might require the use of the runway and the parking apron. The cost of the proposal as referred to the Committee is $1.3 million. Ordered that the report be printed. Rebuilding at H.M.A.S. " Nirimba ". Mr. BUCHANAN (McMillan).- In accordance with the provisions of the Public Works Committee Act 1913-1965 I present the report relating to the following proposed work - First Stage of Progressive Rebuilding at H.M.A.S. "Nirimba", Quakers Hill, New South Wales. I ask for leave to make a short statement in connection with the report. 1614 10000 0 0 SPEAKER, Mr Mr SPEAKER - There being no objection, leave is granted. 1614 JSY 0 0 BUCHANAN, Alexander Mr BUCHANAN - It will be noted that this is the first stage of a master plan to rebuild H.M.A.S. " Nirimba" in permanent construction at a cost estimated to be between $8 million and $9 million. This Naval establishment provides training of Naval artificer apprentices, who provide the main source of the skilled tradesmen required for the maintenance of the Fleet's propulsion machinery and weapons and communications systems, as well as for the preservation of the ships' hulls. The expansion of the Navy and the introduction of a wide range of complex modern equipment into ships, submarines and aircraft have precipitated a rapid expansion in the intake of apprentices and so created a need to modernise this training establishment. There are at the establishment at present some 660 apprentices. This number is expected to increase in the near future to 720. There is a pressing need for the barracks blocks proposed and also for a building required for marine engineering demonstration. Recently a fire destroyed the ward room block, which has made it necessary to provide accommodation for officers at this establishment. Construction of the works in this reference is recommended. When referred to the Committee the estimated cost of the works was $1.8 million. Ordered that the report be printed. 1614 miscellaneous 1614 Motion (by Mr. Fairbairn) agreed to - That Government business shall take precedence over general business tomorrow. 1614 bill In Committee. Consideration resumed from 11th October (vide page 1589). Second Schedule. Prime Minister's Department. Proposed expenditure, $60,752,000. 1614 6U4 Werriwa 0 0 WHITLAM, Gough Mr WHITLAM .- I move - That the proposed expenditure be reduced by $10. I do so to express condemnation of the Government for its failure to conduct an inquiry into all aspects of education in government and non-government schools and for its failure to make adequate provision for teacher training. The standards in Australian secondary schools in particular are not keeping up with the standards of comparable countries because the Commonwealth has not concerned itself with them. The Commonwealth's involvement has been inhibited by the two issues of State rights and State aid. In the last 20 years, the Commonwealth has assumed the sole or the major role in almost all the important fields which used to be described as State responsibilities. It provides all the finance for housing and rail standardisation and more than half the finance for road construction, health services and universities. Schools are the only substantial exception in this postwar pattern, and they represent the greatest single item in every State budget. The Australian school system is a dual one. State finances are fully committed to departmental schools. It is not practicable for the States to divert funds to needy private schools, lt is not practicable for the Commonwealth to help one sector alone of the dual system. It must help both if it is to help either. Only the Commonwealth can now ensure that an equal opportunity is given to every student to develop his natural talents, irrespective of his parents' locality, religion, means and occupation. As long ago as 1945, the Chifley Government passed the Education Act, which provides for Commonwealth grants to the States and to other authorities for educational purposes. The Act set up the Commonwealth Office of Education to advise on these grants to public and private schools. The staff of the office was slashed in half in 1951. Temporary and specific committees had to be set up later to recommend and implement Commonwealth aid to education. The science blocks legislation in 1964 was the first Commonwealth innovation without a preliminary inquiry. It has been rendered largely ineffective through the subsequent rejection of the Martin Committee's recommendations for teacher training. The former Prime Minister, every year since we started moving a resolution on the estimates for his Department in these terms - I think the first occasion was 1958 - always rejected our proposition and all his supporters joined him in voting against it. The present Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Holt), I regret to say, in answer to a question asked by my colleague, the honorable member for Stirling (Mr. Webb), has repeated the refusal to hold an inquiry into Australia's primary and secondary education needs. His justification is that inquiries of this kind are matters for each State. lt is still apparently necessary to survey the field of Commonwealth and State financial relations before one deals with this greatest single remaining item of State financial responsibility. In the last full financial year before the First World War, the total revenue and loan expenditure by the Commonwealth was £23,897,000. By the States, it was f 68,007,000. In the last complete financial year before the Second World War, the total expended by the Commonwealth was £98,596,000 and by the States £128,535,000. This, it is necessary to recall, was before the time of uniform income tax. The first figures were before the days of the Financial Agreement. The financial situation of the Commonwealth and the States has been completely transposed in the course of the last generation. I shall now deal, in greater detail, with the proportion of State budgets which has been spent on education. In the last complete financial year before the First World War, 8.25 per cent, of State budgets was spent on education. In the last complete financial year before the Second World War, it was 9.43 per cent. In 1963-64, the last period for which it has been possible for me to elicit information by questions on notice addressed to the Treasurer (Mr. McMahon), it had risen to 20.89 per cent. It is quite clear that the percentage of the State budgets being spent on education is now rising by geometric proportion. It is of interest to notice that the State activity on which there has been the greatest decline in expenditure - in fact, a corresponding decline in expenditure - has been public transport. I now analyse the proportions of the State expenditures on education in the various fields. Here I quote from the reports made to us each year by the Commonwealth Grants Commission. In 1942-43, the first financial year for which the Commission dissect. a the different school expenditures, the States' expenditure on universities per head of population was ls. 3d. In 1963-64 it was 28s. 2d. On secondary education between those years, it rose from 4s. 9d. to 86s. 5d. On primary education, it rose from 25s. 2d. to 144s. Id. It will be noticed, Mr. Chairman, that between these years the expenditure per head on primary education increased sixfold; on secondary education and on university education, twentyfold. It is in university education alone that the Commonwealth has helped to meet the bill. The lavish special plea put in by the Government in July of this year under the title " The Commonwealth Government in Education " lists the percentage of current State revenues devoted to education in 1964-65 as over 3.1 per cent, and of gross loan expenditure as 19.4 per cent. The utter disparity between the Commonwealth's interest in university education - not tertiary education as a whole, because very notably there is no interest at all in teacher training, which is certainly tertiary education - and other education is made quite clear by this document. The interest in schools has been fractional. The proportion of moneys found for universities by the Commonwealth has varied, according to an answer given to me yesterday by the Prime Minister, between 40.6 per cent, of the total income in the case of Monash University and 27.9 per cent, in the case of the University of Queensland. The percentage of total income received from the States varies between 50.6 per cent, in the case of Monash University and 33.5 per cent, in the case of the University of Sydney. On the other hand, fees over the years have amounted to an ever smaller proportion of the universities' incomes. The Martin Committee reported to us that in 1914 fees represented 30 per cent, of the income of universities. In 1944 they had decreased to 19 per cent., in 1950 to 18 per cent, and in 1954 to 11 per cent. In the figures the Prime Minister gave me yesterday, the percentage of the total income received from fees by the universities varied between 14.6 per cent, in the case of the University of Sydney and 4.5 per cent, in the case of Monash University. The f:cs. however, are in fact largely paid by the Commonwealth, because university fees paid by the Commonwealth varied between 44.5 per cent, of the total fees received by the University of Sydney and 19.8 per cent, of the total fees received by the University of New England. Whatever way we look at it, it is clear that university expenditure has risen and that the Commonwealth's interest in universities is continuing and expanding whereas the Commonwealth's interest in other forms of tertiary education and in secondary, technical and primary education has remained absent. If the States were unable to cope with university expenditure without equal Commonwealth participation how can they cope with their very much greater school expenditure without Commonwealth participation? For some years past - ever since Professor Karmel's Buntine Oration in May 1962 - educationists and members of the Australian Labour Party have quoted the comparative percentages of gross national product spent on education in Australia and in the countries with which Australians compare themselves, and also the comparative percentage of teenagers undertaking full time education in Australia and in the countries with which we compare ourselves. Doubt has been cast by Government supporters at seminars, and in each chamber, on the current relevance of Professor Karmel's figures. The doubters did not attack Professor Karmel's figures for the years he quoted because Professor Karmel had been appointed by the Government to many of its ad hoc committees. On 4th October, however, at the 10th Theodore Fink Memorial Seminar at the University of Melbourne, Professor Karmel concluded that though the percentage of Australia's gross national product spent on education has risen, the increase has been enough merely to cater for the higher percentage of children in the school age group and represents no qualitative improvement at all over the 4i years since he delivered the Oration which we on this side support and which honorable members opposite disparage. There has never been such a clear case of the absence of planning in any government field in Australia as there has been with education. In fact, the principal State field of expenditure is the one in which there has been no national investigation at all. The consequence is that greater and greater inequalities are developing in the opportunities available for Australians until they secure admission to universities. The second part of my amendment refers to teaching. Teachers are the basis and the nucleus of all education. Australia's urgent need is to produce enough properly trained teachers in all subjects in all schools. As the Martin Committee on the Future of Tertiary Education in Australia recommended, teacher training must increasingly come under the auspices of the universities and thus of the Commonwealth. Only in this way will teacher training be accepted as a national responsibility and the status of teachers be raised. Teachers must more and more be regarded as members of a nationwide and international profession as well as members of a State public service or a religious order. Teacher training should be free of bonding and fees. Trained teachers should bc free to accept appointments wherever they choose, in State schools, private schools or Territory schools. Nobody with a knowledge of the cost of education or a knowledge of Commonwealth and State financial arrangements can fail to realise that our State and private schools will never acquire staff, facilities and equipment such as Australia needs and comparable countries provide, unless and until the Commonwealth comes to play as big and expanding a role in financing and co-ordinating them, both State and private, as it already plays in relation to the universities. 1617 KVG Maribyrnong 0 0 STOKES, Philip Mr STOKES .- I wish to refer to the operation of the Public Service Act and the Commonwealth Superannuation Act, both of which are under the administration of the Prime Minister's Department. In particular I want to refer to the modus operandi that is followed when a temporary member of the Public Service applies for permanent status. The acquisition of this status is vital to him for the rest of his career because it governs his promotion in the Public Service, his salary and, most of all, his superannuation. The Commonwealth lays down certain legislative requirements. One is the age qualification. A clerical examination has to be passed. A departmental agreement as to retention of service for a certain period of years has to be entered into, and finally the person must undergo a medical examination. I wish to refer to the medical examination. Where a member satisfies the other conditions I have mentioned, the medical examination has a threefold effect. It determines, first, whether he is eligible for superannuation. If he is not, it determines whether he is eligible to contribute to the Provident Account. Finally, it determines whether he is ineligible for either of those benefits. The medical examination is carried out by one Commonwealth medical officer. I know that in borderline cases this officer can refer to some of his colleagues. He can discuss the case with senior members of the Public Service Board. My point is that only one medical officer makes the physical and clinical examination of the member's body. I know that a set of standards is drawn up by the Public Service Board and the Department of Health and that they have a committee that meets several times a year to decide what standards shall be maintained and what standards shall be altered in accordance with changed medical techniques. However, the point is that the member is physically examined by one medical officer only, and that officer's opinion is not open to professional challenge. If a member disputes his rejection on medical grounds he may make a written request for his private medical officer to be furnished with his medical file. He can get a copy of the medical file, but he does not get the reasons for rejection. To my knowledge there is no other professional opinion in any field that is so insulated by departmental secrecy and which is not open to challenge by professional peers. Consequent upon this single opinion - an arbitrary opinion - a man's livelihood and that of his family may be materially affected. Changes in medical science, even in the postwar years, have been tremendous, and we must admit that the attitudes of medical men to changes can never be uniform, because how they react to changes in their own fields depends on individual antecedents. There is a wide variety of medical opinion even in respect of the more common complaints. I saw an article in the Melbourne " Sun News-Pictorial " some months ago written by Alan Trengove in which he quoted some remarks by Dr. M. O. Kent Hughes, Chairman of the Medical Education Committee which operates under the auspices of the Australian College of General Practitioners. He said - The family doctor, like every other professional man, faces an unending struggle to cope with " the knowledge explosion ". Medical knowledge has doubled in the past 20 years and doctors today use only 30 per cent, of the drugs they prescribed seven years ago. Each one of us, from his own experience, knows of differing medical opinions and sometimes opposing views which have been offered by either general or specialist practitioners; but in the context of qualification for permanency in the Public Service we are left with only one medical opinion and, if that medical opinion is adverse to the applicant, it is not open to challenge. There is ne appeal. I took up this matter some time ago with the Minister for Health (Dr. Forbes) and more recently with the Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Holt). 1 have recommended, the presentation of amending legislation to enable the establishment of a medical board of appeal to deal with disputed cases, a medical board where the applicant concerned can be represented by his own medical officer who will have communicated to him, as from one medical source to another, the reasons for the rejection of the application. Let me make myself clear. 1 offer no criticism of the Commonwealth medical officers. I have the highest regard for them. I am criticising only the system under which they work, a system which in my view is undemocratic and does not afford the degree of justice which is normally afforded in courts of law. I illustrate my proposal by referring to a specific case. This concerns a young man who enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force in 1952 after being medically examined and accepted for a six year term. In 1954 he was feeling a bit worried about certain matters so he went to his R.A.A.F. medical officer who suggested that the young man undergo psychiatric treatment. This he did. He had one month's rest in hospital, one month of insulin treatment and a further two months of occupational therapy and rest. He was finally discharged as cured in January 1955 and returned to his unit in which he continued to serve until 1958 when he was again medically examined for a further term of enlistment of six years. He was classified medically Al. When he completed that six year term in March 1964 he was again medically examined and classified Al. He was then a sergeant engine fitter. He signed on in the R.A.A.F. Reserve to which he is still bound. Two days after discharge from the R.A.A.F. he was accepted for employment as a senior examiner with Quality Control Branch, Department of Air. He passed the examination for clerical assistant on 4th July 1964, was medically examined and was appointed to a permanent position. A month went by and he asked why he was not contributing to the Superannuation Fund. He was told that the Department had not yet received his Air Force medical file. To make a long story short, when the Department received his medical file it scrubbed him, despite the fact that this man, married with young children, had been in first class physical and mental health for the previous ten years. His whole future has been completely upset as a result of a single medical opinion which is confidential to the Public Service Board and from which there is no right of appeal. In reply to my representations, the Minister for Health said that the man's previous Air Force history had been examined and the decision as to his permanent appointment had not been taken lightly. The Department recommended that this young man was not acceptable as a contributor for superannuation benefits or even for the Provident Account. There the matter ends. There is no appeal. Stemming from this matter of the medical examination of applicants for permanent employment there is the further matter which I have put before the Prime Minister for over three years. It concerns the people who apply for permanent appointment, are rejected and who remain temporary employees. They are denied all retirement benefits because of their lack of physical fitness. The present system is neither just nor fair. I suggested to the Prime Minister three years ago that these people should be given the option to contribute to the Provident Account on the express condition that if they failed for any reason to serve their full time until retirement they would accept repayment of their contributions in full settlement of their claim. This seems to me to be the perfectly normal thing to do. These people would then have the option, if they served their full time until retirement, as often occurs, of receiving a lump sum payment from the Provident Account upon retirement. Experience has shown that there are many people who have done this. Medical treatment these days is such that they have been able to continue working until the normal retiring age. One can imagine how they feel when a person who joined the Service at the same time as they did and worked alongside them - one accepted for the Provident Account and the other not - retires with a substantial payment from the Provident Account while all they have is their furlough pay, provided they are entitled to that. One of my constituents was in this position. He suffered a heart condition and worked as a clerk but his heart condition did not interfere at all with his work. In fact, he did not lose one hour from work in the whole of his service. A fellow clerk who suffered acutely from stomach ulcers lost a good deal of time because he was in great pain but he had been accepted for the Provident Account. That man retired with a lump sum of $3,000 whereas my constituent retired with nothing. The Prime Minister advised me on 18th February this year that my proposal was being examined but because it was a radical departure from present superannuation principles the examination must be necessarily a lengthy one. Personally, I do not agree that it is a radical departure because repayment of contributions when a member of any insurance scheme falls down on any of the conditions of his contract or agreement is a matter of precedent. If a man falls down on his contract his contributions are refunded and his contract is at an end. There is nothing radical in that. I cannot see why a fund like the Provident Account, which involves no actuarial consideration, could not operate in that way. The contributors pay in their money and the Account will not be adversely affected by the repayment to them of a lump sum. They will have made their contributions over the full term from the date of acceptance to the date of retirement. There can be no adverse effect. I ask the Minister for Immigration (Mr. Opperman), who is at the table, to convey my remarks to the Prime Minister. It is now three years since this matter was first raised and I believe he should now give urgent consideration to that matter and also to the proposal to establish a medical board of appeal in the Public Service. If these two suggestions are implemented by amendments to the legislation I am sure the Public Service will be much happier in the future and a lot of the present dissatisfaction will be removed. I repeat the two prime matters that I have raised. First, I suggest the establishment of a medical board of appeal, and secondly, I suggest that applicants for permanency who are rejected on medical grounds should have the option to contribute to the Provident Account on the express conditions I have mentioned. If these two proposals are implemented I am certain the Public Service will be a much happier place in which to work. Although one may agree with certain aspects of the amendment proposed by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Whitlam), such as the lack of teacher training and so on, the appropriations have been determined. I support them and reject the amendment. 1619 KYS Barton 0 0 REYNOLDS, Leonard Mr REYNOLDS . - I rise to support the amendment which has been moved by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Whitlam) as a means to condemn the Government for its failure to conduct an inquiry into all aspects of education in government and non-government schools and its failure to make adequate provision for teacher training. 1 assert that there is a very definite crisis in education in Australia today. I suggest that it takes a number of forms. First, we have insufficient and inadequately trained teachers. Secondly, there are no real plans for improving the supply of teachers with genuinely professional qualifications for either State or non-State schools. Thirdly, there is an appalling shortage of even reasonable classroom accommodation and teaching equipment. Fourthly, there are increasing inequalities of educational opportunities, arising out of heavy reliance on private coaching and also on parents' and citizens' organisations for the purchase of vital school requisites, including even capital items, such as libraries, gymnasiums and assembly halls. I assert that these inequalities are also intensified by the increasing scarcity of Commonwealth secondary school scholarships. Fifthly, only a very small amount of educational research is being carried on in Australia. Sixthly, there is a failure on the part of the Government to make any realistic assessment of what place the non-State system of education is to have in the Australian community. It is fair to say that stark poverty faces the State educational services - not only the State schools but also the private schools. I do not want to dwell on what goes on in respect of universities and on what the Government is doing in respect of colleges of advanced education. Legislation that is to come before the House shortly will provide me with ample opportunity to speak on those matters and the reports dealing with them. But there is one thing I do want to note, and that is that the Commonwealth Government has put the States in a most invidious position. It has denied them, at meetings of the Australian Loan Council, the funds necessary to carTy out important services, including the very vital education services. Then it has also set out, on the basis of the report of the Universities Commission and the report dealing with colleges of advanced education, a programme of assistance over the next three years which involves very substantial expenditure by the States to match Commonwealth grants. The programme for State universities envisaged by the Universities Commission involves the expenditure, for both capital and recurrent items, of $446 million over the period 1967-69. It is all very well for the Commonwealth to tell the Australian public that something like S600 million is to be spent in the next three years on these two forms of tertiary education, but the situation bears a closer analysis. The Commonwealth's share of the expenditure for State universities will amount to $175 million out of a total of $446 million. In other words, the States will be required to find $271 million out of the total of $446 million. Moreover, of this total amount 74 per cent, is for what is described as recurrent expenses, and of this amount the States are required to provide $1.85 for every $1 provided by the Commonwealth. This imposes extremely heavy burdens on State Governments. As a matter of fact this was recognised by the Universities Commission in its report, and the Commission made a very strong recommendation that from now on the Commonwealth should meet dollar for dollar the recurrent expenses of the universities and the tertiary colleges. But as those of us who have read the Minister's speech on the matter are aware, the Commonwealth has rejected Ais recommendation. As a result the States cannot even accept all the offers of the Commonwealth by way of matching grants, and so there will be $56 million less spent on this programme than was recommended by the Universities Commission. But the important aspect of the situation is that the Commonwealth is compelling the States, under this system of matching grants, to divert money from primary, secondary, technical and teacher education to universities and the new forms of tertiary education. I am suggesting to the Committee that this is a very lopsided form of educational development in Australia. Let us look at some of the characteristics that cause worry and create crisis conditions in primary, secondary, technical and tertiary education. First, let us look at the position in respect of teachers. I asked the Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Holt) a question on notice recently. I asked him how many graduate and non-graduate secondary science teachers were employed in each of the States and the Commonwealth Territories during the last 1 0 years. Despite the fact that the Commonwealth Government has tried to make the community believe it is giving high priority to science education in schools, the Prime Minister had to tei) me that this information was not available to him. In other words the Commonwealth is telling us that it does not know how many science teachers there are to teach in the science laboratories of secondary schools run by the Commonwealth, let alone those run by the States and subsidised by the Commonwealth. As to teachers, the worrying fact is the inadequate number of fully qualified teachers available for secondary schooling in most of the States. More and more children are staying on to complete secondary schooling. In my State of New South Wales secondary schooling now continues for six years. This takes it to a level of education that has never been available before. At the same time we see a declining proportion of graduate teachers available to teach our children matriculation subjects. As a matter of fact, in my State I think only about 46 per cent, of teachers in secondary schools have graduate status and the proportion is declining year by year. When I look at figures provided to me by the Prime Minister on 18th August I find that in Queensland in 1955 the number of degrees held by full time secondary teachers was 373 while the number of full time teachers without degrees was 361. In other words, in 1955 in Queensland there were almost equal numbers of graduate and non-graduate teachers in secondary schools. But what was the position in 1964? The number of degrees held by full time teachers in secondary schools in Queensland was 608, but the number of full time teachers without degrees was 2.405. The position has so deteriorated that although in 1955 there were almost equal numbers of graduate and non-graduate teachers, in 1964 there were four times as many non-graduate teachers as there were graduate teachers. It is no wonder that parents have to resort to having their children coached in private coaching colleges in order to supplement the inadequate teaching they get in schools. The disheartening feature is that this Government is not prepared to do anything about the situation. It established a committee, the Martin Committee, to inquire into various forms of tertiary education. One of its very strong recommendations was that the Government should support the States in setting up autonomous boards of teacher education, providing fully professional training for teachers of State and non-State schools. It proposed capital and recurrent grants to assist the States in setting up such teacher training facilities. It recommended the provision of 10 per cent, bondfree Commonwealth scholarships to enable people to go to them, get their teaching qualifications and then teach where they wanted to. This, of course, would have provided private schools with a source of trained teachers. Everybody knows today that in our private schools, particularly in the Catholic schools, the number of lay teachers being employed is increasing dramatically. In many Catholic private schools today more than half the staff are lay teachers. Unforunately, many of them, who are teaching young Australians, have had no teacher training whatever. This is the disheartening thing; the Commonwealth has not been prepared to implement the Martin Committee's recommendations. I say here and now that an important pledge by the Labour Party at the next Federal election will be the implementation of the Martin Committee's recommendations - as it has been in the past - to provide Australian State and non-State schools with the professionally trained teachers that are denied at present. The fact is that more and more children are staying on at school. The figures indicate, for instance, in my own State of New South Wales, that in form four between 1964 and 1965 the percentage of students in government schools staying in that form rose from 34 per cent, to 42 per cent. In non-government schools the figure rose from 45 to 57 per cent. More children are staying on in school and there are more inducements for them to do so. The Commonwealth is inducing them to do so by providing new forms of tertiary education and assistance to universities. But how many of these children will be able to reach those levels of education if we are not able to provide the highly qualified teachers demanded, under the Wyndham scheme, in the latter years of secondary schooling in New South Wales? Much the same is required in every other State. New demands are being made for more teachers. We have just received the report on the colleges of advanced education which indicated that between 1966 and 1969 university enrolments are expected to increase by 20 per cent., from 91,160 to 109,480, and that in the advanced colleges of education - which the Commonwealth says are a vital part of our tertiary programme from now on - there is going to be an 88 per cent, increase in enrolments, from 24,342 to 45,948. But where are the teachers to come from? The Commonwealth is making provision for the building of colleges and the payment of salaries; but there is no provision for the training of teachers for this greatly expanded programme of tertiary education. Where are the teachers to come from? They will come from the same source from which the teachers colleges are recruiting their lecturers - from the secondary schools. Our secondary schools will become more poverty stricken educationally than they ever were. So, while building up this superstructure of tertiary education, we are undermining the base on which it is built - primary and secondary education. Under the Government's programme we have a lopsided development in our education structure. It is not only educationally stupid but it is economically unwise. In many cases money is being thrown down the drain and will be wasted. Inadequately trained students will come up from the secondary schools to enter these colleges and universities. The position in private schools is even worse than in State schools. But there is not just a shortage of teachers, there is a shortage of classrooms. There was an announcement on 25th August in the " Sydney Morning Herald " under the heading "Crisis move on portable classrooms". This referred to New South Wales, of course. The article said - The State Government yesterday called tenders for 120 prefabricated classrooms to meet an acute accommodation shortage in N.S.W. secondary schools next year. The Government plans to put the classrooms in 32 High Schools until permanent classrooms are erected. In some cases the structures temporarily could form complete new schools. This is a shocking state of affairs. There has been no forward planning. There has been no body akin to the Australian Universities Commission available to guide the destinies of primary, technical and secondary education. This planning is badly needed in my own district where two of my children attend school. The James Cook Boys' High School and the Moorefields Girls' High School have shared in the past few years a lovely big assembly hall. Now we are told that it is to be divided next year into classrooms because these are so urgently needed. The same situation exists at Narrabeen. The assembly hall there is to be partitioned off and used for classrooms. This is happening in several schools over the State. There are many schools desperately in need of assembly halls, which are an integral part of a modern education, and the few high schools that have assembly halls look like losing them. I make a strong protest on behalf of the parents and citizens' organisations in my electorate, and on behalf of the teachers who have been ringing me in desperation to see if something can be done even at this late hour to forestall this loss of a very important segment of the education system. The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN (Mr. Peters). - Order! The honorable member's time has expired. 1622 JMF Phillip 0 0 ASTON, William Mr ASTON .- It is not very often that I find myself in some agreement with the Deputy Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Whitlam) and the honorable member for Barton (Mr. Reynolds). I will at a later stage refer to some points of agreement and, of course, to some points of disagreement. I would like to correct a statement made by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, who tended to suggest that the only effort that this Government was making in relation to education was in connection with grants to the States for universities and to the Australian National University. Whilst the figures involved are very commendable and the efforts by the Government have been highly successful, it is estimated this financial year that, in round figures, S54 million will be expended in grants to States for universities and $19 million will be required for the Australian National University. These figures are contained in the supplement to the booklet, " The Commonwealth Government in Education ". The impression that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition wanted to convey to the Committee was that this was as far as the Government had gone. He had forgotten, of course, that the Government goes much further. It assists many Australian students. It provides capital grants for technical schools. It provides grants for science facilities, research projects, colleges of advanced education and education in the Commonwealth mainland Territories. It also gives international aid and there are quite a number of other incidental items. It is wrong to suggest that the only aid provided by the Government is for the universities because it is estimated that these other things will cost the Government this year $100 million in round figures. I just wanted to correct the impression that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition conveyed to the Committee. Education in Australia is of increasing importance not only to the individual but to the nation. The assistance provided by this Government in the field of education has been greater than any in our history. It has covered all sections of education, as I illustrated by referring to the document I just mentioned. But, particularly, the Government has been of great assistance at the secondary and tertiary levels. The Government's assistance to universities by way of grants, the provision of equipment, the building of new universities, and modernisation and additions to existing universities, is providing a more solid foundation from which Australia can advance, as advance it must, in the scientific, technological and executive fields. The executive field is often forgotten. 1623 K9M 0 0 JOHNSON, Leslie Mr L R Johnson - Is the honorable member happy about primary and secondary education? 1623 JMF 0 0 ASTON, William Mr ASTON - I will come to those matters later. Let me finish. The honorable member for Hughes will have his say. This aid will, of necessity, continue to increase, as will the number of scholarships which the Government has made available. In recent years the Government rightly has set a new pattern and provided enormous new opportunities in education. The Government has realised that if we are to take our place in world affairs it is essential that we develop as speedily as possible our potential in scientific and technical fields, and that if we are to increase our productivity and world trade, and if we are to expand internally our resources as rapidly as we would desire, it is incumbent upon us to ensure that we have trained scientists and technicians in all spheres of our national activities. However, it is not sufficient to provide the scientist and technologist, for on their own they can achieve little. Behind each of these must be highly skilled technicians and tradesmen. The Commonwealth Government, realising this and the advantages that must flow from this, has adopted the recent Commonwealth Advisory Committee's report on education. The acceptance of the most important recommendations in this report will mean that an additional §97 million will be spent in this sphere over the next three years. Until this Government took office, education was regarded as a province. of the States. The States, in turn, guarded their sovereign rights zealously. I want to say in relation to the inquiry which is suggested in the amendment that before the Commonwealth can go far in conducting its own inquiry into education throughout the whole of Australia it will have to cooperate with the States. That co-operation may not be quite as readily forthcoming as may be expected. After all, the States have a constitutional right for education and they guard their independence and their sovereign rights, as they should. Quite frankly, if this inquiry is a veiled attempt to get uniformity of education in this country I am dead against it. Every State should be able to decide and carry out its own curriculum in the manner in which it wishes. We do not want all the people in this country, no matter from which State they come, to have the same curriculum and be turned out like sausages to attend the various universities. We must have independence of thought and one way in which this can be achieved is by the independence of the States to have their own curriculum. However, today it is apparent that the resources of the States cannot provide adequately for the growing needs of an increasing population of young people thirsting to expand their knowledge. The Commonwealth, having entered into the field of education in conjunction with the States, will undoubtedly be called upon to make greater contributions in this important field. In fact, the people of Australia have come to look to the Commonwealth Government to regard education more on a national level than hitherto. All children in this country should have an equal opportunity to use their ability and initiative, and they should be encouraged to continue in the secondary and tertiary levels of education. But in many cases, through the inadequacy of a basic foundation at primary level, much of our manpower potential is lost. In New South Wales there is an acute shortage of teachers, classrooms are overcrowded, buildings are inadequate, and the equipment necessary, particularly in technical schools, is outmoded or just not available. These conditions are not calculated to encourage our children to continue their education, nor do they encourage their parents to allow them to continue. Many trainee teachers are rushed through teachers training colleges and left to fend for themselves after an inadequate training period of two years, instead of the desired three years. They are sent to schools without the necessary specialised knowledge or a desire to improve their understanding of subjects which require additional study and post-graduate attendance at training colleges. As a consequence, they are not as highly qualified as is necessary to enable them to undertake the responsibility of providing thorough and proper instruction to the thousands of children who deserve the highest standards in an efficient and effective teaching staff to instruct them. In New South Wales the shortsightedness of the previous Government, which was in office for some 24 years, has left the present Government an unwanted legacy. For four years the Wyndham scheme was left in the pending tray and was then introduced, without prior planning, to an education department which had insufficient facilities to cope with the expanded curriculum. This was at a point in time when, due to the postwar birthrate boom, there was a huge increase in the number of pupils at secondary schools. The scheme itself called for smaller classes and a greater diversification of subjects at different levels of study, thus requiring larger schools and a greater number of teachers. These were just not available. To its credit, the Liberal Government in New South Wales will be expending record sums of money on education this year in an endeavour to overcome the backlog. Unfortunately, it will take a considerable time before this can be achieved. Federal aid has assisted the State school system tremendously and also has helped the private schools, but I submit that this Government should go a step further. It is more than commendable to supply the necessary finance to build and equip schools and provide modern teaching aids, but all this is of little use if qualified teachers are not available to instruct children how to use the new facilities and how to absorb changing methods that are provided. This can result in a further waste of manpower potential which we cannot afford and, as the resources of the State Governments are clearly inadequate to cope with this problem immediately, I believe it is vital that the Commonwealth immediately lay the foundations for a sounder basis of education by assisting the States in their teacher training problems. Concern is continually being expressed about the failure rate at all levels. I feel sure that this is due, in a great measure, to a shortage of highly trained teaching staff, which in turn does not allow a so.'id foundation on which to build. The Martin Committee recommended that the Government make a capital grant for teaching training and at least this recommendation should be adopted and applied as speedily as possible. However, I believe that the grants to the States for this purpose should be unmatched; that the Commonwealth should shoulder the responsibility for building the colleges after consultation with the States; that these teacher training colleges should be made available to train unbonded teachers who are willing to teach in the private school system; and that this tuition should be provided free. It is not only the State system which has an acute shortage of teachers-, because of pay and conditions the private schools are unable to attract the quality and the quantity of teachers which they too would like. One can imagine that if the present state of affairs is allowed to progress, the additional strain placed upon the State and private school systems would be untenable. To guide Australia's development and guarantee its continued growth, we must ensure that the reservoir of young people who are willing to become the teachers of our youth are qualified to undertake this responsibility and have the amenities and equipment to fit them for this purpose. If this goal is to be achieved, more teacher training colleges are essential. By giving direct financial aid as I have suggested, the Government will be breaking into a new field of education, but from a national viewpoint we cannot stand by and allow this important problem of teacher shortages to continue. Whilst I have stressed the need for increased grants, I feel that I should impress on the Government that in the calculation of these grants, in all spheres, but particularly in the sphere of training colleges, consideration should be given to the particular needs of each State and grants should not be made simply because a certain State has a larger population. If we are to bp nationally minded, grants must be based on the individual needs of the States. Further, I believe that both private and State schools are unable to meet the demand for the building of science blocks and technical school buildings and the supply of equipment. This scheme, as honorable members will recall, was initiated by this Government just a few years ago. What has been done has been commendable but it is clearly not enough, for at the present rate it will be some years before adequate facilities are available. If we are to harness the undoubted ability of our youth, we should increase our aid in this direction to a more practical level and so provide urgently needed graduates at the tertiary level. We should assist wherever possible in the provision of new buildings and new laboratories. This is a national problem and should be treated on a national level. I suggest to the Government that it consider increasing substantially the amounts that are now available for these purposes. 1625 JO8 0 0 BARNARD, Lance Mr Barnard - Is the honorable member voting for the amendment? Mr. BRYANT (Wills) 1.4.36]. - I think the honorable member for Bass (Mr. Barnard) has made a pertinent interjection. One would expect the honorable member for Phillip (Mr. Aston) to come over to this side of the chamber and to vote for the proposed amendment. But I suppose that is a little too much to ask. However, 1 do congratulate the honorable member. lt was refreshing to hear him speak for a quarter of an hour without once mentioning Communists. 1 want to correct him on one or two points. I understand the States have asked for an inquiry. The State Ministers in council have been co-operating with one another for a long time in an attempt to get the picture of Australian education clear. I am sure they would all be happy to participate and co-operate in any action which the Commonwealth wished to take in developing Australian education. Qf course, the problem we face is not new to our Federal system. What is needed is encouragement and co-operation, without indulging in too much coercion. One of the unhappy features of the present educational activities of the Commonwealth is what we might call the coercion of the States by a system of matching grants. Both the honorable member for Phillip and the honorable member for Barton (Mr. Reynolds) made a very good point when they showed that this method imposes a heavy burden upon the States. It is becoming quite a thing for honorable members opposite to congratulate the Government upon its approach to education and to try to create an atmosphere of complacency, almost approaching smugness. But what are the facts? First, I understand that almost every university in Australia has had a cut back in what it regards as its necessary requirements. This has resulted from the report of the Universities Commission and the action on that report by the Commonwealth. This is a vital question. The requirements of the universities are submitted in the main by people who are skilled in their task and who know what they want - people who have an objective before them. It is a national misfortune that these requirements should be trimmed because of some Treasury or other requirement. 1 should think that at present our educational system is like Topsy - it is just growing. There is no overall plan for it. Nobody in the Government seems to be interested, and very little action can be taken in this Parliament unless there is some ministerial initiative. There is very little effort on the part of the Government to keep a proper eye on education or to give a national direction to it. I believe that until we have a full time Minister for Education in this Parliament we shall not get very far. I say this with all due respect to the present Minister in Charge of Commonwealth Activities in Education and Research (Senator Gorton). He has another full time portfolio. Whilst I. might disagree with the way in which Ministers carry out most of their work, I will admit that they are faced with heavy tasks and that it is beyond the capacity of one person to handle two portfolios properly. The honorable member for Phillip would seek to give the impression that the Commonwealth Government has done lots of things for all forms of education. This, of course, is quite untrue. So far as one can determine, nothing has been done in the broad sense for primary education. It may be possible to get children into schools; it may be possible to provide blackboards and chalk, and to put a teacher in front of every class; but there is no doubt in my mind that our primary schools are unworthy of this wealthy nation. There are large areas of neglect over the whole field of education in this country. In the matter of education, I submit it is fair to say that the Liberal Party is a party of the blind. The Minister in Charge of Commonwealth Activities in Education and Research is continually asserting that there is no crisis in education. I do not suppose what is happening is a crisis if it has been happening all the time. If we turn back the pages of history, we find that our parents and our grandparents before them all suffered from the deficiencies of the educational system of Australia. If a crisis is something which happens suddenly and then passes away, there is no crisis now. But things have been bad over large areas of the Australian educational system ever since efforts were made to establish universal education. To a great extent, the blame cannot be sheeted home to anybody in particular, because in the past we have not been a great and prosperous nation. Now we are. We are one of the richest and most secure nations of the world, and there is no reason why we should not have the best education system in the world. It is unhappily true that honorable members opposite spend a good deal of their time in comparing Australia with somewhere else, not only in relation to education but in relation to many other areas of public activity. We should be out in front because we have so many advantages. I think it is fair to examine the education system in New South Wales. Until the return of the Liberal-Country Party Government about 1 8 months ago. New South Wales was undoubtedly out in front in many areas of education. It was matched in some areas by Tasmania, but, with its greater population and greater wealth, there is no doubt in my mind that it was far in front in universities and so on. I think the figures substantiate this. As New South Wales is a large State with a large population, it is fair to examine the education system there. Until recently, many of the secondary school buildings in New South Wales were almost up to the standard of such buildings in Canberra, but there has been a dramatic collapse in the last 12 months. I hope the people of New South Wales will remember this and that they will take appropriate action when they next go to the ballot box. It has been asserted that education is the province of the States. It is a long while since anybody thought that education was exclusively the responsibility of the States. In 1945, this Parliament passed the Education Act, which set out a charter for the Commonwealth Office of Education. This organisation was subsequently established. The Australian National University was established by a Labour Government. The Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme of the post-war period was followed by the Commonwealth scholarship scheme and other Commonwealth activities. So that many of the areas into which this Government has drifted are not necessarily new ones. Of course, increasing pressures have forced the Government to do much more than it intended to do originally. I entered the Parliament some 10 or 11 years ago. I can recall the first time when 1 heard the estimates for the Prime Minister's Department being discussed. I can recall the former Prime Minister's rather friendly, tolerant but slightly condescending approach to people like myself on this side of the House who raised the matter of education during the discussion of those estimates. We find now that, as a result of continual pressure from the Labour Party and the public generally, the Commonwealth has drifted into the field of education. My complaint is that the Commonwealth is just drifting in this field instead of facing up to the problem and saying what it will do. There may well be differences between the approach of the Liberal Party and that of the Labour Party, but if the Government would step into the field with its Liberal philosophy, for what that is worth, and decide what it wants to do over the whole wide field of education, that would be of advantage to Australia. Before moving to the amendment proposed by the Opposition, I should like to refer to the question of libraries. Some research has been done on libraries recently, and some reports have been submitted. I understand that it was estimated in a recent report that about 50c per head of population needs to be spent on library services immediately. The municipalities accept a large amount of responsibility for library services but the greater burden rests, of course, eventually with the State Governments. It is obviously impossible for those sections of government to do any more. The Commonwealth could easily find the S5£ million or thereabouts which is necessary to give public library services in Australia a reasonable kick along. I think it is very important that this be done. Public library services are very important factors in the cultural and intellectual development of the nation. I hope that we shall have a chance to discuss libraries more fully in this Parliament at a later date. Let me revert to the questions before the Committee at the moment - the estimates for this Department and the Labour Party's proposed amendment. We want an inquiry. Nearly everybody concerned with education asks for an inquiry. The State Ministers and various other authorities have asked for it. We have already established bodies such as the Universities Commission which could conduct inquiries. The honorable member for Phillip thought that this might lead to regimentation. I submit that nothing could be further from the truth. Much would depend, of course, upon the approach of the people who conducted the inquiry. We want co-ordination. We want something established in the field of research. We want greater knowledge. As the honorable member for Barton pointed out, there are areas of ignorance that are astonishing in the extreme. We have only to turn to the answers to questions which he has asked for proof of that. We on this side would like to see established as soon as possible a Commonwealth Department of Education, with its own ministerial head. There are areas of activity in education which can only be initiated by the Commonwealth. Effective educational research is one. The initiation of experiment in Australia is another. It is time that some government authorities, having behind them all the resources of the kind that are being used to establish various enterprises in Canberra in numerous fields, took some action in educational research, not only on the theoretical but also on the practical side. These questions must be looked into, for instance: What can we teach in a school? What can we do with this set of children? And so on. It is only the Commonwealth that is likely to be able to do this. There are large areas of education that need co-ordination. The level of examination for entrance to universities is one. It may well be that there ought to be a national matriculation standard. Then again, we ought to aim at a status of education at which the universities will admit without further training anybody who has graduated from the schools. I believe that this sort of thing ought to be easily achieved in Canberra. The half dozen or so secondary schools in the National Capital ought to be of such a status as would allow the Australian National University to admit students on the results of internal examinations conducted by the schools themselves. Because Canberra is such a small unit, it would be possible to carry out here experiments of this nature. The Commonwealth, of course, can expand its ancillary services. There is the question of television. We have recently received a report on educational television. The largest number of pigeonholes ever accumulated in administrative history must exist somewhere in Canberra to store all the reports that this Government has rejected after having called for them in the first place. I regard television as providing one of the greatest educational opportunities presently offering. The expansion of educational television services would do great things for Australian education. Only the Commonwealth can do what is required in this field. But again, as in so many areas, it pushes the issue aside. As has been mentioned by speakers on both sides of the chamber, teacher education is of fundamental importance. Until we have tackled the question of teacher education, until we have lifted it from the realm of the State administrative system and given responsibility for it to an autonomous body, in the manner suggested in the report of the Martin Committee on the Future of Tertiary Education in Australia, we shall not make satisfactory progress. I believe that honorable members on both sides of the Parliament would sponsor more or less the same policy - a policy of training teachers at government expense, no matter where they are to teach, in much the same way as doctors, lawyers and all the rest of the professional people who obtain their education with the aid of Commonwealth scholarships are trained. Australian education needs a thorough going over. It has a number of disturbing features. It is still very conservative. I suppose that all education is conservative. This is because of the way in which, from generation to generation, we hand down the culture and mores of society. Our system of education, however, is worse than conservative. It is habitual. Let us consider the teaching of foreign languages, for example. We teach French. Why? It is principally because only 21 miles away, across the English Channel, lies the foreign country that happens to be closest to where our grandparents came from, and the language of that country happens to be French. I believe that we should continue to teach French. But it should not be the dominating foreign language taught in the Australian educational system as it continues to be. We live in Asia, and we are interested in the comments of people like the Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Holt), who talks in theory about Asia. If we want some practical application of our association with Asia, let us try to expand the teaching of, say, Indonesian in Australian schools. This would not be easy. I believe that it could be initiated effectively only by the Commonwealth. I have mentioned languages, particularly French. But there are other areas to which we could turn our attention. Woodwork, for instance, is still the main manual craft taught in our schools, though we live in a mechanical and electronic society. Our education system is still university dominated and examination ridden. Large areas of educational administration are still centralised and there are inequalities between States, between the sexes; between social classes and in relation to vital areas like education of the Aborigines, though only small numbers of these are involved, between races. One of the most tragic areas of wastage in Australian education is in the education of women at the higher level. The figures show that only 17.57 per cent, of males leaving school got through to the universities in 1965 and only 7.94 per cent, of females. This means that there is a tragic wastage of female talent. I think that last year there were something like 56,000 young men in Australian universities and only about 20,000 young women. What happened to the other 36,000. young women who should have been at the universities? They were Australians of equal talent, equal social status, equal capacity and equal merit. They were in every way fundamentally equal to the young men except that they were of a different sex. The fact is that last year 36,000 young women who passed through the secondary schools did not reach the universities. This is not only a political question. It is a social question the determination of which rests not just with this Parliament but more directly with the people of Australia. Here is a great body of human talent that goes to waste and remains untrained. These matters that I have mentioned are some of the problems that pose challenges beyond the scope and capacity of the State governments. They are beyond solution by State Parliaments and Ministries. Only effective national action taken at the Commonwealth level will enable Australian education to achieve the standards to which this nation, I believe, is entitled. 1628 DB6 Mackellar 0 0 WENTWORTH, William Charles Mr WENTWORTH . - Mr. Deputy Chairman, 1 wish to deal solely with one item in the estimates now before the Committee - the grant for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. I would like on behalf of the Institute to express to the Government appreciation for what it is doing. I also express my own appreciation to honorable members for allowing me to be one of their representatives on the Council of the Institute. The other is the honorable member for Fremantle (Mr. Beazley). Honorable members will have received and will have noted the contents of the annual report of the Institute. The latest report can bc read with a considerable measure of satisfaction. Two aspects of problems relating to the Aborigines are before us. as Australians. One is the problem of welfare and the advancement of the Aboriginal people, involving the raising of their standards and matters of that description. The other is the question of scholarship and academic research. The Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, which was established under an act of this Parliament, is concerned only with the question of scholarship. Policy questions are, by design, excluded from its consideration. I do not, of course, minimise the importance of these policy considerations. As honorable members will know, I personally take an active interest in all problems of Aboriginal welfare. I hope at some other time during the consideration of these estimates to have an opportunity to discuss other aspects of these problems. But this is not the time to speak of them, for the Institute of Aboriginal Studies is not concerned with the relevant kinds of activity. Nevertheless, I believe that the Institute's programme will help in the solution of the problems of Aboriginal welfare. The Institute's investigations will uncover some of the impediments to advancement. These impediments are very largely of a psychological nature. Anything that gives us a better understanding of the difficulties involved will enable us to cope with them more adequately. In saying this, Sir, I do not imply that Australia should indulge in too much self commination. This problem of the raising of the standards of primitive people has bedevilled policy not only in Australia but also in other countries. Our approach to these problems is in some ways related to the study begun in the United States of America nearly 100 years ago by the ethnographic studies instituted under government auspices. If by this approach we can throw a little more light on some of these problems in Australia, we shall concurrently throw a little more light also on problems overseas. Therefore, though what the Institute is doing is not directly related to welfare, it may help indirectly. Having said that, may I turn to a review of the Institute's proper activities in the world of scholarship. I believe that what we are doing is of importance. Indeed, I am sure that if honorable members examine the latest annual report, they will agree that the Institute's work is of world importance. There are few things in the academic field in Australia which are of world importance. Perhaps one would say, for example, that Sir Macfarlane Burnet's study of viruses, Sir John Eccles' study of neurology and some of our studies in radio astronomy are of world importance. But, in terms of scholarship, there is not much in Australia that is of world importance except this study of the Aboriginal people. This is perhaps the only place in the world where a study of the economy and sociology of a pre-agricultural people, uncontaminated by contact with agricultural societies, may be carried out. There is probably nowhere else left in the world where this can be done. These are vanishing and evaporating opportunities. Australia has for the whole world a special responsibility with regard to them and one which, I am glad to say, this Government is facing up to. I think honorable members will concede that the Government deserves great credit for what it has done in this regard. Let me mention one or two matters which may be of interest to honorable members as they are typical of the kind of programme we are carrying out. I say first that we ourselves do not so much carry out programmes on our own initiative as encourage and help those in universities and elsewhere who are engaged in this field of Aboriginal studies. Our method, which is enjoined on us by the Act of Parliament, is to co-operate in this matter. We ourselves have some workers full time in the field. We have our library, our sound and film archives and our central intelligence agency but we are endeavouring to co-operate with universities and other learned bodies and individuals in this sphere and to augment their work. I shall give an instance of what I mean. I refer to the excavations at Koonalda near Eucla on the border of South Australia and Western Australia. Here is a site which was discovered and the importance of which was seen, not by the Institute, but by a Dr, Gallus of Melbourne, a man to whose initiative and persistence a great tribute is due. The Institute has been able to give to Dr. Gallus funds to enable him to carry out his researches. This has enabled specimens to be carbon dated which would tell us their exact age. Recently, because of the importance of this site which Dr. Gallus first investigated, we have decided to set up a committee to co-operate in the investigation of what is probably the most important archaeological site which has yet come under investigation in Australia. Dr. Gallus will be on that committee. Here, in a dark cave 250 feet underground, we are finding Aboriginal artifacts which can be dated some 20,000 years back. The information gained will answer a great deal of the previous speculation about the origin of man in Australia and the length of time he has been here. We are not by any means to the bottom of the deposit. It may be that in the excavations we are sponsoring and which will be carried out in the very near future we shall find even older deposits. I would say that this is the most important archaeological site currently under investigation or perhaps ever discovered in Australia. It is one the full potentialities of which are unknown. It will to some extent reverse ideas about the provenance of man in this part of the world. Let me take a subject that is quite different - the subject of Aboriginal music This may seem a far cry - a little far fetched - but what I am going to say is what has been told to me by Professor Jones, Professor of Music at Monash University, Melbourne. Professor Jones is perhaps the man most competent to give an opinion in this regard. We are sponsoring some investigations by Dr. Catherine Ellis. Professor Jones thinks that she has a better than even money chance of establishing a new theory of musical intervals which will be applicable to the origins of ail human music. Professor Jones says that if Dr. Ellis does this - he thinks she may well succeed - she will do for musical theory what Einstein did for the theory of physics; she will, overturn a great number of accepted ideas throughout the world. Already she has tried to correlate some of her Australian investigations with African observations. This is something which the Institute is sponsoring. If it comes off it will be of world importance. Let me take the field of linguistics. Here Dr. Capell of the University of Sydney has produced, for the first time in Australia 1 think, a satisfactory handbook summarising what we know of the 700 different Australian languages. Of that number 1 think we can still retrieve about 400. It may be that 300 which are known through descriptions and rudimentary vocabularies collected in the last century have vanished. But it is very important for us to do this work because it will throw light on the origin of human language - not just Australian language, but human language. Unless we record these languages now they will be lost forever. It may well be that as a result of our setting out these things and our investigations, new theories on the origin of human language applicable all over the world will be formulated and accepted. Let me take the matter of sociology, itself. Honorable members may be familiar with the work of Professor Berndt, a Western Australian member of our Council who has carried out investigations in Arnhem Land. His book, " Djunngawahl ", on Arnhem Land will give to those who read it a completely new perspective of what primitive ceremony is about. It will enable us to understand things that have never been understood in regard to such matters as the Eleusinian Mysteries. This is of world wide importance. The book was published before the Institute came into existence, but the Institute is now filming related ceremonies of North East Arnhem Land. We have an organisation in the Northern Territory engaged in this filming work. I would like to have said more on this subject had time permitted. I commend to honorable members the report which is in their hands. It deals in greater detail with some of the things I have referred to and discusses also a number of things I have had to omit due to lack of time. I think that the Government is to be commended for the support it has given to the Institute. 1 hope that honorable members will agree with me that the report in their hands reflects credit on the work which it has done to date. 1630 JO8 Bass 0 0 BARNARD, Lance Mr BARNARD .- -I rise to support the amendment that the proposed expenditure for the Prime Minister's Department be reduced by SIO as an instruction to the Government to conduct an inquiry into all aspects of education, primary, secondary and technical, and to accept the Martin Committee's recommendations on teacher training. The motion is identical with resolutions that have been moved here regularly by the Opposition since 1960. The Government has always resisted them. In other years, every honorable member on the Government side has consistently voted against the Opposition's amendment. A succession of excuses has been offered by the Government for its rejection of the amendment, in which the Opposition has proposed that a competent committee of inquiry be established by the Government to investigate all aspects of primary, secondary and technical educations. In the opinion of Opposition members, none of the Government's reasons has been valid. The reasons have not been accepted by the Australian Labour Party and indeed have not been acceptable to the representatives of the various teachers' organisations and parents and citizens organisations, who have continued to press the Government for the establishment of a committee similar to that consistently sought by the Opposition. In addition to the requests of educationalists, there have also been requests from the State Ministers for Education. Only a few years ago, the absence of such a request was one of the reasons given by the former Prime Minister for the rejection of the proposal that a committee of inquiry be established. The Prime Minister said that, unlike the Martin Committee, the request had never been made by the State Ministers. This excuse is no longer valid. Since 1963, the State Ministers have most certainly requested the Commonwealth to establish a committee of inquiry. Indeed, all the State Premiers have made the request to the Government and they have been supported by the Australian Education Council, which consists of the State Ministers and the State Directors of Education. As far back as 1960, the Council submitted a report. It revised the report in 1963. In both reports, it outlined the great need not only for a review of the education system but for a review of the amount of money that would be required in the immediate future to overcome the difficulties of the various State education authorities. The Commonwealth has already conducted inquiries into university and other forms of education. As I have already said, the former Prime Minister accepted the proposal for the establishment of a committee to examine tertiary education, and much good has flowed from the recommendations of that committee. The reports of the Murray, Martin and Currie Committees have been before the Parliament. They have provided invaluable information to honorable members and also to various State education authorities. Although the Murray and Martin Committees were not empowered to deal with the broader aspects of education, they certainly intimated to the Government that it would not be possible to correct the difficulties at the tertiary level and some of the anomalies that existed when these Committees were making their investigations without giving some consideration to the basic weaknesses at the primary, secondary and technical levels. But the Government has consistently ignored this advice. We believe that today a national assessment is needed. It should now include the needs of the non-State schools. All States today are providing sums of money from State budgets to assist the non-State education system. But despite this involvement very little information is available to the Commonwealth and the State education authorities about the difficulties in this field of education. An inquiry would show that a wide gap exists between the requirements of education at the primary, secondary and technical levels and the availability of finance from State sources. What are some of the difficulties? I think every honorable member realises that the schools are short of qualified teachers. Many teachers are inadequately trained or qualified to teach at the levels at which they are being used. The States are finding it difficult to provide the accommodation needed to meet greatly increased enrolments. There is a large and growing accumulation of makeshift, substandard and obsolete school accommodation. It is totally unsuitable and undesirable for the purposes for which it is being used. All honorable members have seen the conditions that now exist in schools in the various States. Indeed, the honorable member for Phillip (Mr. Aston) this afternoon referred to the need for additional finance to be made available by the Commonwealth to the States. This was one of the very few speeches I have heard in recent years from honorable members opposite in which recognition has been shown of the greater need now than ever before for a more active participation by the Commonwealth in education generally. The honorable member for Barton (Mr. Reynolds) referred earlier to the lack of essential equipment in schools. This equipment is in short supply in most of the States. The schools lack libraries and gymnasiums, and these are required in increasing numbers. The Government has 'shown over a number of years in the Australian Capital Territory that it accepts the principle that secondary schools need adequate gymnasiums and other facilities. These are essential under the present school curriculum. For instance, students need a place in which to meet when they are not engaged in the study of school subjects. But provision is very rarely made for this in our schools. The States must provide additional accommodation in schools and it is no longer possible for them to provide for extracurricular activities. They must meet the urgent requirement to replace obsolete and sub-standard buildings and equipment in the schools. I think that the Government is aware of these difficulties, but it chooses to ignore them. It knows that the States are now spending more on education than ever before. Education is probably the largest item of expenditure in all State budgets. It has increased substantially in recent years. Parents have been pressing for more effective schooling over a longer period. I think it is a disgraceful state of affairs that one must acknowledge in this Parliament in 1966 that some States still maintain a school leaving age of 14 years. The leaving age was raised to 16 years in Tasmania some years ago, and it was altered to 15 years in New South Wales. All States have passed legislation to increase the school leaving age from 14 to 15 years but none of the State instrumentalities has been able to implement the legislation because of the shortage of finance. They know that immediately they implement the legislation they will be confronted with difficulties additional to those now being experienced with accommodation and essential equipment. So we have the situation in the Commonwealth where one State has a school leaving age of 16 years, another a school leaving age of 15 years and the remaining States are still struggling, as they have done for the last 20 to 30 years, with a school leaving age of 14 years. The States have attempted to cope with the demand for increased enrolment at a time when enrolments have been increasing rapidly. Not only are initial enrolments increasing, but some students are remaining for the senior years in technical and secondary schools. Between 1958 and 1963 the number of full time students in the 15 year age group increased from 53 per cent, to 65 per cent, of the Australian population; the number in the 16 year age group increased from 26 per cent, to 37 per cent.; in the 17 year age group from 16 per cent, to 23 per cent.; and in the 18 year age group from 9 per cent, to 12 per cent. In a publication prepared by the Australian Educational Council and relating to the needs of Australian education it is pointed out that to meet the needs for general edu cational purposes by the end of the next four years $516 million will have to be expended and that the States in that period will be able to provide S320 million, leaving a deficit of $196 million. Yet the Government continually rejects the proposition submitted to it that there is a need for a more active financial participation by the Commonwealth Government in education generally, particularly in respect of the need for a committee of inquiry. One of the principal reasons why the Commonwealth has rejected the proposal to establish a committee of inquiry has been its desire not to become involved in the question of state aid, but I point out that the situation changed in 1963. It has been suggested, probably unkindly and unfairly, that in 1963 the Government entered the state aid field for political purposes. It provided state aid in the form of science laboratories and equipment and it has continued to provide finance every year since for the same purpose. The reimbursements of interest on capital borrowed for the erection and extension of non-state schools, in the Australian Capital Territory for example, has risen in recent years- from $3,000 in 1958 to $180,000 in 1964. This has been a substantial increase, yet the Government has resisted becoming involved in any way in any investigation into the needs of non-state schools. A similar situation applies in the States, although I believe that Tasmania does not provide this kind of assistance - repayable interest on money borrowed for the erection and extension of school buildings. The Commonwealth should not be deterred by this kind of argument. Again, there is the question referred to earlier by the honorable member for Barton (Mr. Reynolds) about teacher training. The Martin Committee on the Future of Tertiary Education in Australia made sensible recommendations concerning the need for teacher training in Australia. Its recommendations have been supported by the Australian Teachers Federation. It has been pointed out that as far back as 1963 State schools alone needed an additional 6,000 teachers. The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN (Hon. W. C. Haworth). - Order! The honorable member's time has expired. 1632 MI4 Kooyong 0 0 PEACOCK, Andrew Mr PEACOCK .- In the first instance, I also should like to refer generally to the matters contained in the Bill that deal with educational activities. I congratulate the Minister in charge of Commonwealth Activities in Education and Research (Senator Gorton) on the manner in which the Commonwealth is proceeding in the educational field and, in particular, on the recent spectacular announcement that $610 million is to be spent by all governments on tertiary education in the period 1967 to 1969. This admirably reflects the increasing role that the Commonwealth is playing in this field, for nearly half of the money for universities and colleges of advanced education will come directly from this Government. Regarding the colleges of advanced education I refer to the first report of the Commonwealth Advisory Committee on Advanced Education, and in particular to chapter 8 which is headed " Liberal Studies in Colleges of Advanced Education ". In paragraph 4 of that chapter the following appears - The problem of liberalisation is perhaps more intense in .Britain, whose educational system we have broadly followed, and in Australia than in most other countries. For the secondary school student has usually for a period of two years taken a specialised course before he reaches university or advanced college. This disability is now being recognised among Australian educationalists. That paragraph, as can be seen, deals with what is generally known as specialisation or overspecialisation in education. I believe that overspecialisation is a vice in Australian education which has worked its way back down the pipeline from the universities, where for the best pupils it can do little harm, to the secondary schools, where for all but the best students it can be disastrous. This is not simply a dry, technical question of unbalanced curricula and paper requirements for university entrance; rather it is a matter of the colour and texture of our national life. The separation of science from literature is a serious danger, but it is only one danger among many that come from overspecialisation. The price that we pay for young historians who will give up all but a nominal smattering of science at the age of 15, or engineers without a word of any tongue but their own, is paid not only in a cultural schism, but is paid in national inefficiency. The manager who is slow to grasp technological innovations, the salesman who fails to understand foreign markets, the narrow-minded governmental official - all these and many more - are the products and the victims of overspecialisation and what can be termed undereducation. Since we have to make our own way in the world with few resources but our wits we cannot affort to be undereducated. If honorable members do not believe that we are overspecialised or undereducated as a nation I suggest that they ask one of their well informed friends to tell them exactly how steel is made, or the current state of the theory of evolution, or how foreign trade is financed. Only if they have a steel man or a biologist or a banker among their friends will they get an answer because if it is not our subject we just do not know. Continuing my discussion on matters pertaining to the Advisory Committee on Advanced Education, I should like to add a couple of points regarding the grants which are made by the Commonwealth. Before doing so perhaps I should say, by way of explanation, that in 1965 the Commonwealth set up the Committee to which requests by the States for financial assistance are referred. The Committee, which gives expert advice on the distribution of the money available, is charged with advising on the proposals from the States from the interim capital grants recommended by the Tertiary Education Inquiry Committee. It may be recalled that for the 1967-69 triennium the Commonwealth Government announced that it would provide up to $8 million a year for capital expenditure on these colleges and up to S8 million a year for recurrent expenditure. These grants are conditional on the States providing finance on a $1 for $1 basis for capital expenditure and a SI Commonwealth to $1.85 State basis in respect of recurrent expenditure. Commonwealth financial assistance for recurrent purposes is directed to the increases beyond the level applying in 1964-65. I have stated that I want to mention two points regarding this matter. The first relates to recurrent purposes. I believe the choice of the base year 1964-65 reacts unfairly against the State of Victoria because in that year Victoria's development in this direction was much greater than development in other States. I think this was generally acknowledged in the Martin report. A vague recollection tells me that Victoria was spending approximately 13 times what was being spent in New South Wales and almost 54 times what was being spent in other States. Secondly, again on the recurrent side, the system of the Commonwealth contributing SI for every §1.85 contributed by the States appears unrealistic and unfair to Victoria. The basis is analogous to that used in the university system wherein the amounts paid by way of university fees are relevant and taken into account. However, in technical education there are little or no fees. Consequently, the systems are simply not analogous and the present system reacts unfairly on Victoria. These are small but significant points. They in no way detract from the excellent assistance the Commonwealth is now providing. A further reference I wish to make in the short time available to me is to the Advisory Committee's report. The latter portion of conclusion No. 1 1 in chapter 8 of the report under the heading " Conclusions " is in these terms - We look to the colleges to produce diplomates who will not only serve the community through their professional knowledge and capacity but who will exercise their talents over a wide range of activities including community service. I stress the words " including community service ". A great deal is said today about the role of young people in the community and the duties of Federal and State Governments towards them. I have always believed that young people in turn have a duty not merely to the respective Governments but in particular to the societies in which they live - societies, particularly in Australia, which are providing them with great rights and opportunities. If we accept the philosophical approach to government which is based on a rights/ duties concept - that everyone has certain rights within the society but everyone also must execute corresponding duties - I should imagine there is no other group in the community which has a greater obligation to society than the young people of today. They are receiving far greater rights and opportunities than perhaps any other appropriate or analogous age group has had in the history of Australia. This does not mean that the Government can say: " It is up to the youth of Australia to participate in community affairs". Nevertheless, we should give the incentive because there is little point in training boys and girls to earn a good livelihood if we do not assist them to be good and useful citizens and to live good and useful lives as well. At present, as the Appropriation Bill reveals, the Commonwealth Government makes grants to the scouts and guides organisations. It also makes a grant of $9,000 to a body known as the National Youth Council of Australia. 1 should like to say a word or two about the National Youth Council of Australia. It was formed in 1960 as a representative body of Australian youth organisations to provide a common meeting ground for these groups. A major role of the Council is to make representations at the national level to government and other bodies on matters of concern to young people. The Council also carries out a wide variety of other work. It assists in the development of youth activities and the extension of work with young people; it provides a medium of exchange for ideas and experience in youth work; it arranges for the representation of Australian youth at overseas and international youth gatherings; and it stimulates creative thinking by young people. The National Youth Council also encourages active co-operation between youth organisations. Matters of common concern which they discuss include, I understand, the increase in Australia's teenage population and the problems associated with this rise, and the necessity for an interchange of ideas between Australia and the youth of other nations, particularly nations in the Asian area. It is, therefore, a body highly deserving of support from the Commonwealth Government for it represents and encourages active co-operation between a wide variety of youth organisations comprising people from all walks of life. The Council, together with another organisation with which J am personally connected - the Young Australian Foundation - has, I believe, proved itself in this sphere of youth activities and youth work. Although the Young Australian Foundation does not receive a direct grant from the Government, I feel its role in the community is not one which rivals the National Youth Council of Australia. Indeed, they appear to be working hand in hand. It is providing for young people to participate in community affairs. I would direct the attention of the Government to the role of these organisations, particularly the role of the National Youth Council of Australia, and hope that at Budget time next year when it is considering the amount that it will make available to the National Youth Council, it will consider increasing the present allocation. Before concluding I should like to get off my chest one brief matter relating to education in Australia. We hear today incessant cries for greater opportunities for people to go to the university and acquire a university education. This is good and indeed necessary if Australia is to play her role in the future particularly in South and South East Asia. However, an important factor to realise in this intellectually minded age is that schools and universities do not hold a monopoly of education. A thorough trade training can do as much to bring out the best in one kind of boy as a thorough academic training can for another, in emphasising the need for academic education - I remind the Committee that I have the privilege of speaking as a university graduate - 1 think that we inevitably risk the growth of academic snobbery at all levels. Perhaps a little of the traditional respect for character as opposed simply to intellect would not be a bad thing. 1635 K9M Hughes 0 0 JOHNSON, Leslie Mr L R JOHNSON .- During this debate on the estimates for the Prime Minister's Department 1 would like once again to direct some remarks to the subject of education. The Opposition is endeavouring, generally speaking, to focus attention on education deficiencies, whether at the primary, secondary or tertiary level. We have introduced an amendment for the purpose of stressing that there is an urgent and apparent need for an inquiry into all aspects of education, including those which were spoken of by the honorable member for Kooyong (Mr. Peacock). It was my privilege to move an amendment as long ago as 1958, in terms almost identical to the one now before the Committee and designed for the same purpose. In every subsequent year without a single exception we have continued to urge the Government to have a close look at the needs of education. The fantasy that there are insurmountable constitutional barriers to Commonwealth action in this field, which the former member for Kooyong used to talk about a decade or so ago, disappeared down the drain completely with the innova tions brought about by the Murray Committee on Australian Universities and the Martin Committee on the Future of Tertiary Education in Australia, from which some wonderful benefits have been derived. But we fail to see why it is that the Government is so adamant about assisting only the top level of education - although even at that level there is still a great deal to be done - when the foundations of the edifice are obviously in such a shaky and unstable condition. I do not think anyone would quibble with the contention that they are in such a condition. I know that as the elections approach and the parent-teacher organisations, the teachers' federations, the mothers' clubs and nursery clubs send their deputations to members representing all political parties, the contention will be general that there is a problem in education and that something should be done about it. But for many years amendments moved by the Opposition for the purpose of having something done about it have failed to receive any support from the Government. Why is this so? Will the speaker who follows me say whether he believes that the Commonwealth has a responsibility in the field of secondary and primary education or whether he considers there must be some sort of artificial line drawn so that only the tertiary level of education will benefit from Commonwealth assistance? I do not disagree with the honorable member for Kooyong about the great need for higher education. This is the era of computers and electronics, atomic energy and space, of the group of topics that some people talk about as cybernetics. There is a fantastic time ahead for Australia and Australians. There is a great obligation on us to equip ourselves with these modern techniques which have applications in so many important fields. If we care to obtain from the Library books on the application of computers in the health field, for example, we find that it will probably not be very long before we ourselves will be computerised. We will be diagnosed and the information gained from the diagnosis will be stored in computers. A doctor in years to come may find himself in an operating theatre performing a cerebral operation. He may lack training in a certain direction but he will probably be able to press a button and sain knowledge - not just by way of the written word but from computerised information, films, records and things of that kind - derived from an operation performed in Vladivostock or Vienna or somewhere else many years before. There are many novel ways in which we will gain benefit in the future. We will benefit, for instance, from space exploration. I have read, for instance, that Qantas Empire Airways Ltd. is now thinking about sending space ships or tankers to Venus, the surface of which is said to be a sea of methane gas, and that these tankers will ultimately bring back petroleum or some substance from which petroleum can be derived. I have read that meteorites the size of Tasmania may be pushed out of their orbits by what are called retrorockets and brought down in the North Sea or in central Australia, and that we will then take minerals from them for the benefit of mankind. We have in Australia a great food and mineral arsenal, and not just for this country alone. We have a large part of the world's wealth and we have only 1 2 million people. It is imperative that we should be equipped, and better equipped than any other group of 12 million people, to give an account of our stewardship. So I would not want the honorable member for Kooyong to get the impression that he is alone in his concern about these matters. It is shared by honorable members on both sides. But there is still not enough being done towards the development of our educational potential, towards the provision of educational opportunities for the young people of Australia. We have been debating the Budget and we are now debating departmental estimates which make up a Budget of $5,930 million. There is an extra amount of, I think, $274 million collected in taxation. But an infinitesimal additional amount is going towards education. Yesterday I said something similar to this when we were discussing health matters. I said that the sense of priorities is very bad. I made that remark in regard to aged Kid invalid people and handicapped children, and I make exactly the same comment about this subject of education. There is insufficient concern about and emphasis upon this important matter. In my own State the Assistant Minister for Education, Mr. Fife, who is on the other side of politics from me but has the same kind of concern about education as I have and as most honorable members here would have, said that education in New South Wales is near the breaking point. There is a feeling of urgency about this subject that we seem to be unable to get through to this Government. It is wonderful to talk about academic and philosophical matters, but there are some fundamental things that we must get down to first. We would like to join in with the luxuries after the vital and elementary things are done. We are going to have an election shortly and education will be an issue of the day. Once again we are going to be asked as candidates whether we believe in the Commonwealth assisting primary schools, secondary schools and technical colleges around Australia. I do not know where honorable members on the other side of the Committee stand generally on this, but the Minister for Health (Dr. Forbes) has made his position clear. A statement by the Minister was reported in the "Australian" of 8th June 1966. The report read - Education has done pretty well in the past 10 years in getting its share of the national cake, the Federal Minister for Health, Dr. Forbes, said yesterday. The Minister seems to be complacent and satisfied. He is not an angry young man about this matter. The report said further - There was no doubt, he said, that increasing direct expenditure by the Commonwealth on education would lead to increasing direct control. This would mean the dead hand of bureaucrats and M.P.s in Canberra on the education system. Apparently this kind of hazard did not exist in respect of the tertiary level of education, the university level. It seems that the Minister is happy to do something about that - and let me say in all fairness that a considerable amount has been done about that. Has there been any wail about the dead hand of bureaucracy or about the crippling effect of parliamentary influence in universities? How can we manage to get our argument on this point over into the area that has been neglected by the Commonwealth? Does the Minister speak for every honorable member on the opposite side? Is this the view of the Government? Is there any honorable member opposite prepared to follow me and say: "As a member of the Liberal-Country Party Government, the Holt Government, I declare on behalf of the Government and on behalf of our Parties that we will never engage in direct assistance to the States for primary and secondary education "? If any honorable members opposite do say this, they are at variance with the Premiers of the various States who belong to the same political parties as they l.o. The State Premiers met in 1953 and asked for an extra S90 million. Liberal Party Premiers, Labour Party Premiers - the lot of them - said: " We want a national inquiry. We want the Commonwealth to conduct this on our behalf to ascertain the needs of education at every level. Until this is done we want an emergency grant for primary and secondary education of S90 million." Do honorable members opposite intend to effect a split in their party organisations by saying they do not stand for what the Premiers want? If honorable members opposite do stand for it they should support the Opposition in its amendment. lt is not good enough to say that the Commonwealth has spent a lot of money on education. We know it has spent a lot, but what has that to do with the problem that prevails? The question is: Is the Government going to spend enough to alleviate the great difficulties being experienced by Australian families? lt is true that the Minister in charge of Commonwealth Activities in Education and Research (Senator Gorton) recently tabled the third report of the Australian Universities Commission and the first report of the Commonwealth Advisory Council. I think these particular milestones in the educational spectrum are of great significance. They show us the value of having some objectivity, some examination of the problem, some opportunity to work towards things. The Murray report and the Martin Committee report are also beneficial in that regard. lt is true, too, that the Minister announced that $610 million would be provided for the triennium. But the honorable member for Kooyong withheld the information that this sum would represent an increase of $190 million over the last triennium expenditure, which was $56 million less than the Universities Commission recommended. He failed to make that point. So even in this area of education, to which, he fairly contends, the Commonwealth has made a reasonable contribution, there is still an element of failure. The Commonwealth has not done what an expert authority contended should be done. I believe that in making its recommendations the Committee would have had regard to the other obligations of the Commonwealth in the educational sphere and in other areas of government activity. With the limited time at my disposal I will not be able to go into these things in great detail. But it is apparent that insufficient is being done. Building costs in universities are up by 10 per cent, since 1964. I have not calculated this myself, but I think the increase made available for education generally amounts to one-third of one cent in each dollar spent. This is the additional allocation to education - the measurement of the Government's real concern on this score. I think J should contrast the position in Australia with that in some other parts of the world. On the university front, having provided adequate facilities, the first thing to be broken down is the economic barrier that deters many students from taking higher education. In Washington, President Johnson announced a short time ago that $56 million was available for qualified students who could not attend college without financial help. Grants of from $200 to $800 each would be made to some 130,000 students in the fall semester of the 1966-67 academic year. This is in sharp contrast to the scholarship position in Australia this year. This year 61,619 scholarships were applied for and only 9,992 were awarded. I think that 51,627 missed out. Only 16 per cent, of the applications were successful in obtaining scholarships. So this is one area where there is neglect. But there are so many others. T wanted to talk about the deficiencies in teacher training, deficiencies in the provision of buildings in all States, and the deficiencies in respect of things like libraries and playing fields. Surely there is not much need to labour the point. The Commonwealth will have to face up to these responsibilities i.n the very near future. The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN__ Order! The honorable member's time has expired. 1638 KIW Evans 0 0 MACKAY, Malcolm Dr MACKAY .- I rise to oppose this amendment moved by the Opposition to the Appropriation Bill. I find the amendment itself a curious document. First of all, it is, as one would expect from that source, worded in extravagant language. It expresses carping criticism. It is politically belligerent. It expresses " condemnation of the Government for its failure to conduct an inquiry ", and so on, and " for its failure to make adequate provision for teacher training ". It contains this curious twist of proposing to reduce expenditure by the Commonwealth on education by a certain amount. As to the reduction proposed, a little bit of new thinking about it might have suggested that the amount be rather increased by $10. But leaving that matter on one side: We have been listening to a speech in which the honorable member for Hughes (Mr. L. R. Johnson) has spoken about scholarships in secondary schools being neglected. That, of course, is belieing the whole situation of the secondary education sphere and misrepresents the way in which the Commonwealth has been increasing its interest and the number of scholarships available. To give an illustration of this: I was recently at a fine ceremony conducted by the Ashfield Returned Services League branch. Every year this body raises some thousands of dollars to make scholarships available to the brighter students in the schools in its area. OVer the years it has made a considerable contribution to education and to the encouragement of outstanding students. This year the President of the Ashfield R.S.L., in making his speech to the gathering commented that the Commonwealth Government had pretty well put the R.S.L. out of business in this field. He said that so many scholarships had been granted to students in that area that the R.S.L. had difficulty in finding students of merit to whom the R.S.L. scholarships could be given. This was not my comment. It was the comment of the President of the R.S.L. at Ashfield, which he made publicly at a gathering. That is just one instance to illustrate the extravagant language in which this amendment has been put. I believe that the Opposition seeks to make a political football out of this subject, which ought to command the highest level of debate and the most constructive and most statesmanlike thought that it is possible to bring to it. Apart from that, I personally find no quarrel with the general philosophy behind the practical aspects of the amendment proposed. Some of the concepts envisaged in the amendment are those to which Government supporters, I am certain, have been directing their attention. Our hopes, like those of honorable members opposite, lie in the possibility, indeed, the inevitability, that before very long the National Parliament will have to take increasing responsibility in education right across the whole spectrum of the field, lt is becoming increasingly evident that it is not possible for the Commonwealth to continue giving assistance to particular sections of education without running the risk of throwing other sectors into imbalance. For example, in helping the universities and then only partially fulfilling the suggestions of the Martin Committee in regard to other tertiary institutions, it is seriously impairing the standing of the teacher training field. The States, naturally, in response to a Commonwealth lead on finance tend to spend in those fields of education which attract matching grants from the Commonwealth. To make matters worse, the better paid and better equipped fields then begin to attract staff away from other very necessary areas such as teachers colleges. There is undoubtedly a great deal for which this Government is to be commended in its tremendous work in bringing the universities to such magnificent shape. This is something that goes to the credit of the Government. But the Government also, as I have indicated, has an expanding responsibility and concern for the educational field as a whole. But my plea this afternoon is that the Commonwealth reconsider the necessity to give a balanced rather than an ad hoc approach to the whole field of education. There is no question that past action has been warranted to rescue specific sectors from dangerous conditions. However, it is becoming clear that the needs of education in yet other spheres are so serious and so large that no ad hoc or piecemeal approach can be safely considered. It has been said of the Commonwealth with regard to teacher education, and defending what I hope is a temporary suspension of the recommendations of the Martin Committee on the Future of Tertiary Education in Australia in this regard, that the widely differing backgrounds and patterns of teacher training in the States are among the reasons why the Commonwealth has not seen a clear way to buy into this field. In act, there has been such a wide divergence of qualifications, of period of training and of the kind of patterns which are seen in the various States with regard to this subject that the Commonwealth, rightly J think, has considered that there was room for a good deal of putting one's own house in order at the State level before it became possible for this Government to lay down lines of approach to the question. That, I believe, is something which is rapidly being outpaced and outdistanced by the tremendous and growing crisis in teacher education. When one looks at the kind of figures that have been presented to the Australian College of Education recently and the kind of qualifications of teachers generally in Australia, I believe there is room for alarm. Professor Connell has summarised this for the nation and has done a magnificent job in doing so. I believe that perhaps he has oversimplified the matter and has brought certain groups together in a way which does not adequately or fairly reflect the entire situation, but let me quote some of the figures which to me are quite alarming. Of the 100,000 teachers in Australia, a figure which is growing at the rate of 5,000 each year - 80 per cent., of course, are in government schools - but less than 20 per cent, have university degrees or less than half the secondary teachers have university degrees. About one fifth have reached less than matriculation standard. I add here that there are reasons for this, such as through some teachers not going on to do university degrees because of the nature of the course they were pursuing, having preferred to do other than a matriculation type secondary course. Nevertheless, it is a sobering thought. Only two thirds of all the teachers in the nation ever went to a teachers' college, and 8 per cent, had no training at all as teachers. That figure, of course, includes teachers of music and home science and many other things for which specialised training has been given. Nevertheless, in this new approach and this new age there is a demand for a greater degree of professional training. Only 3.5 per cent, have a higher degree of any kind and this percentage will probably fall. About one-sixth of the teachers in secondary schools have had no university training of any kind in the subjects they are teaching. Even in the vital subjects of mathematics, physics and chemistry, less than half the teachers taking students for matriculation have not majored in those subjects in their own training. As I have said, there are valid explanations for some of the statistics I have quoted. But it needs no words of mine to stress the seriousness of that summary, not only for individual girls and boys but also for the nation as a whole. I am sure that most thinking people in the nation would applaud Professor Connell's addition to the charter for teacher training in the report that there should be an uncompromising statement that entry to school teaching must be by means of a properly constituted course of training. I believe there is reason for us to give some consideration to professional developments taking place within the teacher training field. There is increasing awareness of the need for teachers to be like other professional people with their own standards recognised throughout the nation and their own professional standing in the eyes of the nation. This is something to which I believe considerable encouragement must be given because, while it is true that the States have differing backgrounds and differing patterns of operation in many cases, this is not because of present requirements but has to do with the past rather than the future. In fact there has been remarkable unanimity as regards the hopes and visions for the future evident in, for example, the work I have quoted of the Australian College of Education on nationwide teacher training requirements. There are grounds for believing that united rather than uniform approaches are possible and ought to be encouraged. I believe that in many fields sufficient investigation work has already been done. The amendment speaks a great deal about conducting inquiries, but we have already had a large number of inquiries. One was conducted by the Australian College of Education which I have already cited. There is the work of the Australian Educational Council which has been printed and has been long in our hands and well studied. There are many results of these inquiries already to hand. A great deal of searching has been done and I believe sufficient has been produced to show that there are obvious needs, both urgent and massive, in some sectors. In some of these, for example in New South Wales where the Wyndham scheme is about to increase vastly the number of students in secondary schools, coming into operation most viciously, if I may use that word, next year, these effects are so serious that they threaten the structure of education itself. So I make this plea in the light of all that has been said this afternoon that the Commonwealth should take the lead in the entire field of education. To continue aid at the tertiary level without regard to priorities as to the use of funds relative to other levels could be as short sighted as building an elaborate treatment plant and smelter without first making sure that there were supplies of ore of a grade to warrant the construction of the plant. So I sympathise with the proposition that there should be emergency grants, that there should be provision made for some of these crises which undoubtedly exist in the whole field, such as in New South Wales secondary schools which I have mentioned, and in the field of teacher training where the recommendations of the Martin Committee in my view should be implemented as soon as it is humanly possible to do so. Also, whilst we have had in the past many reports from committees of inquiry, I feel that " inquiry " is the wrong word to use here. I would much sooner see a committee set up in an advisory capacity to the Commonwealth with regard to the complete field of education from kindergarten. Indeed, it could advise on education upwards from the pre-school level, where a tremendously important job is done in forming attitudes, psychological approaches and the social attitudes of children to education. This is something on which such a committee should report to the Government. This committee should have representatives of the Universities Commission on it, but it should also have available on its strength the best statesmen in educaion. The quantum of money needed for such an approach to education staggers the imagination. It must certainly frighten the Treasurer and it certainly gives a responsible government reason to pause. A very great amount of money wm be needed to give this nation the kind of educational pattern that it requires to bring it into line with other and vaster nations in the western world. If this is to be achieved I cannot see that it can come about without some increase in taxation. If this is so, then it is also my opinion that the nation is rapidly getting to the place where it is ready for an honest, frank statement on needs. It is my opinion that it will be supported. In fact, it is often felt that a massive plan to take the field of education out of its present piecemeal existence into a semblance of order and security would be a valuable and attractive policy to put to the people, because I am sure that the majority of people in the nation realise that, while some are making tremendous sacrifices in the field of defence, we should not ourselves boggle at or shrink from making demands for a degree of sacrifice from the nation as a whole for a field which is so intimately connected, not only with the wellbeing and development of the nation but also with the defence and strength of the nation in years to come. Sitting suspended from 5.55 to 8 p.m. 1640 KXV Dawson 0 0 PATTERSON, Rex Dr PATTERSON .- I wish to speak briefly tonight on two aspects of the estimates for the Prime Minister's Department. One relates to education and the other to Commonwealth and State relationships. Other honorable members have emphasised the extreme importance of education to the future development of this country. In fact, various surveys that have been made have shown that people in Australia are more concerned with education than they are with some of the problems of defence. This is understandable, because parents are concerned with the education of their children, and many children in country areas, because of insufficient secondary industries, are destined to spend most of their working lives in the capital cities. According to some of the authorities, educational standards in Queensland are being progressively lowered because of the major problems confronting the educational system there. The per capita expenditure on education in Queensland is lower than that in any other State. Because education is such an important facet of our lives, the per capita expenditure on it should be the same or nearly the same in all States, but in Queensland the expenditure is much lower than in the other States. So bad has the position become that a conservative section of the Queensland Teachers Union is actually considering whether its members should take the drastic step of striking. In fact, the Mackay branch of the Union recommended that the teachers should go on strike. The crux of the matter, of course, is lack of funds, of Federal funds in particular, to stimulate activity in relation to education. As has been explained by other honorable members, the main problems concern the recruitment of teachers, teacher training and the condition of teachers. There seems to be little appreciation here of the importance of teacher training and of the importance of recruiting the right type of teachers. Wc are inclined to attach too much importance to university training and not enough importance to primary and secondary education. How many of us in this House who have had the privilege of university training realise how poorly equipped we were in some disciplines because of the lack of basic, fundamental training in certain fields? This is possibly more often the fault of the student than of the teacher, but in many cases the teachers arc poorly equipped to train students in the best way. This is certainly the position in Queensland today. The Queensland Teachers Union and other organisations there are quite alive to the problem. They recognise the urgent and very important problem presented by the lowering of standards. Tn many cases, average students are receiving marks which indicate that they are not getting sufficient training, and students with a high I.Q. are relegated to lower positions because of unsatisfactory teacher training methods. In saying this, I am making no attack on the teachers themselves; I am attacking the educational system. Surely that system warrants very much more effort than has been put into it hitherto. The future prosperity of this country is becoming more and more dependent upon tech nology, and the success of technology depends largely on the way in which we train our technicians. Whether they may be agricultural scientists, businessmen, economists, librarians - whatever they may be - their basic, fundamental training in the primary and secondary schools will be of the utmost importance to them. In this country we spend a fair amount of money on helping sub-normal children. That is a very good thing; more should be spent on it. But how much money do we spend on helping the top student, the student with a high I.Q. or the student with the high degree of common sense who is prepared to learn and has the ability to go a long way? Usually these students are accommodated in the crowded classrooms that we see so often, and as a result their education must suffer. Because of the rejection of the recommendations of the Martin Committee on the Future of Tertiary Education in Australia relating to teacher training, we see a marked deterioration in the quality of teachers, certainly in Queensland. I regret to say this, but the type of teacher being recruited today is nowhere near as high a standard as was the case some years ago. At one time, teaching was an honoured profession. Today, however, if one fails to obtain a Commonwealth scholarship or is unable to attend a university, one seems to finish up being a teacher. 1641 JLT 0 0 ALLAN, Archibald Mr Ian Allan - That is a shocking indictment of the teachers. 1641 KXV 0 0 PATTERSON, Rex Dr PATTERSON - If the honorable member cares to read the official organs of the teachers' unions, he will find those exact words. As I said before, education is basic and fundamental to the scientists, the administrators and the businessmen of this community. We should heed the advice that has been given from both sides of the chamber with respect to education during the course of this debate today. I should like to say a word or two about Commonwealth and State relationships, because a major function of the Prime Minister's Department is the maintenance of harmonious relationships between the Commonwealth and the States. The Prime Minister's Department is responsible for inter-departmental co-ordination in government, administration and economic affairs, and for communications between the Commonwealth and the States. The usual method of approach to the Commonwealth is via a Premier. The matter is then processed by the Commonwealth and transmitted back to the States by the Prime Minister. Taking developmental projects as an example, if a project is submitted by a State to the Commonwealth, the Prime Minister's Department is the department really responsible for the determination or interpretation of final policy on the matter. I believe that relationships with the States are progressively worsening under the present system, where we have the unsavoury spectacle of the States begging for funds each year. One major reason for this is the imbalance in the economy caused by what I have termed the octopuslike growth of the cities, and the ever increasing demands on the Commonwealth for funds to cope with this self-generating growth. With the limited finance that is available, it is becoming increasingly difficult to meet the urgent demands of the States for funds to meet their financial commitments. If one can judge by newspaper reports of the views of Sir Henry Bolte, Mr. Askin and the other State Premiers, it is certainly right to conclude that CommonwealthState relations today are not smooth. One of the reasons for this, obviously, is the arrogance of the present Commonwealth Government towards the States. It seems that this Government's arrogance is replaced by humility only when it runs into electoral reverses. This was clearly demonstrated after the 1961 general election, at which the Government suffered a very serious setback. After that election, we saw the Commonwealth playing a more realistic role in Commonwealth-State relations. It actually began co-operating with the States and co-ordinating its activities with theirs in determining priorities for the allocation of funds so as to ensure the maximum development, the maximum return and the maximum benefit for the States. As a result, we saw stimulation of the economy between the general elections in 1961 and 1963. At that time, Commonwealth-State relations appeared to be good, if one judges by the statements of the Premiers that were then reported. During that period, the Prime Minister's Department had a major hand in formulating policy on many projects relating to the standardisation of rail gauges in southern Australia, coal ports, beef roads, land development and the Ord River scheme. After 1963, however, the position again deteriorated, just as it is deteriorating now. Once again we read reports of criticism of the Commonwealth made by Sir Henry Bolte and Mr. Askin. Let me illustrate what I describe as the Government's arrogance by reference to answers that have been given recently to questions asked upon notice. 1 recently asked a question about a proposed Queensland project that has been mentioned frequently in the newspapers in the last three years - the Nogoa River irrigation project. I asked when the Prime Minister's Department received the Queensland Premier's request for evaluation of the project and what was the position relating to the investigations that had been undertaken. The reply, which I received yesterday, was - Tt is not customary to make information of this type public without the prior agreement of the State Government concerned. The truth, of course, is that the Commonwealth has done nothing about the matter. We could go right through a list of projects that have been referred to the Prime Minister's Department. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Whitlam, recently asked a question upon notice seeking information about the project for the border rivers between New South Wales and Queensland. The reply that he received yesterday was almost identical with the answer to my question about the Nogoa irrigation project, for it was in these terms - Information of the type requested by the honorable member is regarded by the Commonwealth Government as confidential between itself and the State Government concerned unless it is mutually agreed to make the information public. That information is made public in the newspapers. One has only to read the daily Press to see it. The truth, again, is that the Commonwealth has done nothing about the matter. This sort of attitude on the part of the Commonwealth does not bring about good relations with the States. I recently asked upon notice - What is the name of each water conservation project located north of Brisbane for which the Queensland Government requested financial assistance . . . ? The answer that I received from the Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Holt) was - Information of the type requested by the honorable member is regarded by the Commonwealth Government as confidential . . . One has only to read the particulars of payments made by the Commonwealth to the States to learn the answer: Absolutely no money has been made available to the State by the Commonwealth for this purpose. I he Commonwealth has made available to the States S900 million, but not one cent has been allocated to Queensland for water conservation projects. This is a disgraceful indictment of the present Commonwealth Government. 1643 JF7 Fremantle 0 0 BEAZLEY, Kim Mr BEAZLEY . - Mr. Chairman, I want to devote my remarks to the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. This afternoon, the honorable member for Mackellar (Mr. Wentworth) discussed this subject. I pay a tribute to him because it was his persistent advocacy in this chamber that led to the establishment of the Institute. Both he and I have the honour to represent the House of Representatives on the Council of the Institute. I stress again that although Australia as a country now has 180 years of history, the establishment of this Institute recently represents only the third serious effort at a governmental level to record the customs of the Aboriginal people and to seek to understand the Aborigines. The first attempt was made by the Queensland Government at the turn of the century when it commissioned Roth, the anthropologist. The second was made by the Government of South Australia which, in the days when it was responsible for the Northern Territory, commissioned the Baldwin Spencer expeditions. The third attempt has now been made by the Commonwealth by the establishment of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, which finances universities and individuals in recording the languages, the music, the customs and the like of the Aboriginal people. The amount of the grant made to the Institute represents a test of whether we are a people that recognises the value of other people, of whether we recognise the value of unique thought structures, of whether our attitude to an immemorial culture amounts to ignorant contempt, as has been the situation in the past, and of whether we can understand that knowledge of a thought life utterly different from our own in its roots and origins may throw light on all human psychology. In a way, the amount of the grant made for the Institute is a test of whether we can appreciate another people and of whether we are capable only of a kind of cultural genocide. In the smugness of our aim of assimilation, there arises a doubt: Should we not, before the Aborigines vanish, record their languages, music, art, dances, ritual, beliefs, philosophy, artifacts and customs? The crass, dull ignorance of the past - the proud ignorance that we have had with respect to another people - still manifests itself in a million ways. We are the last generation to have a chance to undertake this recording of the features of the life of the Aboriginal people, and posterity will not forgive us if we miss it. One of the many respects in which people of about the age of 20 today are superior to our generation is in their desire for this kind of anthropological knowledge. It is a feature of the universities today that there are hopeless queues of as many as 200 or 250 anthropology students seeking one book that has been set for a tutorial. I realise that the purpose of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies is to record what may be called new knowledge of the Aboriginal people. But the numbers of trained anthropologists who can do this work will underlie the work of the Institute. It may well be worth the Commonwealth Government's time for it to take a look at these hopeless queues of anthropology students seeking books in the universities and to see whether it can do something to increase the supply of the required material. 1 see the distinguished Minister for Territories (Mr. Barnes) entering the chamber. He was an effective member of the Select Committee on the Voting Rights of Aborigines. Those of us who had the opportunity to serve on the select committee which heard the grievances of the Yirrkala people came across an astonishing fact. Honorable members will recall that one of the stipulations laid down by the Parliament in passing the resolutions which set up the committee was that we should hear the Aborigines through competent interpreters. This ii precisely what the Commonwealth Government never does. It remains deaf to the thousands of Aborigines of Arnhem Land because it is without linguists. I remember the evidence of the Aborigines given to us through interpreters. The elders of the tribe were orators of great dignity. They answered questions with considerable penetration. The Commonwealth's welfare officers who sat listening to the proceedings confessed afterwards that they were utterly staggered by what they had heard. They had no idea that the Aborigines thought this way or held these opinions. This was because the Commonwealth had nobody who could hear Aborigines speak in their own languages. All it had were people who were in contact with Aborigines struggling to express themselves in English. In a sense the Commonwealth Government was proud not to know their languages. It was proud to have schools which could be conducted only in English, where Aboriginal children must conform and try to obtain their fundamental education in a language in which they did not think. This is part of our arrogant assimilation policy. The Aborigines demonstrated how they were not listened to. They described how the chief welfare- officer of the Northern Territory would rush in by aircraft and how, when they were trying to talk to him. he would constantly look at his wristlet watch. It was devastating evidence. I believe young people today do want the humility of listening to these people because they have a great many things to say which are interesting. In spite of our ignorant contempt for them, Aborigines are regarded by anthropologists as the intellectuals of the primitive world. But the Aborigine is a transcendent thinker, to use the terminology of the philosophers. He insists on an explanation for everything. The native of New Guinea is an immanent thinker. He lives for the moment. He has easily conformed to our money economy. He has moved from day to day. readily adaptable. But the Aborigine developed one of the most elaborate thought structures in human history. Everything had to be explained. Every physical feature and its origin had to be explained. The origin of the animals had to be explained. Some tribes, such as the Loritja initiated their youth by making them learn a saga of 1,000 verses which explained the origin of everything - where water was to be found, where the best hunting was, and the use of trees and plants - so that the whole of their history, religion, economy and geography was taught in the one stage. These transcendent thinkers tried to explain everything, including their position in the universe, with their art, corroborees and dancing. They were an utterly isolated people, except for contact with those whom we would now call Indonesians, and this was intermittent contact by the coastal Aborigines of Arnhem Land. Otherwise they had no contacts. Living isolated, in many cases in thankless deserts, they developed a philosophy and a way of life which enabled them to survive in the most grim conditions. This attitude to other races is the true test of whether there is anything new in our community. I believe there is something new in modern Australian youth. Lots of people think they are producing something new. But the Red Guards, for instance, in China are a throwback to the Boxers in their contempt for barbarians and foreign devils and their rejection of all external ideas. They are really reverting to the past in China and not producing something revolutionary and new. I am not sure whether our assimilation policy is not anything more than a reversion to our own arrogant past whereby we assumed that the Aborigines had nothing worth preserving, and that they must conform to us. We called this " assimilation " and said it was a new and enlightened policy, but it is precisely the way we have acted for 1 80 years. Nearly all of the a priori assumptions made about the Aborigines were false. The attitude to the Aborigines is a test of whether there is any real change among Australian people on race issues. We believed, for instance, that the lives of Aborigines were drab. I will not suggest that the lives of fringe dwellers are not drab, but they to a large extent are deculturalised We have assumed that the lives of the Aborigines were drab, but they were rich in ritual. They had a whole hypothesis of creation which gave them immense satisfaction. Literature seemed utterly absent and certainly there was only the literature of drawings. But there were word of mouth sagas of great complexity, great length and great penetration. They appeared to have no records but their corroborees are complex records of their whole past. They seemed to own no land, and how happy we were about this. We said that the Aborigine was a nomad, so he may as well move to some other place whenever we wanted his land. We have precisely that philosophy today whenever minerals are discovered on reserves. We know that in South Australia the first move in the history of the Commonwealth is being made to acknowledge some kind of tribal title to land. It is having a grisly time with the Legislative Council. The Aborigines seemed to own no land and not to be concerned about it, but the whole relationship of every individual was to some particular piece of land. His origins were believed to be in the earth spirit, in some particular piece of land in some particular place. Relationship with this land and its features was an absolutely major part of his life. Although the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies does not deal with Aboriginal policy, I believe that it is injecting, rightly, into the Australian community a new sensitivity and a new appreciation. It has come almost too late, but I do not believe it is entirely too late. I believe that what has been done already by the musicologists, the film men, the linguists who have produced dictionaries and whole volumes of verses and those who have studied their social life through the Institute has contributed to a vital part of the history of this country. Australians of the future will regard the Aborigines as a part of the history of this country even if Australians of the past have not regarded them as being of any significance. More and more we are coming into contact with neighbours who will regard our relationship with these people as a test. I believe that a basic enlightenment of policy is possible if the Commonwealth Government realises what a treasure it now has in its hands in the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. Motion (by Mr. Aston) agreed to - That the question be now put. Question put - That the amendment (Mr. Whitlam's) be agreed to. The Committee divided. (The Chairman - Mr. P. E. Lucock.) 37 58 Majority .. ..21 AYES NOES Question so resolved in the negative. Original question resolved in the affirmative. Proposed expenditure agreed to. Repatriation Department. Proposed expenditure, $260,680,000. Department of Social Services. Proposed expenditure, $23,063,000. 1646 JZX Kalgoorlie 0 0 COLLARD, Frederick Mr COLLARD .- In speaking to these estimates, I want to express my appreciation of the courtesy and co-operation extended to me by officers of the Department of Social Services in Western Australia during the time that I have been a member of the Parliament. These people are criticised for what they do or do not do at times, but if the actions or attitudes that give rise to the criticism are closely examined it will invariably be found that the officers have been bound or limited by the policy of the Government, the instructions of the Minister for Social Services (Mr. Sinclair) or the Act itself. In fact, the criticism should be levelled directly at the Government and not at the officers of the Department, because they have no control over government policy. The officers are obliged by the policy of the Government to refuse or reduce social service payments and this in turn causes the applicants or recipients some suffering or inconvenience. As a result, the officers are often condemned for a policy over which they have no control. For instance, the recent instruction by the Minister in relation to the abolition of cash payments went out over the signature of the Director in the State, and as a result the Director copped the blame, when actually it was no fault of his. However, where the Department's officers have a free hand I have always found them helpful and co-operative in attempting to bring about the desired results. I certainly appreciate their help. Recently we had before us the Social Services Bill 1966, the contents of which were described by the Minister as measures representing an acceptance of the responsibility of the community to provide for its less fortunate members. I feel quite sure that the general public would take offence at those remarks. The Minister was not expressing the real views of the people. The opposite would be the true position. The measures contained in the Bill were very few and provided for small increases in isolated instances and certainly did not represent the general community's idea of acceptance of what the age, invalid and widow pensioners should actually receive. 1 say, as a member of the community, that they certainly did not represent my feelings of responsibility in that regard. They may, and apparently do, represent the feelings and attitude of the Liberal Party and of the Country Party, but quite certainly the Australian Labour Party does not agree that the Parliament measured up to its responsibilities in that Bill. The Minister went on to say - and 1 agree with him in this regard - that the measures in the Bill represented a continuance of the Government's policy to provide assistance to the less fortunate. I think we would all agree that making small increases to a few items only of social service, and at the same time completely ignoring many other items, is certainly a continuance of Government policy. It is also completely in line with the thinking of Government supporters. If we examine the statement attached to the Budget speech we find that out of a total of 35 items of social service - and I exclude the health items - only 11 were adjusted. What the Minister really told us was that by making additions to about one third of the social service items he was carrying out Government policy. He also admitted, of course, that by making the very meagre increases to those few items he was carrying out Government policy in relation to financial assistance to pensioners. I have no argument with the Minister if he feels obliged to admit that inadequate pensions and allowances and discrimination between pensioners is Government policy and has the blessing of Government supporters. If he feels he should make that quite clear, that is O.K. by me, but I take exception to his claim that the general community accepts the Government's policy in that regard, because that just is not so. It certainly is not the attitude of members of the Opposition. The point remains that the Minister has admitted, apparently with some pride, that the recent Social Services Bill represents Government policy. It is very important that we examine Government policy. One could take the married pensioner couple rate as a fair example. In 1962 both pensioners received £5 5s. a week. In 1963 the pension remained the same. In 1964 it was increased by 5s. a week to £5 10s. a week. In 1965 there was no increase. This year there has been an increase of 7s. 6d. or 75c. Over this five year period the pension payable to a married pensioner has increased from £5 5s. or $10.50 to £5 17s. 6d. or SI 1.75- a total increase of 12s. 6d. or Si. 25. By my reckoning this amounts to an average of 25c a year. Thus we have the interesting, although rather frightening, position of the Minister telling us clearly that he is continuing Government policy and, this being so, that married pensioner couples in Australia can look forward to receiving an average increase in pension of 25c each year while this Government remains in office. This, of course, applies to age and invalid pensioners. In referring to invalids I point out that during the five year period I have mentioned there was also an increase of 1.2s. 6d. or $1.25 in the wife's allowance, so here again there was an average increase of 25c a year. The maternity allowance has not been increased since 1%2. Child endowment has not been increased in respect of the first or second child, but the payment for children beyond the first two has been increased by 50c. The Minister draws attention to this as being the Government's policy. Over the five year period the A class widow's pension has been increased by $2, or 40c a year. The B and C class widows have received a total increase of S2.50. or an average of 50c a year. This is the continuation of Government policy. These people can expect the same treatment over the next five years if they are prepared to allow the present Government to remain in office. We find that the unemployment and sickness benefits have not been altered; they remain as they were in 1962. I emphasise that the average increase in social service payments during the last five years has been 25c, 40c or 50c a year, and that some benefits have not been increased at all, yet the Minister referred to the measures in the Social Services Bill as being the acceptance of a responsibility towards pensioners and a continuance of Government policy. This means that next year, under this Government, married pensioner couples can expect to receive a further 25c increase in their pension. Perhaps the increase will be 50c, or even $1, but if they should happen to receive a SI increase next year they must bear in mind that they will have to wait until 1970, or perhaps 1971, before they get a further increase, and then it will be only 25c. That is the outlook for pensioners while this Government remains in power. This is Government policy, as the Minister told us, and it is the policy the Government intends to continue. Of course, if the Government is returned it will take the election result as meaning that the people of Australia, including the pensioners, support its policy, and therefore the people cannot expect any different treatment. The wage and salary earners and their wives would be well advised also to look at this Government's policy and to give serious thought to the social services situation. If a breadwinner suffers an illness, or an accident for which he is not entitled to compensation, or is not able to get employment, he will receive from the Government the same rate as applied in 1962. The Government has had the opportunity of increasing all social service benefits, but it has failed to do so. No doubt the Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Holt) in his election policy speech later this year will promise some increases in social service payments. If he does, I suggest that pensioners and other recipients of social service benefits, and those who expect to become recipients in the future, should not fail to remember that just before the 1963 election the Government made such a promise. After being elected the Government increased by only 5s., or 50c, the pension paid to married age and invalid pensioners and widows. It failed to do anything more about pensions until recently because we are now on the eve of another election. The Government will follow that same policy if it is elected again this year. The fact of the matter is that the Government's policy is driving more and more people into a state of poverty. Immediately a man or woman is obliged to go on the pension he or she faces an existence of near poverty simply because this Government is not treating them as it should. Just because a person is unable to continue working for a living is no reason why he should have to depend on charity for an existence. But that is what is actually happening. A survey carried out last year proved that thousands of pensioners depend regularly on free meals and other help from charitable organisations to avoid slow starvation. It also showed that thousands of pensioners have to depend on charity to obtain blankets for the winter otherwise they would sleep cold or not sleep at all. The blanket appeal is an annual event in Western Australia - I imagine it would be in other States as well - made necessary because of this Government's attitude to pensioners. The survey proved further that only a very small percentage of pensioners have refrigerators, washing machines or electric or gas stoves. The majority of those who happen to have a wood stove, the survey proved, were unable to purchase sufficient wood for their requirements. This Government after 17 years in office still has pensioners depending on charity. The Government made a great song and dance about, and apparently expected great applause for, introducing a rent allowance for single pensioners. This was later extended to include married pensioners in cases where the wife did not receive a pension but received a wife's allowance. According to the Government, this was a great step forward. I took the trouble to ask a question about this matter and received a reply dated 30th August 1966 which indicated that only .1 6.5 per cent, of the total number of pensioners receive an allowance. In other words, 16.5 per cent, get something and 83.5 per cent, get nothing. And this is what the Minister has put forward as the Government's policy. More recently Government members have endeavoured to support their attitude towards the present inadequate pensions by measuring the present rate as a percentage of the basic wage. They have taken the basic wage in 1949 or some such far off year as a measuring stick. As 1 have said before, no-one can successfully argue that the pension, in relation to the basic wage or anything else at any particular time, was actually sufficient for pensioners to live on. Everyone knows that over the past 15 years and more the basic wage has gradually lost its value in relation to the cost of living. 1648 10000 0 0 LUCOCK, Philip The CHAIRMAN (Mr Lucock - Order! The honorable member's time has expired. 1648 KAR Bowman 0 0 GIBBS, Wylie Dr GIBBS .- The honorable member for Kalgoorlie (Mr. Collard) has been rather critical of this Government's performance in relation to pensions. I expect that these fulminations from honorable members opposite will continue throughout this debate because we must remember that we are on the eve of an election and they are casting around frantically, desperately, for some issue on which they can seize which may have some appeal to the public at large. All 1 say in this regard is that we should let the people compare the performance of this Government, which has provided one of the finest pension schemes in the world, with the miserable performance of the Ministry to which the honorable member opposite who is now interjecting belonged when Labour was in office so many years ago. The Labour Party then had an opportunity to increase pensions - no -one was inhibiting them - but the fact is that during their term the pension was reduced on one occasion. I do not think they can be very proud of that. I congratulate the Department upon the way in which it has managed its affairs during the past year and, in particular I compliment the Minister for Social Services (Mr. Sinclair) on his efficient, intelligent and if he will excuse me for saying so, his liberal administration, of the Department. I have always had the greatest admiration for the way in which he has managed the Department of Social Services. I have had no cause for complaint. In fact, I have always received the most courteous attention when I have come to him with a problem. [ congratulate him further on the recent pension increase of $1 a week for single pensioners and $1.50 for a pensioner couple. This will help considerably people who admittedly are often living under considerable difficulties. This is a problem which is exercising the minds of all honorable members at the present time. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that pension provisions in Australia are amongst the best in the world. We must remember also that there is only a limited amount of money in this country available for the provision of all services and that if we increase pensions there will inexorably be an increase in income tax. This Government has had a very lively sense of responsibility to the community. We must not run the risk of inhibiting the economy by imposing too heavy a tax burden upon it. Honorable members opposite laugh because they are the greatest exponents of crushing and crippling taxation of any party in the world today. However, despite these problems and the almost certain result of increased income tax, is there any justification for broadening the eligibility for pensions? I believe that for many reasons a case for this can be made out. First, a liberalisation of the means test would enable some who are in difficulties to supplement their incomes, and it would help to overcome many anomalies. Some of the anomalies in respect of, for example, superannuation, are beyond my comprehension because, as I think is fairly well known, there is no difference between the income received by a person who took up, say, 10 units of superannuation and thus paid an appropriate contribution rate during his working life, and that received by a person who took up only 3 units. This anomaly cannot be very pleasing to the former superannuitants when they reach retiring age. There are other points as well. The present system discourages thrift and encourages people who have saved during their working life to spend some of their savings before they retire. There is also the philosophical question upon which I will not take any side, as to whether the elderly who have paid income tax and who have worked throughout their active life and raised a family should not be granted some concession in the form of a liberalisation of the means test. 1 believe a case can be made out in that respect but obviously it is utterly impractical to remove the means test at one stroke. The increase in taxation would be crippling and 1 am sure the economy would not be able to stand up to the severe strain which would be imposed upon it. These are the things we must consider. 1 have a suggestion which may assist in easing the means test without imposing this completely crippling degree of income tax upon the community. I believe that we should grant a half pension to those of eligible age irrespective of means test. 1649 KYC 0 0 POLLARD, Reginald Mr Pollard - That is what they are getting now. 1649 KAR 0 0 GIBBS, Wylie Dr GIBBS - Then they must have been receiving only a quarter pension when you lot were in power. As I was saying, a half pension should be given to all the people of pensionable age irrespective of means test, but those who are presently unaffected by the means test would naturally be still entitled to a full pension. I have some relevant figures before me. They may not be the latest figures but they are the best I could obtain. They show that there are in Australia 384,150 males and 509,693 females of pensionable age. Of these, 184,189 males and 443,911 females are actually receiving pensions. As I have said, these figures may not be exact, but they give a pretty reasonable guide and they would not be very far wrong. This means that about 200,000 males and 65,500 females of pensionable age are not receiving pensions at the present time. I might point to the highly significant fact that of the females of pensionable age only a very few are in fact working. I mention that because these females would be better able to work than the males. We know full well that the female of the species is made of more substantial fibre than the male. I am sorry to say this, but it is true. I think that if all these people of pensionable age were given a half pension and had the proper motivation, a lot of them would work. We know that in our present situation in this country we need workers, and especially skilled workers, and these people would be mainly skilled workers. As I said in my speech on the Budget, a good proportion of these older people are well able to work and perform creditably in almost any sphere of activity. 1649 KYS 0 0 REYNOLDS, Leonard Mr Reynolds - Would you look for another job at 60 years of age? 1649 KAR 0 0 GIBBS, Wylie Dr GIBBS - The honorable member for Barton might like to retire at 60. In fact, he might be retiring from this Parliament at a much earlier age, but whether this has coloured his thinking or not I do not know. But the point I am trying to make is a serious one, and I wish honorable members opposite would not stick their heads in the sand but would give my proposal consideration. It is very important to these older people that they should work. Many of them lose all motivation on retiring and simply run to seed. 1 have a very apt quotation before me. It is from a doctor, Dr. Alex Johnson, who said - The danger of " acting old " is a very real one and doctors have a responsibility to help elderly patients keep morale and hope high. When a patient is convinced that he is done for he has said goodbye to health, happiness and purpose. This slate of affairs is all too common and prompts the cliche " We ripen or we rot ". I believe that we should try to motivate these people to work. I am not suggesting that we should compel them to work. If we can motivate them to work we will save them from rotting and we will assist the community very considerably by increasing the available work force, which is something that is sorely needed in the prosperous Australia of today. I shall give honorable members an idea of what this would mean, and the figures 1 give are quite possible of achievement. If we provided the right motivation, we could have 45,000 more males and 60,000 more females of pensionable age working. I believe these figures are conservative. I know it is difficult to give an accurate estimate because many people of this age would be quite unable to work. But I have studied statistics and I believe these figures are quite capable of achievement. How do we provide the motivation? We do it. first, simply by removing the means test. This would provide motivation because they would know they would still receive a half pension and associated benefits even if they continued to work. They must be motivated also by encouragement and by suitable information services. The Commonwealth Employment Service must be brought up to date in regard to this matter. This sort of thing is done in other parts of the world, and where it has been done it has proved very satisfactory. The Commonwealth Employment Service must have specialists trained in advising old people. One reason why old people retire altogether from work is that they lose a job and find it hard to get another one. A person may be misplaced once or twice. This may be done in all good faith; the Commonwealth Employment Service does a magnificent job but it must have expertise. After a person loses a couple of jobs he is inclined to say: " I will give it away.". But if such people are motivated correctly and placed correctly, and if there is a scheme instituted such as those in existence in other parts of the world, under which old people are constantly being retrained for jobs - and this does not involve a great deal of training - then I believe we can easily achieve the numbers I have quoted and perhaps many more. If we did this we would save the taxpayer in aggregate 105.000 half pensions, but on the other hand there would be 265,000 more people who would be receiving half pensions. In other words, there would be a net increase of about 160,000 half pensions. These would amount to about §55 million a year, which the Government might theoretically have to find. But the taxpayers would not have to find the full amount of $55 million for the simple reason that many of these people would be paying income tax and a substantial amount of money would be returned to revenue in this way. I believe that if we are eventually going to eliminate the means test completely, then the worker will have to find the necessary money throughout his working life. We all know there is no Santa Claus. As I have said before, and as every responsible citizen knows, this is an expensive business. We cannot afford to cripple the economy, which is carefully and skilfully but delicately balanced. If we did not make people contribute throughout their working lives we would impose crippling burdens. The point I make is that if we instituted the scheme I propose and at the same time commenced a contributory scheme, the taxpayer would have to contribute very little indeed towards a system which would give a half pension to all people of pensionable age in the community today. I think that in doing this we would not only be correcting many anomalies but we would also be performing a social good deed, in that we would re-motivate people who at present are not ripening but are rotting in the community and who could be happily performing a useful task. 1650 JZP Leichhardt 0 0 FULTON, William Mr FULTON .- We are discussing at present the estimates of the Repatriation Department and the Department of Social Services, and I want to speak first about the estimates for the Repatriation Department. Let me say, first, that as our present legislation stands, the repatriation services in this country are among the best in the world, although sometimes the Act is not administered according to what we believe to be the letter of the law. I have had an opportunity, as a member of the Public Works Committee, to visit repatriation hospitals and I believe they are doing a creditable service. Ex-servicemen are being given good treatment by their fellow Australians - and rightly so. If a man is prepared to offer his life in the defence of his country I believe we should be prepared to support him for the rest of his lifetime if he is incapacitated because of that war service. But I believe that many of the anomalies that exist under the present legislation have not been cleared up by the Government although it has had 16 or 17 years in which to do so. It may be difficult to remove many of these anomalies, but I believe that the Minister and the officers concerned should be prepared to settle down and tackle the problems effectively. It is all very well to grant a few dollars extra on this occasion to some of these people, but why not clean up the anomalies that have existed over the years? The Government should bring in legislation to clean up these matters. There are quite a few ex-servicemen suffering at the present time from heart complaints, lung complaints and cancer. Whether or not they form a bigger proportion of ex-servicemen than such sufferers among civilians form, I am not prepared to say; but I know from experience that young fellows who served with me are suffering from heart complaints now when they are not yet 50 years of age. They live in the north and are classified by the doctors as not being permanently incapacitated. They can earn a living but they cannot lift anything more than 15 or 20 lbs. When they live in areas such as north Queensland, and back country areas of any State at all, how can they get a job that will not involve their having to lift a weight of more than 20 lbs? It is all very well for doctors to say that they can do light duties. If they move to the south, to the cities, they can get jobs as lift drivers or at some other light duties. But what do the doctors expect them to do? Do they expect them to sell up the homes for which they have saved all their lives? Do they expect them to sacrifice their homes? They would have to sell at a loss and would have to buy new clothes for for their wives and families, because clothes they wear in the north would not be suitable for the southern cities; so new clothes would be another added expense for them. I have put cases before the Minister for Repatriation and the Repatriation Department, and the Department will not put the people concerned even on the intermediate rate pension. It puts them on the 100 per cent. rate. These people cannot live on the 100 per cent, rate when they have a family. They want to work. They are prepared to work. I know of several cases where the persons concerned have tried to get employment and have worked for a week, a fortnight, three weeks or a month, but eventually, because of the strain, they have been taken to hospital again, treated for another three weeks and then discharged. This is happening time and time again. I could give details of the individual cases if required. These men have been before the Repatriation Board but they say the same reply comes back to them: " Come down south where you can get a job which is suitable for your condition ". I appeal to the departmental officers and the Minister to consider the conditions under which these men are forced to leave their homes. If they are forced to leave their homes in the north, sell them at a sacrifice and move south, they are forced to buy other homes at inflated prices. They have to buy somewhere near the city or the suburbs where they can find light work. They have to suitably clothe their families, resettle their children in schools and help them to find new friends. It is not a problem easy for these ex-servicemen to solve. I think they deserve consideration in regard to these matters. I think that if a survey were taken we would find that ex-servicemen suffer more from heart complaints than do civilians of the same age. I am talking about men who have been in the thick of war - men who have suffered bombing and explosions, and not particularly those who have been fired at; many ex-servicemen were fired at during the early stages of the war. But when the bombing was terrific, when we had no protection and had to suffer bombing attacks from superior air power, it was a tremendous task to try to keep from breaking, from letting one's spirit crack, to keep on one's feet and to lead or be part of the team. It was a difficult job and it must have been a strain which must eventually tell upon a man. This kind of thing may not have affected ex-servicemen as soon as they returned to normal life, but it must do so as they get older. I find that this is happening to quite a few of the younger ex-servicemen from World War II who are not yet 50 or who are in their early 50's. Some of them died in their early 50's because of heart complaints, but these complaints were not accepted by the medical profession as being due to war causes. What would cause this kind of complaint in such a case? Surely the experience during the war of such treatment as I have described would affect their systems and bring on heart complaints or nervous complaints which would affect their lives eventually. I appeal to the Minister and to the departmental officers to consider this matter again. The people I am talking about do not wish to be placed on the T.P.I, rate. They want to work, but in the areas in which they live they cannot find suitable jobs, although they try hard. In every case that I know of in my electorate they have tried hard to find suitable work. I found that they worked for at least three weeks and were then back in hospital again, put out on the labour market again and then had again to seek a suitable job. But such jobs are not available in that area, and these people cannot be expected to pack up and leave just like that. There are quite a number of anomalies that could have been cleaned up. I do not have time to go through the lot. Consider the case of the T.P.I, pensioner. These men are entitled to a lot of concessions, such as free television licences. But after the pensioner's death his widow is not entitled to them. Why? Why has she to pay the full television licence fee and lose the other concessions that she had when he husband was alive? All these anomalies will be brought out later on, but they should have been cleaned up years ago. They do not concern only war widows. I will refer to social service benefits in a short while, if I have time. All these anomalies should have been cleaned up, and to do so would have cost the Government very little. The other matter I want to talk about refers to Boer War and First World War diggers. I will not harp on this subject, because I spoke on it recently. I have been through our repatriation hospitals and there is accommodation available in them. Extra staff and extra beds would not be required to look after these diggers. All that would be required would be extra food. That is all that would be required to provide free hospitalisation for these men, given to them whether or not their complaints are war caused. Someone said to me recently that this would cause a sorry state in our repatriation hospitals because if any of these men got a boil he would enter hospital. This is not so. These old diggers will not enter hospital unless it is necessary. They are not the type who would seek hospital treatment unless it was necessary. They were a tough crew and they proved this over the years. I do not believe it would cost very much to accede to the request made by the Opposition during the debate on the repatriation legislation recently and provide free hospitalisation for Boer War and World War I diggers. There are not very many of them, and surely they are entitled to this. This is another anomaly that should have been cleaned up by the Government and which would not have cost very much to remove. It would not have meant the provision of extra staff or extra accommodation in the hospitals because sufficient staff and accommodation are already available. After all, a lot of them are passing away every year. I believe the repatriation hospitals could accommodate all Boer War and World War I diggers even if they went in at the same time. It would not overtax their capacity. This is one matter the Government should have considered. These problems may be hard, but why are they not tackled? Why are they pushed aside? There is no justification for that. The departmental heads as well as the Minister are to blame if the problems are not tackled. If a problem is hard it should not be put aside in the " too hard " basket. That is all very well and it has been done before; it was done during war time. But somebody has to tackle these problems sometime, so why not now? I think that the Boer War diggers and the World War I diggers should be accommodated in our repatriation hospitals for all ailments, whether due to war causes or not. There are also a lot of anomalies in our social services. It was strange to hear the honorable member for Bowman (Dr. Gibbs) talk about the lifting of the means test - after 16 years. Why has not the Government done already something about lifting the means test? I believe it should be lifted completely. People who are earning more than a stipulated figure could be placed in the taxation field. They would not be free of tax. They could come into the tax field and in this way they would not be a burden on the country. The anomaly that I consider to be worst of all so far as social services are concerned is in respect of the wife of the individual who has turned 65 years of age. Most industries and most companies have a superannuation scheme which obliges employees to retire at 65 years. But some do not receive any superannuation benefit because the scheme came into operation too late for them to be able to participate. They retire on the age pension. Quite a few in my electorate are in that situation. Unfortunately, if the wife of the retired man has not reached 60 years of age she is the one who suffers. If she is 57 years of age she has three years fo wait before she may receive the age pension. Apparently she is expected to go out and work. After a woman has been a housewife for 30 or 40 years, does the Government expect her to humiliate herself by taking in washing or ironing? What else can she do? She is not trained for anything else. If her husband is in receipt of the pension but she is not, they cannot live on the one pension and so, after looking after her husband for 30 or 40 years, she has to go out to work or take in washing and ironing. This is a disgraceful situation which should have been corrected long ago. Surely a woman who has been married for all those years should not have to suffer the humiliation of having to take in washing and ironing. She cannot do any other work. It is no good saying that if she had been a school teacher 40 years ago she could go back to teaching. As a teacher she would be useless. If she had been a nurse before she married she could not go back into that profession after 40 years absence. All she can do is look for washing and ironing. This is the penalty she has to pay for being less than 60 years of age when her husband retires. This situation should have been cleaned up long ago as it is one of the worst anomalies. There are quite a few others that 1 have not time to deal with. I ask the Minister to look into this question. If a woman has kept house for her husband for all those years - I do not care if a limit of 30 or 40 years is put on it - surely she is entitled to receive the age pension at the same time as her husband becomes entitled to the benefit so that she is not forced to humiliate herself by going out to do washing and ironing. 1653 KVG Maribyrnong 0 0 STOKES, Philip Mr STOKES .- In dealing with social services I should like to highlight three matters which were introduced by the Government in the recent legislation. The first is the removal of the nationality provisions which until this time required a person to be a naturalised British subject before he could obtain social service benefits. Under the new provisions, even though persons are aliens, if they satisfy the residential period of 10 years and otherwise satisfy the means test they become eligible for the benefit without having to be naturalised. The second matter to which I refer is the increase in the earning capacity of eligible pensioners in respect of dependent children. This reacts favorably particularly for the class A widow. The provision increases her permissible earning capacity for each child from $1 to $3 per week. In the case of the civilian class A widow with two dependent children, one who has two children at school and is able to go out to work, she can now receive $34.50 per week virtually tax free without affecting her pension. She can now receive her base rate pension of $13, for both children she can receive the allowance of $3, the mother's allowance of $4 and child endowment of $1.50, which is $21.50 tax free. Then she is able to earn a permissible income for herself of $7 and now, for the two children, $6 per week which enables her to have a total weekly income of $34.50. She is eligible also for medical and pharmaceutical benefits, as well as concessions from the Postmaster-General's Department and State Government travel concessions. The Federal basic wage, following the recent increase of $2 per week, now stands at $32.80. So it will be seen from the example 1 have stated that a class A widow can now, from all sources, obtain $1.70 in excess of the Federal basic wage. As I have pointed out, most of this is tax free. The third matter .hat I would like to highlight in respect of so;;al services is the extension of the Aged Persons Homes Act to enable religious _nJ charitable organisations which are registered v/i.h the Department or the hospital a.-.d ciarit.es departments of the various Suites to receive a capital grant- to enable them to erect buildings to be" used as nursing homes for the aged sick. One of the great deserts in our welfare work as a government undoubtedly has been brought about by the aged sick living longer and having to go to private nursing homes for custodial care and their families having to support them. Most of the nursing homes, in my State anyway, charge in the vicinity of $45 to S50 per week, which has put them beyond the means of a person receiving the normal pension, even with the Commonwealth Government subsidy of $14 per week. This extension of the provisions will be of great benefit in future in housing and providing custodial care for our aged sick. Turning from social services to service pensions, I am rather concerned about the operation of the general rate war pension. This benefit is now paid to ex-servicemen for war caused disabilities and runs in 10 per cents, up to the 100 per cent. rate. The pension is paid to them as a compensation for their disabilities which have been adjudged by the tribunals as war caused. This amount is paid not in a lump sum but as a pension. Nevertheless it is compensation for war caused disabilities. It is not taxable and it is inviolable at law. Nobody who sues a Service pensioner can attach the pension. Yet, when an ex-serviceman's finances are at their lowest ebb so that he has to apply for a service pension, this war pension is included in the means test as income and affects his entitlement for a service pension. I shall cite the example of two single men, both 65 years of age, one a civilian pensioner and the other an ex-serviceman. For the sake of the example, both have the $4,040 in extra property. The serviceman cannot claim the civilian pension or $13 beceause he is receiving the 100 per cent, general rate of $13 which is compensation for his war caused disabilities. He is in an adverse position when compared with the civilian who has no such compensation but can receive a social service benefit of $13 per week for which the ex-serviceman is not eligible. I shall cite another example of the man in receipt of a 10 per cent, or 20 per cent, w.ir pension whose war caused disabilities get worse. He goes to his repatriation medical officers, the specialist examines him and they upgrade him from 10 per cent, or 20 per cent, to 50 per cent. This is the man who has been receiving a part service pension, less the amount of his general rate war pension of 10 per cent, or 20 per cent, which is now increased to 50 per cent. He cannot do as much work because his disabilities are worse, yet he receives no more money because the increase is set off against the balance of his service pension. This is a grave injustice to him. I: is inequitable and it is discriminating against those who have put service above self. In New Zealand the general rale war pension is not included as income in the means test applied for social service pensions. Nor do we in Australia take into account general rate war pensions so far as unemployment and sickness benefits are concerned. Permanent military personnel who retire on an invalidity pension are assessed under the Defence Forces Retirment Benefits Act and have only the amount they earn taken into account. Their civil income is taken into account in grading their incapacity. We do not take their general rate war pension into account in this case, but we do take it into account when a returned ex-serviceman is at his lowest financial ebb and wants to apply for a service pension. It has been estimated that the cost of exempting those now receiving part general rate war pensions from the income means test for service pensions would be $3.12 million a year. 1654 JWU ALP 0 0 FRASER, Allan Mr Allan Fraser - That is a small cost to do a just action. 1654 KVG 0 0 STOKES, Philip Mr STOKES - That is so. I feel that there is an argument against it, and I shall deal with it. It is argued that if this is done it will be possible for a man to receive a source of pension of $13 a week, and this, with the $13 100 per cent, war pension, would bring him into conflict with the intermediate pension and the T.P.I, pension. If this is true then, I suggest that a percentage of the war pension should be exempted from the income means test. If, say, 75 per cent, were exempt, then the man on a 40 per cent, war pension would have an exemption of 30 per cent, of the pension, and so on up the scale. 1 have taken 75 per cent, just for the purposes of my argument, but the percentage could be tailored so that there would be no impinging on the T.P.I, and intermediate rates. If the suggestion were adopted, it would mean that returned soldiers from all wars, not merely the Boer War and World War I, who were in need and who applied for and received part service pensions would also get free hospitalisation and free medical benefits not only for was caused disabilities but also for non war caused disabilities. This would not be discriminatory in the way that the recent Opposition amendment to the Repatriation Bill would have been. It would be based on need. There would not be an indiscriminate benefit, to be enjoyed by people who had money, as would have 'been the case had the amendment to the Repatriation Bill been adopted. My suggestion would give needy people eligibility to full hospitalisation and medical treatment once they became entitled to a part service pension. I come now to another group in the community about whom I am concerned. I refer to the fixed income superannuatants. Rising costs with no cost of living adjustments have put many of these people in a worse position than recipients of social service benefits. Something has got to be done to relieve them. Some people advocate taxation concessions, but I think that partial exemption of their superannuation from the means test would be the answer. If the first $10 a week of superannuation were exempted, these people would at least get some compensation for the fact that they were on low fixed incomes, for which they contributed many years ago when money had a different value. Then there is the question of the permissible income. This is now set at $7 a week. It has been set at that amount for 12 years now. I think this should be increased to $10 a week. The honorable member for Scullin (Mr. Peters) is interjecting. I have not a great deal of time, and I wish to refer now to the abolition, not of the honorable member for Scullin but of the means test. This has been freely advocated in this chamber. The revised estimate of the cost of abolishing the means test is $340 million a year, plus the consequent increase in medical benefit costs. 1 invite the Committee to think of the present members of the community in terms of three groups - those presently over 60 years of age. those presently over 40 years of age and those presently over 20 years of age. Those in the first group - those over 60 years of age - have had difficult times. They have been through two wars and a depression. They have had no superannuation schemes and life assurance has not been attractive or of great benefit to them. They have had low wages and therefore no ability to provide for their retirement. It is this group that we generally think of when we talk of the abolition of the means test. The second group, those presently over 40, have had better opportunities than the first group. They have had better wage conditions, better superannuation schemes, long service leave, a better chance for life assurance, and the benefit of postwar progress over the last 25 years of their working life. The third group, those presently over 20 years of age, are in an affluent society, enjoy top wage conditions, the extension of superannuation schemes and cost of living adjustments. The majority of these people should be able to provide for their retirement 20 or 30 years hence. So that when we think of this question of the abolition of the means test we should realise that it is the first group about whom we are thinking. But if we abolish it, we abolish it also for the second and third groups. In fact, we abolish it for all posterity. This is a quite unscientific and unrealistic approach to the problem. I think that we have to introduce a compulsory national superannuation scheme, as advocated by the honorable member for Sturt (Sir Keith Wilson), with contributions based on a percentage of the wages earned and with payments being made at age 70, reducing later perhaps to age 65. The pension would be a percentage of the average wage earned over the last five years of working life. I submit that it is necessary to retain the present form of social service benefits in order to cover the people in group 1 and the needy minority in the second group to which I have referred. There would be but very few in the third group. Before I conclude I should like to pay a tribute to the honorable member for Sturt who has been chairman of the Government Members Social Services Committee from 1955 up to the present time. He will be retiring from this Parliament at the end of this session. He is a man who has dedicated himself to social services. He has given not only of his time but also of his money in promoting the establishment of cottage schemes for the aged in his own State. He has suggested many innovations in the field of social services which have been accepted by this Parliament. I pay tribute to him and wish him health and happiness in his retirement. 1656 K5L Watson 0 0 COPE, James Mr COPE . - Shortly after I was elected to this Parliament in May 1955, the late Sir Earle Page, who was then Minister for Health, introduced a rigid means test for pharmaceutical and medical benefits for age and invalid pensioners. Up to its abolition in 1965, not one member of the Government parties ever protested about this iniquitous means test. It was abolished only after continual hammering for 10 years by the members of the Opposition. I advocated its abolition year after year. All that it cost was something less than $3 million. It took the Government 10 years to undertake, at a cost of $3 million. This gives some idea of the sincerity of those members on the Government side who talk about the abolition of the means test. No doubt what they do is take extracts from their speeches as reported in "Hansard", and have them published in the local newspaper. When their constituents read these extracts they think their member is doing a marvellous job in trying to have the means test abolished. But when it comes to voting in the House on these particular matters, what happens? 1656 2V4 0 0 CAMERON, Clyde Mr Clyde Cameron - That is the real test. 1656 K5L 0 0 COPE, James Mr COPE - That is the real test, as the honorable member for Hindmarsh says. What happens when it comes to the real test? Before relating my remarks to the estimates for the Department of Social Services, I should like to take this opportunity of commending the officers of that Department for their efficiency and the courtesy they extend to me whenever I make representations on behalf of my constituents on matters relating to all aspects of social ser vices. I am sure that all other honorable members will agree with me that they are most efficient. During 1964-65, the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Public Accounts, of which I am honoured to be Vice-Chairman, conducted an inquiry into this Department in conformity with the Audit Act. I might add that I was very impressed by the competency of the officers who appeared before us. From time to time, certain sections of the Press and the general community seem to take pride in knocking the ability and efficiency of our Public Service. I certainly do not agree with them. I believe that the public servants in general are comparable with if not better than many servants of private enterprise. In referring to social services, I take honorable members back to the general election campaign of December 1949 when the former Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, gave a solemn promise that a Liberal-Country Party Government would maintain the full value of social service benefits and appoint a special committee to inquire into the means test with a view to its abolition. Neither promise was honoured, as I shall now proceed to show. 1 shall deal first with child endowment. Let us compare the purchasing power of this benefit in relation to the average basic wage of $13.20 a week in July 1950- the time when the Menzies Government introduced endowment for the first child - with its purchasing power in relation to the present average basic wage of $32.80 a week. In 1950, the endowment of 50c a week for one child was 3.79 per cent, of the basic wage. The same percentage of the basic wage of today is $1.25. So the loss in purchasing power is 75c. A family with two children received in endowment $1.50 a week, or 11.36 per cent, of the basic wage, in 1950. The same percentage of today's basic wage represents $3.70. The loss is $2.20. In 1950, a family with three children received endowment of $2.50 a week, or 18.94 per cent, of the basic wage. The same percentage of the current basic wage represents $6.20. So the loss is $3.70. A family with four children received endowment totalling $3.50 a week, or 26.51 per cent, of the basic wage, in 1950. The same percentage of the present basic wage represents $8.70. The loss is $5.20. Endowment for five children totalled S4.50 a week, or 34.09 per cent, of the basic wage, in 1950. The same percentage of the current basic wage represents Si 1.10. The loss is $6.60. 1657 2V4 0 0 CAMERON, Clyde Mr Clyde Cameron - Are these figures based on official statistics? 1657 K5L 0 0 COPE, James Mr COPE - They are. Endowment for a family of six children totalled $5.50 a week, or 41.66 per cent, of the basic wage, in 1950. The same percentage of today's basic wage represents $13.70. So the loss is S8.20. These figures amply and forcibly illustrate the manner in which mothers have been cheated by the failure of this and preceding Liberal-Australian Country Party Governments to implement the promise made in 1949 to maintain full value in social service benefits, lt is interesting to note that recently various authorities have expressed concern at the decrease in the birthrate in Australia over the last two or three years, lt has been said, inter alia, that the pill is largely responsible or that some parents are too busy enjoying themselves to bother about raising families. I do not accept those reasons, Mr. Deputy Chairman. I believe that the major contributing factor is that breadwinners in the lower income brackets, for economic reasons, find it impossible to raise families of average size. Furthermore, many scores of thousands of housewives go to work from sheer necessity because the husband's wage is insufficient to meet normal weekly commitments. Everyone is aware of the enormous cost of special infants' foods and of the high cost of clothes, shoes and school accessories for growing children. The basic solution for this appalling situation rests with this Government. If the Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Holt) refuses to accept the responsibility for remedying the situation, the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Calwell) certainly will accept it. I shall now deal with the maternity allowance, which is more popularly known as the baby bonus. The monetary value of this benefit has remained unaltered since 1 949, despite the fact that the average basic wage has increased by 148 per cent., from $13.20 to $32.80, as I pointed out earlier. In assessing the real value of the maternity allowance, let us consider this fact: The Liberal-Country Party Government in New South Wales and the Liberal Government in Victoria have recently steeply increased hospital charges, ls it any wonder tha; the birthrate is falling? Scores of thousands of young married couples are eager and willing to raise families of average size but are prevented by poor economic circumstances from doing so. It is true th-t we are expanding our population by the admission each year of many migrants, all of whom are welcome. 1 believe that it is equally important, by putting real value into child endowment and the maternity allowance, to assist and encourage our young couples to raise our birthrate. 1 turn now to the funeral benefit. This was introduced by the Curtin Government in July 1943, the amount then payable being $20. At that time, the basic wage stood at $9.50 a week. So the benefit was then equivalent to 222 per cent, of the average basic wage. The only alteration in the benefit occurred in 1965 when it was extended by allowing a pensioner who is responsible for the burial of a spouse or another pensioner benefit at the rate of $40. This sum represents only 122 per cent, of the present basic wage of $32.80. The ordinary rate of $20 represents only 61 per cent, of the present basic wage, compared to 222 per cent, of the basic wage of 1943. I wish now to deal with the merged means test, with specific reference to the permissible income of $7 a week for a single pensioner or $14 a week for a pensioner married couple. These limits of permissible income were last adjusted in 1954. It is interesting to note that in that year the base rate of pension was $7 a week for a single pensioner and $14 a week for a pensioner married couple. In 1954, the permissible income equalled the base rate of pension. The base rates are now $13 a week for a single pensioner and $ 1 1 .75 a week for a pensioner married couple. Despite the great increase in the rates of pension since 1954, the permissible income remains the same. This is most unfair to superannuitants. They have paid both ways. During their working days, they paid taxes and they also contributed to superannuation. Yet they are denied justice when they go into retirement. This situation ought to be rectified immediately, lt has been suggested on both sides of the chamber that the means test should be liberalised step by step until it is completely abolished. Proposed expenditures agreed to. Department of Territories. Proposed expenditure, $2,166,000. Christmas Island. Proposed expenditure. $241,000. Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Proposed expenditure, $123,100. Norfolk Island. Proposed expenditure, $76,000. Northern Territory. Proposed expenditure, $28,674,900. Papua and New Guinea. Proposed expenditure, $70,933,300. 1658 KDA Wilmot 0 0 DUTHIE, Gilbert Mr DUTHIE .- I wish to raise an unusual subject at the beginning of this debate on the proposed expenditure for the Territories. I may be like Daniel entering the lions' den, but I want to protest at the discrimination against Australian rules football in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea, I regard this as a very serious 1658 KHS 0 0 HOLTEN, Rendle Mr Holten - Hear, hear! 1658 KDA 0 0 DUTHIE, Gilbert Mr DUTHIE - I hope that the honorable member will support me when I have finished my speech. He was a great Collingwood player. I plead for a fair go for Australian rules football in New Guinea schools. After meeting in Tasmania over the week-end a New Guinean I am of the opinion that the rugby and soccer codes are catered for in a remarkable way in the Territory. He said that all equipment needed to play these codes is supplied free of charge to the schools. The Government even waives the 25 per cent, import duty on this equipment. This is what I have heard from a resident of the Territory. I assume that he knows what he is talking about. But the gear needed for Australian rules has to be paid for in full. The schools even have to pay the 25 per cent, import duty on it. This is a partisan and discriminatory attitude. If the allegations are true, they indicate an outrageous situation. In this Parliament are supporters of all three football codes. On this side of the chamber 23 honorable members or 43 per cent, of us support Australian rules. On the Government side 37 honorable members or 52 per cent, support Australian rules. Of the 124 members in this place, 60 or 48.3 per cent, support Australian rules. Yet supporters of this code in New Guinea are placed at an unfair disadvantage compared to followers of the other codes. No government has a right to discriminate with taxpayers' money against one code. 1658 KHS 0 0 HOLTEN, Rendle Mr Holten - Who supplies the free equipment? 1658 KDA 0 0 DUTHIE, Gilbert Mr DUTHIE - As far as I understand, it is the Administration. Its attitude has placed Australian rules in an impossible position. No administration or department using taxpayers' money has a right to say that rugby or soccer shall be promoted and encouraged in New Guinea schools while at the same time doing nothing to promote Australian rules among these children. It is interesting to know that the Victorian Football League, which might be called the landlord of Australian rules, often invites New Guineans to Melbourne towards the end of the football season, paying their fares and board while they are in Melbourne, so that they may study Australian rules in action. Many residents of the Territory are keen on Australian rules. The code should have an equal chance in the schools with the other codes. I have nothing against rugby or soccer. Tasmania is an Australian rules stronghold, but in some of our schools rugby and soccer are taught as well as Australian rules. So it cannot be claimed that I am biased entirely in favour of Australian rules. I wonder if there are agents of rugby and soccer entrenched in the Department of Territories, committed, James Bond like, to strangling Australian rules in its infancy. Have they a pipeline to the Treasury or to the Minister? The Minister for Territories (Mr. Barnes) should be in the chamber while his Department is under discussion. This is an important matter. We all know that the Minister is a Queenslander. Perhaps he, too, is a secret agent in this war of the warriors of the football codes, encouraging and supplying the weapons of football warfare, so far as rugby and soccer are concerned, to the schools of the Territory. 1659 KB8 0 0 GILES, Geoffrey Mr Giles - Is this the only thing wrong with the administration of the Territory? 1659 KDA 0 0 DUTHIE, Gilbert Mr DUTHIE - I am referring to an aspect of Territory administration. The honorable member for Angas may raise other matters later. Could the Minister, with his rugged exterior, be the James Bond of the rugby and soccer fans and promoters? Could he be the key to the whole story of discrimination against Australian rules in New Guinea? 1 appeal to this absent Minister- 1659 5E4 0 0 SINCLAIR, Ian Mr Sinclair - I am listening attentively but I do not think the Minister is missing much. 1659 KDA 0 0 DUTHIE, Gilbert Mr DUTHIE - 1 hope the Minister is not missing anything, because I do not want to have to repeat myself. I appeal to him, to his Department and to the Government, on behalf of hundreds of thousands of supporters of Australian rules, to end this unjust and partisan treatment of the Australian rules code in New Guinea. After all, a code which is dominant in Tasmania, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia and which has pockets df support in New South Wales, Canberra and even Queensland, is worthy of treatment from this Government equal to that accorded rugby and soccer. I make this appeal in all seriousness. I hope that my informant is wrong. I hope that Australian rules has an equal chance with soccer and rugby in the schools of New Guinea. But if my information is correct, this Government, the Department and the Minister have something to answer for. Behind his easy going and affable exterior he may be a James Bond of the worst type, sabotaging Australian rules in New Guinea. We of the southern States face him squarely tonight. I wish he were here to answer my charge before we pass these estimates in about two hours time. Let us know for sure what is going on in New Guinea. We all admire the physique of the people of the Territory. They are wonderful sportsmen. They are great athletes. I do not think any code - here th honorable member for Indi (Mr. Holten) will support me, I am sure - gives greater scope for brains, ability, stamina, strength, courage, tenacity'- 1659 009OD 0 0 NIXON, Peter Mr Nixon - Initiative. 1659 KDA 0 0 DUTHIE, Gilbert Mr DUTHIE - Yes. initiative, than does Australian Rules. I make this strong appeal on behalf of all those honorable members on both sides of the chamber who support the greatest game on earth. 1659 DB6 Mackellar 0 0 WENTWORTH, William Charles Mr WENTWORTH . - I do not want to follow Oddjob entirely in this debate. There are serious matters under consideration. I hope that this is the last time that the estimates for the Northern Territory will appear in their present form. If honorable members will look at the printed document, they will see that, in round figures, $29 million is provided for the Northern Territory, but the detail covers four and a half pages. We provide $71 million for Papua and New Guinea and most of it is dealt with in one line. Of the $71 million, $70 million is dealt with in one line. What is being done in regard to New Guinea is right; what is being done in regard to the Northern Territory is wrong. It is absolutely wrong for the detailed estimates for the Northern Territory to be set down in a way that deprives the Legislative Council of the Territory, as a partly elective body, of all control or authority over details and in a way that hampers and inhibits the efficiency of the Administration. The Northern Territory, as honorable members know, is subject to a heavy monsoon. Virtually no public works can be undertaken out of doors during December, January, February, March and probably most of April. If the authorities wait for their budget, their construction season is compressed uneconomically; it is distorted. I know that the present Administrator of the Northern Territory, a man for whom everybody in the Parliament has the highest respect, has tried to cure this state of affairs. 1 know that he has extorted some kind of flexibility from the central administration, and good luck to him for having done so. But still it is bad in principle that we in this Parliament should lay down detailed estimates for the Northern Territory, instead of acting sensibly, as we do for Papua and New Guinea, and putting them all in one line. 1 do not suggest that the Legislative Council of the Northern Territory should have full authority for the expenditure of the money, lt is not ready for that full authority yet. 1 should think that any expenditure should be subject to a report to this Parliament in a form that our own Public Accounts Committee might conveniently settle, so that prompt and effective information would be available to this Parliament. I believe that all moneys spent should be subject to the authority of the Administrator, who in turn is responsible to the Minister for Territories (Mr. Barnes). However, I believe that we should try gradually to transfer authority to the Legislative Council in Darwin by giving it not executive but advisory authority, so that the Administrator can call the members of the Council, particularly elected members, into consultation. I think the formal control of expenditure should remain with this Parliament while we are providing most of the revenue; but without relinquishing the formal control of expenditure, we could gradually transfer real authority to the Legislative Council in Darwin so that it can determine the way in which money is spent in the Northern Territory, lt should act first in an advisory capacity, subject, of course, to the veto of the Minister, just as is done with Papua and New Guinea. lt would gradually take on more and more authority. 1 believe that we should be making a conscious effort, though it it not necessary to go too fast, to build up the authority of the Legislative Council in Darwin. 1660 009OD 0 0 NIXON, Peter Mr Nixon - What about acceptance of local government responsibility first? 1660 DB6 0 0 WENTWORTH, William Charles Mr WENTWORTH - The honorable member makes a very practical suggestion. I will not have time to canvass it, but perhaps he will enlarge on it in the course of this debate. I should think that one thing we should be doing is to bring in a one line budget for the Northern Territory, leave to the Administrator full formal authority for the expenditure, and ask the Administrator to rely more and more on the advice of the elected members of the Legislative Council in Darwin, thus gradually building up the authority and prestige of the Legislative Council of the Northern Territory. There would be a good by-product of this, because, by so doing, we would avoid the distortions of expenditure which at present, regrettably, despite the best efforts of the Administrator, are taking place in the Northern Territory as a result of the peculiar position of the monsoon, which shuts down public works in the period of a few months around Christmas. 1 put this to the Minister as something that is overdue and should be done. I would like to deal with a second matter in relation to the Northern Territory. We must consider the position of the Aboriginal people, who form the largest part of the permanent residents in the Northern Territory. We must consider their interests in what is done. I know that this is a very difficult matter. A good deal of painful adjustment is inevitable in the implementation of the Government's policy of full wages for Aboriginals. I think the Government's policy is right. The Government advocated this policy and the court accepted it, perhaps with too great delays, although this is not the kind of thing I want to stress particularly. The Government's objective of full wages for Aboriginals in the Northern Territory is correct. Nevertheless, the transition period will cause great difficulties and we should have a much more constructive scheme to meet them. Let me say also that these difficulties may be accentuated by the inevitable increase of fencing in the Northern Territory. This will change the method of working from the open range to the fenced paddocks and thus change the requirement for the peculiar skills that the Aboriginal stockmen at present exhibit. Coming at this time, this will accentuate the difficulties of transition. These are practical problems. I will not have time now to deal with any more than the most sketchy of outlines, but I will say that there are grave difficulties ahead. They are difficulties that can be overcome by goodwill and constructive policy and I am confident that the Government will exhibit both these qualities. Let me say something about the Aboriginal reserves in the Northern Territory, particularly Arnhem Land, which is by far the biggest of the reserves. Arnhem Land is undeveloped as yet. Contrary to the impression that is generally held, it is likely to be very rich in both pastoral and mineral potential. Its mineral potential, except for Gove, is still not established. As honorable members will probably know, the Western Nuclear company is conducting a survey at the present moment. The geological nature of Arnhem Land is such that it is likely that good deposits will be hard to find, but will be big when they are found. I will not take time to elaborate on this, but there are technical reasons for the statement I have made. There is great pastoral potential there, too, but I am not in favour of relinquishing the Aboriginals' right and title to this land. It may be that in certain parts there will be mining or other special development. If this is so I ask the Government to do a great deal more than it has done up to date to preserve the rights of the Aboriginals. The so called special royalties, and things of that character, are of a quite derisory nature: They do not meet the position at all. Arnhem Land should be thought of as belonging to the Aboriginals, and should be exploited for the interests of the Aboriginals primarily and of nobody else. The Government should rethink a little its policy in this regard. I would consider, for example, that if a company is established to mine in Arnhem Land, or to develop a pastoral property, at least one quarter of the ordinary shares should be reserved for the benefit of Aboriginals. Furthermore, a place on the company's board should be kept for an Aboriginal, even though in this transition period it might be necessary ;o have a church or some other body acting as a trustee in the place on that board. I feel that this is the least we could do. Something like this would be far better than the quite small so called extra royalties that are provided in the foreshadowed contracts. I know - and the Minister will agree with me I am sure - that there are difficulties regarding the ownership of tribal lands. I do not think these difficulties are insurmountable, although they do exist, but I ask that Arnhem Land and the other reserves should be considered primarily as reserves to be used for the benefit of the Aboriginals of the Northern Territory. Any policy which is not keyed to this primary objective is an inadequate policy. I do not believe that at present there should be open access to these reserves. I say this with a great deal of doubt, but I still feel that this is correct. No Aboriginal, of course, should be kept on a reserve: Every Aboriginal on a reserve should be free to leave it when he wants to and to return to it whenever he wants to .do so, but for the present this area should be kept for the Aboriginals as a refuge in this very difficult state of transition in which they are at present placed. I recently spent four or five weeks in the bush in Arnhem Land and I have seen something of the missions and the stations surrounding them. I have seen something of the Aboriginals who are living there. I believe that we can approach this in a way that will be to their advantage and which will give them a greater measure of initiative, self reliance and authority, because these people must have restored to them the feeling that they are the owners. This is a psychological problem. They must be given back the pride of ownership, and this I think we have perhaps failed to do. 1661 10000 0 0 CHAIRMAN, The The CHAIRMAN - Order! The honorable member's time has expired. 1661 JAG Melbourne Ports 0 0 CREAN, Frank Mr CREAN . - I should like to speak on the estimates for the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. It seems to me rather disturbing that so few honorable members are here when these estimates are being considered. Much as I can sympathise with my colleague, the honorable member for Wilmot (Mr. Duthie), about whether Australian rules football ought to be played in Papua and New Guinea, I must confess to being somewhat of a heretic in respect of Australian Rules, because I have not seen a game played this year in what is probably the headquarters of that great game. However, with respect to Papua and New Guinea we are considering the problems of more than two million people - more people than in any State of Australia with the exception of Victoria and New South Wales. I believe - and 1 am sure my party does too - that anybody irrespective of the colour of his skin, is as good as anybody else and should be given the same opportunity to improve or to evolve as we have been given. I must say with all respect to the Minister for Territories (Mr. Barnes) that 1 was rather disturbed by an answer he gave to a question about wages in Papua and New Guinea. He said that if the Papua and New Guinea Administration wanted to increase the wages and salaries it had to find the increase out of its own Budget. I draw the attention of the Committee to a rather interesting document which has never been debated fully in this place, despite its importance. 1 refer to the report of the World Bank on the economic development of Papua and New Guinea. I have cited these figures before. In the roneoed edition of the report is an estimate for the year 1962-63, which is four years ago, of the gross national product of the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. I point out again that Papua and New Guinea has a population of more than two million people, about one sixth of the population of Australia. The figures in the report are measured in pounds Australian because the conversion to dollars had not then taken place. If we take what is called the monetary sector and the subsistence sector the gross national product of Papua and New Guinea in 1962-63 was £A146 million, or in round figures $A300 million. When that is related to our gross national product as it then was - somewhere in the region of §15,000 million - it represents about one fiftieth. This was to support a population about one sixth of Australia's population, lt shows the disparity of income levels between Australia and Papua and New Guinea as roughly of the order of about 10 to 1. When we analyse the figures further as between what we call the monetary sector and the subsistence sector the disparity is greater even than that. Between the poorest persons in Papua and New Guinea and the richest persons in Australia the disparity is probably 20 to 30 times to 1. This surely is the proportion of the problem that faces Australia in relation to Papua and New Guinea. The problem is not disposed of in terms of the very small sum that we allocate out of our Budget. The Government may claim that it is spending more now than any other government ever spent. So it should. I suggest that in the years ahead it will have to spend a great deal more. I do not think that we in this country realise the obligations that we have to this particular piece of the earth. It is an area twice the size of Victoria and, as 1 have stated previously, it has a population greater than that of any State of Australia except Victoria and New South Wales. In many respects it has been regarded in the past as having some strategic significance as far as Australia is concerned but I doubt whether, in terms of 1966, it has anything like that strategic significance any more. However, we in Australia have at least some moral obligation to this part of the world. 1 often think that if we faced up to our obligations we. could make ourselves a pilot scheme for raising the standards of this particular area. Some few months ago we had in Canberra meeting of the Interparliamentary Union which was attended by representatives from approximately 50 other countries. 1 was a delegate to that conference and had the opportunity to address it. I said then that I thought that nowhere yet has there been an example of what might be called a subsistence economy which has been able, in a measurable period, to lift itself from the subsistence standard to a standard near that of the more advanced parts of the world. It should be recognised in Australia that New Guinea is a subsistence economy, lt is beset by the same kinds of difficulties as beset subsistence economies anywhere else. From Australia's point of view there are two difficulties, namely that the area and geographical problems of the Territory are much greater than those of any similar place. In many respects New Guinea is what almost may be called geography's joke. Whereas in Australia our problem is a shortage of water, in New Guinea the problem is a super-abundance of water in terms of population and geography. Anyone who knows the area is aware of the difficulty involved in constructing a road from, say, Port Moresby to Lae, a distance of only a couple of hundred miles over which one can fly in an hour or two. To construct such a road would be one of the hardest road building tasks in the world. No-one wants to construct a road because the population which would be served by it is relatively small. However, somehow in the next few years Australia must make a breakthrough in this very important problem. It disturbs me, I must confess, to see how little interest this House is showing in this problem at the present time. It may well be that because this is election year and in a few weeks we will go to the hustings honorable members are not bothered very much about it. However, the point is that Australia can do better with Papua and New Guinea than anyone else can. Fortunately, I think, for Australia the Papuans and New Guineans think the same thing. It ill behoves us to be complacent about the continuance of such circumstances. Whichever party becomes the government of this country for the next three years - if I may be political at this stage, I hope there will be a change of government - I believe that much greater attention will need to be paid to the problems of Papua and New Guinea than has been the case in the past few years. I think we are getting on top of the health problem there, and once we get on top of the health problem we bring upon the population what is called death control - we limit the rate at which people die. However, at the other end of the line we still have the problem of birth control. It is estimated that by the year 2000, which is only 34 years from now, Papua and New Guinea probably will have four million people. By that time, in terms of numbers and of world attitudes, the problem will be much greater and much more significant than it is in 1966. I believe that politically we must always think in terms of 20 years ahead rather than in terms of 20 months ahead. I doubt whether the estimates that are now before us are thinking of Papua and New Guinea in terms of 1986 rather than in terms of 1968. That is unfortunate. We are, for the time being, custodians of that area and, as I have said, I believe that primarily our obligations are economic, social and moral. The people of the Territory still regard us as their friends. Within the next few months, and certainly within the next few years, there probably will be a good deal of argument as to their political evolution. It is pretty difficult to translate what we call democratic processes to what have been fairly primitive areas in the past. Even in this Parliament we argue in 1966 whether the institutions we have had for 60 years are satisfactory, yet in essence we try to perpetrate upon the Territory the same kind of institutions. The Territory is having its growing pains and will continue to have them, but at least it seems to me that there is at present a bank, if you like, of goodwill towards Australia. Just as I believe that Australia can best develop its own area, so do I believe that Australia, in association with the native population of Papua and New Guinea, can best develop the Territory for the benefit of its people. Sometimes it is suggested that if we do not develop our own northern areas someone else will come in and develop them for us. I am one who believes that with the proper application of capital, technology and skills in the right places we can do better with our own country than anyone else can. Equally, I believe that the goodwill Australia feels towards the Territory must be backed by more than kind thoughts. It must be backed by physical application - primarily money. But money only purchases technology and skills. There must be an application of technology and skills in far greater measure in the immediate few years than there has been in the past if we are to develop the area. As I have said, the Government that is in power in the next Parliament, of whatever political persuasion, will have to make much greater allocations of money to these areas than are shown in the estimates now before us. I trust that in the next Parliament more time and more consideration will be given to the fundamental problems of something more than two million people, each of whom is entitled to as good a go in the world as any Australian is. A great deal has been said about the investment of overseas capital in the Northern Territory, but it is generally forgotten that the land is held on leasehold only. An example of what has happened to properties in the Territory is to be found at Brunette Downs, which is held by a company in which Australian and American capital has been subscribed. Brunette Downs has been transformed in the last five years from a property that sent off cattle in forward store to fat condition, only at 4 to 5 years, and mostly walked them, to one that is today turning off fat cattle as three year olds by road. The changes have not all been made simply because of the good management of the company I refer to, but have been due also to some extent to the improvements in communications and There has been a general realisation of what can be done in the higher rainfall areas of the Northern Territory by means mainly of Townsville lucerne, but also of other legumes and pasture plants. While I am on this point I may say that I hope the Government will see fit to provide people who are trying to improve these areas with superphosphate at the prices prevailing at the northern Queensland ports. This will enable Northern Territory properties to carry a great many more cattle, and to carry them in a way different from that which prevails today. The Northern Territory suffered more than any other area in Australia from war damage and I am sure that nobody would be more alive to the wisdom of defending Australia from somewhere outside Australia than the Territorians. Now I come to New Guinea. I have said that great changes have taken place in the Northern Territory, but I venture to suggest that nowhere have greater changes taken place than in New Guinea in the last 20 years. We must remember that half the population of Papua and New Guinea, both of which are under the jurisdiction of Australia, had never seen a European until 1930 and had never seen a wheel of any kind until an aeroplane landed near where Goroka now is in 1 935, and had never seen an animal larger than their domestic pigs until 1 938, which is only 28 years ago. These people, who occupy some of the richest agricultural land in New Guinea, have been taken from the stone age and plunged into the atomic age in less than two generations. It is true that although they remain to a great extent unsophisticated politically, they have a tremendous amount of basic wisdom. They are people with very sound philosophies built on a system of living that they have developed for some hundreds of years at least. They are agriculturalists who live in small groups. In the past they have been mutually afraid and suspicious of one another. Modern society is something that cannot be thrust on them in a limited length of time. This is a rich area where considerable expansion in agriculture has taken place and also some expansion in animal husbandry in the cattle industry. It is against the background that I have outlined. with half ;he population being somewhat backward so far as civilisation is concerned, that it is fair to measure our progress and what we have done for the Territories since the last war. Anybody who saw the country in 1945 will remember the devastated condition that it was in, even though development previously had been very limited. To see it now one would hardly recognise it as the same country. Great things have been done there. A big hydro-electric scheme is being carried out. Roads run from Mount Hagen to Goroka through some of the rich land that I have referred to. Roads are being put through the Markham and Ramu Valleys. There will be a road right from Lae to Madang which will open up excellent areas. The economy which was originally based very largely on gold and copper has now been expanded and diversified to include such things as coffee, tea, timber and cattle. A great deal has been said about the exploitation of this country by European people, but I would like to mention two notable happenings. The Bulolo Gold Dredging Company was one of the first companies to operate in New Guinea. The company has slightly more than 50 per cent, outside capital and nearly 50 per cent. Australian capital. Having made great profits out of gold in the Bulolo Valley it might well have chosen to leave the Territory. Instead it diversified its activities and commenced to operate in the timber industry. It has started another notable enterprise on the Leron Plains, about 80 miles from Lae. It took over 25,000 acres of land which was unused and virtually unusable except to a very minor degree by the natives. The natives did not want it. I might explain that land in these Territories is used by Europeans only if the natives do not want it. The company bought a lease of the land and fenced 25,000 acres, 16,000 acres of which is put to use. It is fenced into small paddocks. The company has put in several sets of first class cattle yards and water facilities and it has improved the property in such a way that unless one compared it with what might be termed over-improved properties it would compare with any property in Australia so far as improvements are concerned. It now carries 4,000 cattle on country that has considerable pasture improvement, and a gre: deal of experimentation is being carried out at no cost to the Government. This is all being done by the Bulolo Gold Dredging Company for the purpose of supplying its employees at the timber mills, both Europeans and indigenes, with cheaper meat. Another example of what private enterprise is doing is provided by a retired Victorian businessman and pastoralist who went to New Guinea in 1960. He has studied the tea industry around the world and has taken up 1,000 acres of what was swamp land near Mount Hagen and has so far spent half a million dollars on it. This area is about to come into production. So the European residents are not, as is so often represented, only exploiters of the Territory. Most of them have deep roots in the Territory and have deep affection for the indigenous people. This is reciprocated in most cases. But the Territorians do have a marked awareness of the great dangers facing their security, and therefore Australia's security. All these facts are rather overshadowed by the Territory's uncertainty about its political future. It is this fact, and not any lack in sense of service, that is today causing many excellent types of young men in the administration to feel that their future, and the future of their families, will be jeopardised if they remain in the area. We are doing something about education for the Territorians but we must do more. Advances have been made in this regard - there is no doubt about that - by the Government and by mission schools, so far as primary and secondary education is concerned. Higher education is being undertaken. But it is very doubtful whether the responsibilities of democratic government could be fully undertaken by the people of the Territory for at least another two generations - very doubtful indeed. It is rather odd that most of the countries which are pressing for Australia to set a time for self government for the Territory of Papua and New Guinea are those which have certainly not embraced democracy as we know it when they themselves gained self government. Australia simply cannot afford to have an insecure political situation in Papua and New Guinea, as that country is one of the keys to our security. I say unhesitatingly that what Australia has done in Papua and New Guinea is something of which we have great reason to be proud. It is a record of great achievement and great development. The establishment of mutual trust between Europeans and indigenous people that exists in the Territory is seldom equalled, and is unsurpassed, anywhere in the world. This spirit of mutual trust and dependence is particularly marked in the relationship between officers of the Administration and the indigenous people. This state of affairs has been concreted only by diligent and valuable service over a long period by the Administration generally. It has not been assisted in any way by the critics who sometimes go to the Territory and have a casual look and who, very often, base their assumptions on a few years knowledge, of a very limited locality. lt is notable that most of the agitation for self government in the Territory at present comes from within Papua. Papua is only sixth in the list of districts in contributions made to the economy of the country. What Australia has done in the Territory is something of which we can be proud. We have made a great contribution, and we must continue to do so in order to build these people up in good time so that they will be able to take their place among the emerging countries of the world. 1666 KXV Dawson 0 0 PATTERSON, Rex Dr PATTERSON .- I would like to say a few words tonight on the development of the Northern Territory cattle industry. The honorable member for Riverina (Mr. Armstrong) mentioned Brunette Downs. I think one must certainly agree with him that Brunette Downs is one of the properties in the Northern Territory where attempts have been made to achieve a level of carrying capacity and turnoff in line with the natural resources. Brunette Downs was, I think, purchased from the White family, the Gulf Cattle Company, in 1958. At that time it was one of the best improved cattle properties, certainly the most improved on the Barkly Tableland and one of the best in the top end of the Northern Territory. Since the American and Australian interests have taken over they have spent, according to the latest figures I saw, about $800,000, principally for property improvements such as fencing, water conservation and the provision of yards, and in the introduction of better blood in the herds. However, the biggest problem facing Brunette Downs is thai facing all major property owners in the Northern Territory, as well as in North Queensland and the Kimberleys - management. The size of the properties is a matter which has been giving people concerned with the administration of the Northern Territory a headache for a long time. In the early days, the days before beef roads and before cattle prices were high, there was justification for big properties. But even 28 years ago it was recognised in the Payne Fletcher report that the days of the large properties such as Alexandria, Brunette Downs, Wave Hill and Victoria River Downs were over. Even in those days it was recognised that there should be progressive policies or subdivision, with the object of settling more people in the Northern Territory. If one looks at the area from Camooweal to Wyndham what does one find in the way of towns? The biggest town is Elliott and it would probably have no more than 150 to 200 people. It was recognised in 1938 by an honorable member still present in this House that there was need for the commonsense resumption of land, and action to ensure that there would be the maximum number of people occupying this country; that they should have a decent standard of living and be able to attain maximum production from the land. Those points were regarded as the principal factors to bc considered in deciding resumptions. The honorable member I refer to is the Leader of the Australian Country Party today, Mr. McEwen, who was Minister for the Interior from, I think, 1937 to 1939. He recognised in those days that these properties were too large and that the major ones should be divided into smaller areas. What has been done since then? Certainly the properties have got smaller, although Brunette Downs at present covers about 4,700 square miles. Alexandria has just been broken up into three smaller properties and this action, by the Territory Administration, as the Minister for Trade and Industry (Mr. McEwen) knows, has been trenchantly criticised throughout Australia. The action of the Administration of the Northern Territory in regard to the subdivision of Alexandria has been criticised. lt was in the late 1940's that the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation made a study of the Barkly Tableland area and came to certain conclusions regarding carrying capacity and turnoff. That area has been classified as containing some of the best natural breeding country in Australia. The conclusion reached was that the area would carry a lot more cattle than it does today. This has certainly been highlighted by the various surveys which were carried out in the area with respect to Alexandria, but what do we see? We see, as I said, a decision which has been trenchantly criticised in a number of newspapers in Australia. There is no question that the decision deserves criticism. Alexandria was split up into three more properties - Mount Drummond, Benmara and Mittiebah - and we saw the extraordinary result of Americans winning the ballot at the expense of Australians who had the experience and who had the capital. We saw the other two leases being won by Australians, but I understand that one of them had interests in both leases. The remarkable thing about the Benmara lease won by Mr. Snyder - I forget the other American, but I think it was Mr. Wise - is that these gentlemen owned also a property of 2,000 square miles close to the Stuart Highway. I agree with those people who have criticised this decision. If there had been no Australians who were capable of developing this area and if there had been no Australians with the necessary finance there would have been a case for allowing overseas interests to be in the ballot; but surely from what I have quoted from the remarks of the Leader of the Australian Country Party in 1938 when he was Minister for the Interior we see that he recognised the importance of subdividing these areas and settling Australians in these areas in times when it was far more difficult than it is today. Yet we see this phenomenon of Americans coming in and winning the ballot. 1667 JOA 0 0 BARNES, Charles Mr Barnes - Who changed his policies on Alexandria? 1667 KXV 0 0 PATTERSON, Rex Dr PATTERSON - The Alexandria policy was changed during the war when bombs were literally falling on the Northern Territory and Queensland. But the principle of subdivision was still the same. I have never heard the Leader of the Country Party say anything different from what he said in 1938 because he still believes in commonsense subdivision. I am quite certain that in an open debate he would admit that it is a scandalous thing for Americans to come in here and win the ballots over Australians who have the experience and have the money. These statements have been made throughout northern Australia where the Leader of the Country Party has been challenged to say anything different from what he said at that time. He will not say anything different because he was right when he said that. I have not had time to check the facts and so I am open to correction by the Minister at the table, but my recollection is that one of the reasons given by the Minister in the adjournment debate in support of Americans was that they introduced or were responsible for the introduction to Australia of Santa Gertrudis cattle. I do not know who told the Minister that, but he will find that the Zebus, although not fixed to a true Santa Gertrudis type, were introduced into Australia many years before the Americans came in. 1667 JOA 0 0 BARNES, Charles Mr Barnes - They were first introduced in 1906. 1667 KXV 0 0 PATTERSON, Rex Dr PATTERSON - The point is that even in the Northern Territory, at Koolpinyah for example, Zebus were being run for years. Let us admit that in certain parts the Americans are doing a good job. I will admit that in certain areas, such as in the Cape York Peninsula area, the American money will do a good job, but I absolutely disagree in principle with Australians not being given a chance to settle this country first. Why are they not given this opportunity? The obvious reason is that the areas are far too big under present conditions. It was said, for example, that we could not settle the brigalow area in small areas, yet this is being done. The Cape York Peninsula area, which is a high rainfall area, is no more difficult than the Northern Territory or other areas. Of course, what the Americans are bringing in is money. They are not bringing in any technical knowhow so let there be no attempt to put that over. There are plenty of Australians who could show the Americans more about cattle in northern Australia than they will ever know. But the point is that the Australians have not the finance and are not given the chance to have the finance under the present system of leasehold conditions in the Northern Territory, the Kimberleys and in the northern parts of Queensland. 1 suggest in the short time available to me that in order to test this point the Northern Territory Administration - I cannot speak of Queensland or the Kimberleys in this debate - should study the methods and principles used in the classification of brigalow lands, using the scientists who are available in land research, the botanist, the ecologist, the climatologist, the geomorphologist and others to work in with the experienced cattle producers to determine what is the best method of subdivision of these areas. On this point we have seen, for example, the beef roads. It has been rightly claimed that practically all the money expended so far on beef road construction has been for the benefit of absentee owners. This, of course, is rather an exaggeration. Nevertheless, certainly the major part in the Northern Territory has been for their benefit. If we forget the two arms from Yuendumu to Alice Springs and Plenty River, certainly the road from Walhallow and Anthony Lagoon down to the Barkly Highway, the road from Dunmurra to Top Springs and the proposed road to Wave Hill will serve large properties and the main beneficiaries will be large companies. The road from Katherine and Willeroo to Top Springs will serve principally the Victoria River Downs southern areas, Wave Hill and the new blocks and the properties around Top Springs, but the main beneficiaries here again are still the very large companies. The road across from Victoria River to Auvergne and Newry serves almost exclusively the large properties. Obviously, if we are to do what the Leader of the Australian Country Party suggested in 1938, a proposition with which I agree, and get people into the area we must try to take a more progressive view of subdivision in association with the availability of finance. There is no shortage of applicants; there is no shortage of good managers or young managers; there is no shortage of good white stockmen and their families to develop these areas; but certainly we must admit that there is a shortage of finance. This, I assume, is the main reason why the north at the present time is being taken over so quickly by absentee owners and predominantly foreign companies. If the Government is pleased to see the north becoming more and more a colony of overseas countries, certainly we in the Labour Party are not. First and foremost the problem should be tackled progressively and it should be tackled to give the maximum benefit to Australians. There should not be a repetition of what we have seen in Alexandria in the ballot to which I have referred. I believe there were approximately 60 applicants who originally applied for the three blocks, and yet we have seen even Australians with a lifetime of experience in running cattie being unsuccessful in the ballot. One application was from Mr. Milton who has had a lifetime of experience in running cattle in Queensland in the tick and clear areas and in areas closely associated with the Mitchell and Flinders pastures which are the main grasses of the Barkly Tableland. Yet he has been denied access to the ballot, and he has the finance. 1668 10000 0 0 CHAIRMAN, The The CHAIRMAN - Order! The honorable member's time has expired. 1668 009OD Gippsland 0 0 NIXON, Peter Mr NIXON .- It is not my intention to speak for long in this debate, but there are one or two points I would like to make. I should like to reply first to what the honorable member for Dawson (Dr. Patterson) has said. I think he really appreciates the Government's attitude towards foreign investment in this leasehold country in the Northern Territory. There is a significant difference between the development of leasehold country and the development of freehold country. The simple fact is that leasehold country developed in this way returns to the Crown after a period of time in a developed condition. 1668 KXV 0 0 PATTERSON, Rex Dr Patterson - That is not right. 1668 009OD 0 0 NIXON, Peter Mr NIXON - It is right. The leasehold country returns to the Crown in a developed condition. This is one way of assisting the overall development of Australia. I find myself in some sympathy with the honorable member's point about the exclusion of Australians from the ballot, but I see the difficulty of the Administration in this matter in that American capital could come in through the backdoor by way of a successful Australian applicant. At least, in this way we know where the capital is coming from. The honorable member for Mackellar (Mr. Wentworth) spoke about a single line budget for the Northern Territory. I find myself in sympathy with this suggestion too, but J suggest to the honorable member that perhaps he is starting at the wrong end. I suggest that it might be more advisable to have an extension of local government so that the people of the Territory would accept the responsibility for charging rates, for paying rates and for carrying out all the other functions of local government, before taking the step of having a single line budget. I repeat that 1 am in sympathy with the idea but it must come in due course and in the proper way. I know that many parts of the Northern Territory are accepting the principle and the responsibilities of local government now, but there must be an extension of this before a single line budget will be practicable. One matter to which I wish to direct the attention of the Minister for Territories (Mr. Barnes) is the need for a subsidy on superphosphate freights to the Northern Territory. It is my belief that phosphate is badly needed for the development of agricultural and pastoral areas in the high rainfall zone. I believe, too, that, given proper encouragement, an area of from 8 million to 10 million acres in that high rainfall zone could be developed if superphosphate were made available at a price at least comparable with that applying in the northern parts of Queensland. I understand that superphosphate now costs something like $54 a ton landed at Darwin, as against about half that price in the high rainfall zone of Victoria. I do not think there is' any way of overcoming this difficulty except by way of a straight out superphosphate freight subsidy, at least until we get to the point where the demand is such that phosphate manufacturers will see that it would be practicable and economic to construct a works in Darwin. Somebody has to give a lead in the use of phosphate, and I think that lead should come from the Government. I ask the Minister to give consideration to that point. I come now to another point which has bugged me a little in recent years. I refer to the voting rights of the Northern Territory. I believe that the Northern Territory is deserving of full voting rights in this Parliament. I say this for the reason that the Northern Territory is the front line of Australia. It is a strategic area and is of extreme importance to the defence of the whole of Australia. It is a tremendously large area to represent, and I do not think there is any part of Australia where matters related to foreign affairs and defence are more important than they are to the Northern Territory. The people there are placed in different circumstances from the people of the southern States. In my view, therefore, the principle of one vote one value is of no real importance in this context. I know that the electoral population is only 17,000, but I believe the peculiar situation of the people of the Northern Territory justifies their right to have a full vote in the affairs of this nation. They should certainly have full voting rights on all matters relating to defence and foreign affairs that are debated in this Parliament. There are no people more vitally concerned with these problems than are the people represented by the honorable member for the Northern Territory (Mr. Nelson). I ask the Minister to give consideration to the points I have raised. 1669 JP5 Batman 0 0 BENSON, Samuel Mr BENSON .- I wish to draw the attention of the Committee to Australia's growing responsibilities towards her Territories. Australia now has Territories scattered far and wide. I know we are not debating Antarctica, but Australia has Territories in the Antarctic and is responsible for half the area in that region. We have the Territories of Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. We have the Territory of Norfolk Island and we have the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. As the world progresses apace, Australia's responsibilities to her Territories will increase. So far, I have no complaint with the work carried out in our Territories by this and previous governments. Before dealing with Papua and New Guinea, I wish to emphasise the importance of Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands to Australia. The phosphate deposits on Nauru are showing signs of working out. It is estimated that they will last for only another 30 or 40 years. In the meantime, as honorable members know, the price of phosphate rook from Nauru is increasing. It seems to me to be increasing year by year, and there may come a time when it is just too expensive for us to buy. We are fortunate in having Christmas Island, although the phosphate rock there is of low quality. The agricultural industries of Australia are dependent upon phosphate, and we are very lucky to have such deposits as those on Christmas Island to fall back on. Christmas Island is a straight out Australian Territory. No doubt, as the years go by, Australia - will take greater interest in the area and develop it, because, as I have said, our agricultural industries . cannot be developed without phosphate rock. Apart from that, there is the important defence angle to be considered. It is interesting to know that Christmas Island is nearer to Indonesia than it is to Australia. It lies 180 miles south of Indonesia while the nearest point in Australia to it - North West Cape - is some 875 miles away. The Cocos (Keeling) Islands are 600 miles from Indonesia and 1,200 miles from Australia. Both Territories, I am sure, are further from Australia than most people realise. Cocos (Keeling) Islands are important, because we learn from the annual report of the Department that last year some 274 nights were made to them. They were made mainly by Qantas. From the defence point of view, these islands are of the utmost importance to Australia. We all know that Britain is withdrawing from that part of the world, and as the British power decreases our possessions in this area will become all the more important. I should like now to say a little about Papua and New Guinea. If we examine closely what has happened there over a very short period of time we will develop a better understanding of that Territory. Vast development has taken place in Papua and New Guinea since World War II. Before World War II, very few people went to New Guinea. Very few indeed gave a second thought to going there to live or of taking up land there, because most people believed that if they went there they would be stricken by all sorts of tropical diseases and that the future was not very bright. Consequently, in the early stages, except for the devoted people of the Administration, only the missionaries and a few planters went to Papua and New Guinea to try to start up a way of life there. The population of the area followed the example set by these earlier settlers. We have been very fortunate indeed that the people who went there in those early days were people of the right type and went there with the right ideals. Papua was proclaimed a British protectorate on 6th November 1884 and General Sir Peter Scratchley was appointed the first Special Commissioner. He came to two important conclusions. The first was that the administration of justice according to European ideas was impossible. His second conclusion was that the showing of the flag by naval men-of-war was not suited to the purposes of administering justice and punishing outrages that might occur on the New Guinea coast. Outrages have not occurred there, Mr. Chairman. The indigenous people have followed the example set by the Europeans who have gone there. By the standards of world rule, the people of Papua have been educated in a unique fashion. As I have said, before World War II the country was very primitive. Disease was rife. It is only since scientists have found out how to cure or prevent certain diseases, including malaria, and how to cure and avoid complaints such as tinea, that the development of the country has expanded rapidly. That is understandable. Most of the servicemen who were in New Guinea during the war suffered from tinea. They took a long time to get over it. Most of the health problems have now disappeared. Consequently, there is a new phase of prosperity in the country. Those of the native people who have worked and become by their own standards very rich find it hard to understand the views of their fellow countrymen. As I see the situation, the indigenous people of New Guinea must take stock of themselves. It is of no use for the dissatisfied inhabitants of the coastal areas merely to say: " This is what must be done ". This will be of no avail, because the people in the Highlands have different views altogether. The Highlands have been settled by Europeans and developed only since the end of World War II. Before the war, European settlement and development of any kind were found only on the coastal fringes. All the diseases that one could pick up in the tropics were common. In a short period, we have seen the country develop rapidly. 1 am rather alarmed when I read in the newspapers accusations by Russia that Australia is building up Papua and New Guinea as an arsenal and statements to the effect that this should not be done. I think it is to the credit of the Government and of the Minister for Territories (Mr. Barnes) that last year the Minister made available some 34 reports on what took place when the United Nations mission toured the Territory. If one examines the views that were put to the mission, one will find a few complaints from the local people. Some said they wanted higher wages and others said they wanted schools. But generally they said: " Leave us alone. When the time is right, and we want independence, we shall say so." I think it would be very bad if we in Australia were to say: " You will be independent on such and such a date next year ". If we did that, we would . not be doing the right thing for the people of Papua and New Guinea. It is up to us to help them to establish an independent nation when they say that they want independence. I am sure that we shall only bring trouble on them if we try to make them run before they are able to walk. Some academics whom I know have told me: " The people of Papua and New Guinea must get independence - and they must get it quickly ". I say: Of course, they must have independence. But let them have it when they want it. I believe that one of the great advances that has taken place in the Territory is the development of administration by means of local government councils. The indigenous people show great interest in these. Some of them now sit in their own House of Assembly. This represents a step in the right direction. But we know that more than half of them do not understand parliamentary government. Even though they have their own Parliament, we must not force them and try to make them understand too readily the meaning of parliamentary government, for they are not yet capable of understanding. I do not say that with any harshness towards the indigenous people. They have not reached the stage of understanding yet, but they will gradually get to it. They will then be in a position to administer their own affairs. However, I believe that at present they should hasten slowly. I have mentioned complaints made by Russia. One complaint is that Australia is building airstrips in the Territory. The indigenous people themselves say that they want us to do this. Progress Report No. 16 on the United Nations mission to New Guinea states the views expressed by Robin Safetoa, a local government assistant, of Popondetta, who told the mission that he was concerned about the defence of the Territory. He said that the Pacific Islands Regiment was not strong enough and that defences in the Territory should be built up. The report states that he said that radio news of fighting in other countries was constantly heard and that greater preparation, including armament factories, was wanted. I believe that the Russians, through the United Nations, hear of statements such as these. Here we have these primitive people themselves saying that they want armament factories in the Territory and that defences ought to be built up. I have not Lime to read to the Committee extracts from other reports. They show that the indigenous people have expressed grave fears about Indonesia, which shares a common border with the Territory. They want the Territory defended against any possible threat by Indonesia. All this has to be done with the means and the funds that we are able to give them in assisting them to put their affairs in order. I believe that what we have done in Papua and New Guinea has been well done. Australia has been criticised for spending too much money in the Territory and not enough elsewhere. So long as we promote the steady and gradual development of the people and encourage them to do the things that are within their capacity, we shall do the correct thing for them. When Papua was first taken over by Queensland, its boundaries were somewhat awry. A couple of weeks ago in this chamber, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Whitlam) pointed this out. It goes back to 1884, Mr. Chairman. Funnily enough, Queensland now has a common border with parts of Papua and New Guinea. But that was the attitude of those days. The record shows that Queensland's population was expected to be so great by 1950 that it would have to spill over into Papua and New Guinea. That is why the boundaries were drawn as they were. I would say that it is in their own interest for the people of Papua and New Guinea to put their faith in Australia. We will stand by them as long as they want us. As soon as they are ready for self determination and apply for it, they will get it. I repeat that in my opinion it would be wrong to give self-determination to Papua and New Guinea before the people are ready for it. 1672 10000 0 0 CHAIRMAN, The The CHAIRMAN - Order! The honorable member's time has expired. 1672 KGA Canning 0 0 HALLETT, John Mr HALLETT .- The Northern Territory, together with the rest of northern Australia, suffers some serious disadvantages compared with other parts of the Commonwealth. I refer particularly to freight charges. The Commonwealth Government has made some worthwhile contributions towards minimising some of these disadvantages. I refer, for example, to the subsidy on petrol, which ensures that people in outlying areas of the Northern Territory pay no more than 4d. a gallon in excess of the capital city price. I think all honorable members will agree that we must develop the north. If we are to do this we must take some practical steps towards assisting and encouraging people to live there. The cost of materials used in the construction of homes and factories is extremely high in the Northern Territory and in the northern part of Western Australia. Much of this high cost is due to freight charges. Many of the materials used in buildings are manufactured in the south and transported to the north. The cost of building a house in Kununurra, for instance, is almost twice as high as the cost of building a house in the south. There may be several reasons for this higher cost. Labour may be dearer in the north, for one thing. As Australia has developed, most of our factories have been erected in the south. In developing new areas in the north it has been necessary to transport building materials over long distances. This will continue to be done until such time as these materials are manufactured in the north. I feel that the Government could give greater tax concessions to people living in the north to encourage its development. The people of the north are entitled to amenities such as air conditioning. But these things come from the south. The cost of everything that comes from the south contains a freight component, which is extremely high. We know that in Western Australia the Commonwealth Grants Commission has greatly assisted as far as shipping is concerned. But we should be looking for more ways to overcome the cost of freight. The subsidy on superphosphate has been referred to. I fully support the subsidy of $6 a ton on superphosphate used in Australia. This subsidy will help people in outlying areas, including the Northern Territory. But as I mentioned recently, 35 per cent, of the cost of superphosphate is incurred beyond the factory. No doubt superphosphate costs more the further you go from the factory. If we are to develop the north we must do something to level out the costs faced by the people who are prepared to go there and stay there. We know the problems associated with obtaining a home in the south. We know what it costs to build a home. We know that housing costs are rising. But they are much higher in the north than they are in the south. How can we expect people to go into the north and face these high costs when they can obtain homes considerably cheaper in the south? This is an important problem. We must consider also what can be done to encourage the establishment of small factories in the north. In the new Parliament next year the only member without full voting rights will be the member for the Northern Territory. Having in mind what I have said about the development of the north, I think that the Government could well look into the matter of granting to the member for the Northern Territory full voting rights. The Northern Territory will grow rapidly. The member for the Northern Territory should have full voting rights in this Parliament. 1672 KET 0 0 KING, Robert Mr King - What is the position now? 1672 KGA 0 0 HALLETT, John Mr HALLETT - At the moment two members of the Parliament do not have full voting rights. In the next Parliament only one will have restricted voting rights. The Northern Territory does not have a full voice in this Parliament. Having regard to the problems of the Territory and its proximity to our Asian neighbours, I think the Government should seriously consider granting to the member for the Northern Territory full voting rights. A lot has been said from time to time about development of the north. We all are of the same opinion on this matter. We have our own ships on our coastal runs. We have our Australian National Line. Western Australia has its shipping line. I have already referred to the assistance given to Western Australia in this regard by the Commonwealth Grants Commission. I think the Commonwealth Government has power to assist northern development by doing something about freight costs. If we reduced freight costs in the north we would be giving a tremendous boost to the Northern Territory by assisting in the building of homes and factories and the providing of commodities that go towards development of the north of Australia. 1673 JSU Wills 0 0 BRYANT, Gordon Mr BRYANT .- I wish to address myself to the proposed expenditure for the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. We are in a special relationship to Papua and New Guinea. Although the honorable member for Canning (Mr. Hallett) is correct in his statement of the deficiencies of the Northern Territory as regards its representation in this place, at least that Territory has a member here. The people of Papua and New Guinea have no direct voice at all in this Parliament. So to that extent each of us is an honorary member for the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. One of the things that concerns me about the Territory is its relative isolation from Australia. This relates to a number of things, such as travel and administration. Let us examine for a moment the matter of air fares from Australia to the Territory. Let me give some details taken from a Trans-Australia Airlines timetable. These details apply equally to AnsettA.N.A. and other airlines operating to New Guinea. The distance from Cairns to Port Moresby is about 530 miles. The air fare is $58.20. The distance from Cairns to Coolangatta is about 900 miles, but the fare is only $58.40. So the person who lives in the Territory and the Territory people themselves :.re disadvantaged to the extent of the disparity between the air fares. In the Territory we are dealing with a particularly poor section of the Australian domain. These are the people who have the least amount of cash. Travel to them is a much more expensive operation that it is to the rest of us. For an Australian living in Papua and New Guinea for any reason, the distance to bc travelled before reaching the mainland of Australia is tremendous. I believe that the disparity in fares is a serious error in airline administration. I do not think any convincing argument can be advanced that it is any more expensive to operate across the Coral Sea than across the land spaces of Australia. The density or liquidity or whatever property air has is no different. In fact, it is part of international air travel. As far as Australia is concerned administratively, I believe that in such matters we ought to treat Papua and New Guinea as an integral part of the Australian scene. The disparity exists not only in air fares but in other matters. It extends even to telephones. A telephone call from Port Moresby to Australia costs about 30s. lt is 12 months since 1 was there, but at that time the telephone service closed down at night and a fairly expensive late fee was charged to get it opened. I think in Australia the maximum charge for an internal telephone call is about 12s. 6d. or 15s. For instance, it is possible to make a call from Cairns to Perth for 15s. or thereabouts, but from Cairns to Port Moresby costs about 30s. I think that we are erecting a false barrier between Papua and New Guinea and Australia. Apart from that aspect, there is the simple economic barrier that we are creating between ourselves and the people who have the least amount of cash to spend. This applies equally to what might be called the positive areas of travel. There is a lack of suitable shipping to Papua and New Guinea. The average citizen is unable to travel there. But at some time in the near future - 1 have no doubt that this will occur after the election - we will turn our attention to the relationships we should have in a number of areas, such as customs and shipping. In the world today, the barriers are coming down. French and Germans are now living in some amity and travel between the two countries is easy. Travel between Singapore and Malaysia, between the countries of Europe and elsewhere in world is relatively easy. But in this part of the world, where we ought to be setting standards, we are busy erecting barriers of our own. I believe that this isolation extends not only to what might be called material areas, but it is also found in the administration of the Territory. I believe that it would be an advantage if members of the Parliament were able to travel to Papua and New Guinea as readily as if they were travelling internally in Australia. Most of us would go there only for special purposes, but there are those in the Parliament who have demonstrated a particular interest in Papua and New Guinea. It would be better for them to be able to go there once a year or as often as they wish. It would not be likely that we would find honorable members travelling more often than necessary. But the infrequency of travel to Papua and New Guinea makes it difficult to keep in touch with affairs there. This is an area in which progress would not cost the country much but would be of considerable advantage to Papua and New Guinea. I believe also that facilities ought to be provided for members of the House of Assembly to visit Australia with some frequency. The average citizen in Australia has the advantage or disadvantage, depending on the way we look at it, of 25 Commonwealth Ministers, of a. varying number of State Ministers - 8, 13 or 15, depending on the State - and of municipal councillors to look after his interests. But the people in Papua and New Guinea must look in general to only one department. I think the Postmaster-General's Department operates only in the field of broadcasting and does not provide postal services. The Department of Defence operates there and so does the Department of Civil Aviation. But in the specialised fields, such as education, health, agriculture and research, the people in the Territory must rely largely on the internal resources of the Public Service of Papua and New Guinea. I know that difficulties arise in the relationships between the services. But one of the big advantages Australians have in living under the auspices of the Commonwealth is that, no matter where they are, the full services of the Australian administration are available to them and remoteness is of no account. I believe that the isolation of Papua and New Guinea from the specialist Australian services has been to the disadvantage of the Territory. I should think that this is particularly apparent in the field of education. There are some other problems that are difficult to tackle, but they should be consistently faced. There is the question of racial discrimination. It has been the policy of the Government, and it has been expressed by the Administrator and his officers from time to time quite effectively, that there should be no such thing as racial discrimination. But this discrimination is one of the prevailing characteristics of humanity. To the itinerant observer in Papua and New Guinea, there may seem to be no racial discrimination. In the Services - for instance, in the Army - I understand that now at the various levels, such as in the officers mess, people of different races associate freely and work with a sense of complete amity and unanimity. This would, I should think, be so in the House of Assembly itself. In some specialist areas there is no sense of racial discrimination, but in some areas, including the Public Service, there is still an indication of racial attitudes in the way that white people and black people separate. Apparently there is still a failure to admit black people to some clubs and so on. This is a serious matter, and I realise that it is difficult for the Administration to counter it. But I believe it is to the advantage of the Administration to attempt to do so. We should always discuss racial discrimination and express our concern at its existence so that Australians working and living in Papua and New Guinea will at least know that Australia disagrees with this discrimination. I believe that development in Papua and New Guinea is lagging in three principal areas. They are education, industry and political development. I will deal briefly with each one of these. Papua and New Guinea has a tremendous educational problem. I will say that, as we look at the rest of the world, we realise that probably in Papua and New Guinea the social experiment in advancing people from a primitive state into the modern age is being carried on more successfully than anywhere else. It is to the great credit of this country that we are able to administer such a difficult area, with such diversity of peoples, ranging over such intimidating mountains, in such an effective way. But I still believe, as I have said here before, that the approach to education has been rather more diffident than it ought to be. The school population in Papua and New Guinea is somewhere about 600,000. Of these, some 210,000 are in schools. Those are the figures that we received recently. In Papua and New Guinea, we are attempting to create an education system almost of the size of that of Victoria, lt is interesting to consider for a moment the problems that we face in this area. Honorable members may turn to the figures and see how many schools, students and teachers are in Papua and New Guinea. Victoria has 665,000 children of school age. We have about 487,000 in State schools and 178,000 in non-State schools. We have 2,229 government schools and 568 non-government schools, making a total of 2,797. But it is in the field of teachers that the figures are almost astronomical. Victoria has 24,352 full time teachers and 2,572 part time teachers. This was the position a couple of years ago. The statistics are readily available. Education costs about £82 or $164 a pupil. The cost of running the education system in Victoria is about $25 per head of population. If this standard were applied to Papua and New Guinea, it would mean that the Government ought to be spending about $100 million on education alone. The extension of education in Papua and New Guinea, of course, presents great difficulties, but when I have been there I have been unable to convince the people to whom I have spoken that there are any real dynamics behind the Government's approach to education. I believe that the recommendation by the World Bank that there be a cut back in the development of education was a mistake. This is the most important area of development in Papua and New Guinea. Only an educated society will be able to develop itself in the face of world competition in the sale of its various products; only an educated society will be able to take its place in the community of the world. Before this can be done, and before it will be really effective, there will have to be substantial indus trial development. It is a fallacy to wait for private enterprise to develop enterprise in Papua and New Guinea. With all the evidence of recent history before him it would have to be a particularly benevolent capitalist who would pour great sums of money into Papua and New Guinea. It may well be that there is no fear of expropriation, but the capitalists of the world are realists and I consider it a complete fallacy to wait for them to develop industry in this Territory. Therefore it is a question for this Government to tackle. There should be substantial government industrialisation of Papua and New Guinea. Public enterprise will have to undertake the industrialisation. It has been the misfortune of Papua and New Guinea that it has been beset by probably the two most conservative Ministers who could have been appointed from this Liberal Party and Country Party Government. Their attitudes have been bound to doctrines rather than to the needs of the people of Papua and New Guinea. Consider the simple question of clothing. Why is there not a substantial clothing manufacturing business in Papua and New Guinea? Why is there not a substantial shoe manufacturing industry there? These are light industries that could be embarked upon without great capital expenditure and in which it would be relatively easy to train people. I believe this is the first element in what we might call the material side of the development and industrialisation of Papua and New Guinea. The other element to which I want to refer is, of course, the parliamentary political development of the Territory. The honorable member for Batman (Mr. Benson) said we must go slowly. I do not think we can go much more slowly than now in the political development of the Territory. There has been a very tentative approach towards democratic government there. The Territory House of Assembly is a vehicle towards the independence of Papua and New Guinea. Independence and self determination are relative questions. The Australian Commonwealth for 50 or 60 years expended much time in trying to get rid of the shackles of Whitehall and is now getting a new lot forged in the White House. Independence is related to industrial development, to a place in the world and to attitudes on this, that and the other. Every time the House of Assembly passes a new law - whether it is to ban the playing of cards, whether it is to extend the Public Service, whether to raise the school leaving age or to provide whether vehicles should drive on the right or left of the road - and it goes through the various echelons of approval and finally is not rejected by the Minister, that is a step on the road to self determination and independence. 1 recommend honorable members to read the report of the Select Committee on Constitutional Development in Papua and New Guinea. Their Parliament is going to be the instrument of the future of the people there and part of their future relationships with us. It must be expanded; it must be given more membership; it must be given more resources; its members must be given the ability to move around the country, and greater faith must be placed in it. Papua and New Guinea is one of the great social experiments going on in the world today. It is Australia's most important trusteeship. We cm show by the way in which we develop and extend future relationships between us that here is a new element of man's relation to man, despite material resources, despite race and despite background. This is our greatest challenge, and 1 hope that in the near future we will accept it in a much more effective way than we have done so far. 1676 2V4 Hindmarsh 0 0 CAMERON, Clyde Mr CLYDE CAMERON . - I think that the honorable member for Wills (Mr. Bryant) made a very good point when he said that two of the most conservative Ministers in the Government have, for the last 17 years, controlled the destinies of Papua and New Guinea. This was certainly an understatement. For a long time I thought the present Minister for Territories (Mr. Barnes) was lazy in his job; that this could be the only possible explanation for some of the decisions taken; that he was allowing the departmental heads and the administrators in the Department to make decisions for him, and though they were bad decisions he was too lazy to bother about correcting them. But as I study him more closely I am satisfied it was not the fault of the administrators at all, or of the departmental heads, but that it was the wilful decision of the Minister himself that backward, retrograde points of view should be imposed upon the people who were unfortunate enough to come under his control. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to visit Papua and New Guinea some six years ago and I was able to gather quite a lot of useful information while I was there. The first thing I discovered was that the natives of New Guinea are probably among the most exploited people in the Southern Hemisphere. 1676 KKU 0 0 MACKINNON, Ewen Mr Mackinnon - Is this the view of the honorable member? 1676 10000 0 0 CHAIRMAN, The The CHAIRMAN - Order! I ask the honorable member for Corangamite to cease interjecting. 1676 2V4 0 0 CAMERON, Clyde Mr CLYDE CAMERON - I dare say that the honorable member who is interjecting is envious of the cheap labour that is available in New Guinea. He would love to have such labour on his wealthy western district estates so that he could employ people at about 6s. 9d. - I am sorry, the wages have increased by about SO per cent, to 9s. - a week plus feed. It is amazing when one realises it, that an enlightened people such as we claim to be should have the hide, the cheek, to allow these native people to be employed at the miserable pittance of about 9s. a week and keep, lt is about time we had a look at ourselves. 1676 JOA 0 0 BARNES, Charles Mr Barnes - What would the honorable member suggest? 1676 2V4 0 0 CAMERON, Clyde Mr CLYDE CAMERON - I suggest that they be paid the same rate, for the same work, as a white man receives. 1676 JOA 0 0 BARNES, Charles Mr Barnes - This is good news for the planters. 1676 2V4 0 0 CAMERON, Clyde Mr CLYDE CAMERON - It is elementary, surely. It ought to be so. Where a New Guinean driver of a bulldozer drives just as well as a white man he ought to get the same rate of pay as the white man. 1676 KIW 0 0 MACKAY, Malcolm Dr Mackay - Who is going to pay it? 1676 2V4 0 0 CAMERON, Clyde Mr CLYDE CAMERON - The employers, of course. Who does the honorable member think should pay it? 1676 KIW 0 0 MACKAY, Malcolm Dr Mackay - Who are the employers? 1677 2V4 0 0 CAMERON, Clyde Mr CLYDE CAMERON - The employers for the time being would be Burns Philp & Co. Ltd., W. R. Carpenter & Co. Ltd. and some of the other companies that have grown fabulously wealthy from the sweat and toil of underpaid natives. This is who should pay the natives. If they cannot pay them, then the quicker they get out and admit that they are incapable of running an industry in New Guinea the better for everybody concerned. Instead of letting W. R. Carpenter, Burns Philp and the other wealthy millionaire exploiters in New Guinea continue to exploit the natural resources and the cheap manpower of New Guinea, why does not the Minister say to the natives: " Look, we will give you an opportunity of running your own cooperatives. We will help you." Let us not forget that the Government is helping Burns Philp and W. R. Carpenter very handsomely now. 1677 KIW 0 0 MACKAY, Malcolm Dr Mackay - There are hundreds of co-operatives. 1677 2V4 0 0 CAMERON, Clyde Mr CLYDE CAMERON - There are nothing of the kind. I will tell the honorable member something about co-operatives in a moment if he will bear with me. The millions of pounds that we pour into New Guinea each year find their way into the pockets of companies like Burns Philp and W. R. Carpenter. It would be far better for us to be using this money to finance and to sponsor co-operatives run by the natives for the benefit of the natives. When I was there about six years ago I was disgusted to read that the Minister's illustrious predecessor had granted, or had allowed somebody else to grant, a huge tract of wonderful cattle country in the Markham Valley to Bulolo Gold Dredging Ltd. 1677 JOA 0 0 BARNES, Charles Mr Barnes - In the Markham Valley? 1677 2V4 0 0 CAMERON, Clyde Mr CLYDE CAMERON - Yes. 1677 JOA 0 0 BARNES, Charles Mr Barnes - The honorable member has his geography mixed up. 1677 2V4 0 0 CAMERON, Clyde Mr CLYDE CAMERON - Where is it then? 1677 JOA 0 0 BARNES, Charles Mr Barnes - Bulolo is near Wau. 1677 2V4 0 0 CAMERON, Clyde Mr CLYDE CAMERON - I said that a huge tract of cattle country in the Markham Valley had been handed over to Bulolo Gold Dredging Ltd. That is what I said. It was handed over at the princely sum of 6d. an acre a week on a SO year lease. How could that be justified when there are pockets of native population in New Guinea bursting at the seams and crying out for land? Here was land - a huge area upon which this Government had already spent enormous sums in development - that could have been set aside for a native cooperative. But nothing was done. I have said before, and I repeat, that the money we spend in New Guinea, if we are to get the best value for it, has to be spent in developing a cultural corridor running parallel to the Indonesian border and working eastward. This idea of spending all of the money in Port Moresby where the Administrator happens to have his cocktail bar, or within easy radius of Port Moresby, has to end. If we are going to establish true defence for the people that we are caring for in New Guinea, and if we want to get a proper return for the money we are spending there, we ought to remember that the day cannot be far distant when there will be a border dispute between West Irian and East New Guinea. What will we be able to do to stand up to our responsibilities to the natives in the event of such a border dispute? Virtually nothing at all. The reason we will be able to do nothing at all is that we have not attempted to develop a cultural oneness, a oneness of language or some tie which will unite the people we care for in the corridor running parallel to the eastern border. This is where we should be establishing our medical aid posts and our schools and be doing everything we can, as quickly as we can, to teach the English language to all the youngsters for a start. If we cannot teach it to the older members of the population, let us commence by teaching English to the youngsters living in the villages there in the hope we can do the job effectively enough so that in the event of a dispute these people will at least be able to converse with each other. There are something like 500 different languages in New Guinea, so different indeed that it is utterly impossible for any one of the 500 language groups to understand even one word spoken by the other language groups. There will never be a united New Guinea - at any rate, united to the degree of being able to defend itself against Indonesia - until we weld the people together into at least a one language group. This has not been done and no attempt is being made to do it. I believe that none of the missions should receive any more aid from the Government until they agree to teach the one language. We have the fantastic position at present of some missions teaching in German, some in the native tongue of the particular localities, others in Pidgin, others in Motu, others in English and others in any other language which happens to be favoured by the particular missionary. This is not good. We should be insisting that all schools - both government schools and missionary schools which are financed by the Government - should teach only one language, English. Before concluding I want to get closer to home and to refer to the strange position which has arisen at Alexandria Downs. The Minister knows something about this. I am sure he is not completely ignorant about it. Some time ago a certain part of Alexandria Downs was acquired for redistribution. Three blocks were taken. Applications were called for the blocks and it was decided that a ballot would be held. Some time ago I learned from the Minister, in reply to a question, that for one block there were 24 applications. Three of these were withdrawn or were rejected because they were late. Twenty were arbitrarily excluded from the ballot by the Land Board and there were 18 protests with the result that only three of the applications remained in the ballot. Just think of that: Of the 24 who applied to go in the ballot only three were allowed to enter. The others had been arbitrarily excluded from the ballot by the Board and had no chance of winning. The three who were in the ballot had a 3 to 1 chance of winning. I will have more to soy about that later. For the second block 55 applications were received. Of these five were either withdrawn or were rejected because they were late; and 36 were not even allowed to go into the ballot, in the result, only 20 were allowed in the ballot. For the final block 58 applications were received. Four of these were withdrawn or were rejected because they were late, 39 were excluded and only 21 were allowed in the ballot. Then a rather odd kind of situation seemed to develop because one of the applicants which was successful in the ballot was an American firm which already had a holding of 2,000 square miles in the Northern Territory. That company was allowed to enter the ballot and was successful. The other two blocks were won by different companies but it is interesting to note that one person was a partner in both of them. I happen to know three of the applicants who were excluded from the ballot. One is Mr. P. J. Browne who has had a tremendous amount of experience in the cattle industry. He had §80.000 which he could have made available for the development of the land but he was excluded because he did not have sufficient relevant experience. I tried to squeeze out of the Minister some explanation of the magic term " insufficient relevant experience". I thought the Minister might have interjected at that point. 1678 JOA 0 0 BARNES, Charles Mr Barnes - I am waiting to have my say later. 1678 2V4 0 0 CAMERON, Clyde Mr CLYDE CAMERON - I do not know what is meant by relevant experience but Mr. Browne had more than 20 years experience. 1678 JOA 0 0 BARNES, Charles Mr Barnes - Does years mean experience? 1678 2V4 0 0 CAMERON, Clyde Mr CLYDE CAMERON - Yes it does, the kind of experience he had. I do not know whether the Minister's clerks in the Land Board told him that this gentleman had more than 20 years experience in the cattle industry. I do not know whether the clerks in the Land Board told the Minister that Mr. C. Milton, another applicant who was excluded on the ground of insufficient experience, had a tremendous amount of experience. He comes from Queensland and probably knows more about the cattle industry than the Minister or any of his clerks who rejected the application will ever know. He also had plenty of money to invest. Another applicant who was rejected, a Mr. Mahommed, also had a fund of experience in the cattle industry. He had been in it nearly all his life - in fact since he had been a little boy in short trousers - but he did not have much money and was told: " You have been rejected because you have not enough money". But that could not have been said about Mr. Browne because he had $80,000 to put into the project as soon as he was granted a lease, so to overcome that difficulty the clerks, in the case of Mr. Browne and Mr. Milton, used the excuse that they did not have sufficient relevant experience. In my question I asked the Minister - Were about 40 applicants to enter the ballot excluded from the ballot? The answer, of course, was " Yes ". Then I asked - Is it a fact that at least two of those excluded (Messrs. P. J. Browne and C. Milton) were excluded on the grounds that they had insufficient relevant experience? Again the answer was " Yes ". Then I asked the Minister - Can he say whether both of these applicants did in fact have considerable experience in the cattle industry? The answer prepared by his clerks was - It was the considered opinion- Listen to this - of the Northern Territory Land Board that these applicants did not have sufficient relevant experience. I know that was the reason why they were rejected. I mentioned that in my question. What I was trying to learn then and what I am trying to squeeze out of the Minister now is what is meant by this term " insufficient relevant experience ". Will he tell us what it means? Will he tell everyone in Australia what it means? Do not try to pull the wool over my eyes, Mr. Minister, by using this magic phrase. 1679 10000 0 0 CHAIRMAN, The The CHAIRMAN - Order! The honorable member's time has expired. 1679 JOA McPherson CP Minister for Territories 0 0 BARNES, Charles Mr BARNES . - I am delighted to note the wide range of interest shown in the estimates for the Department of Territories. Unfortunately I was on duty in Cabinet and was unable to hear the first part of the speech by the honorable member for Mackellar (Mr. Wentworth) although I did hear the latter part of it in which he suggested that Aboriginal reserves should be utilised to a greater extent than they are for the benefit of the Aborigines. I agree with his suggestion and I hope to be able to announce soon some policy along these lines because, obviously, if they are to have any future in the pastoral, agricultural or, for that matter, mining industry, something should be done to help them. I may add that on one reserve to the north of Alice Springs the Aborigines are working a copper show. They have quite a lot of copper at grass and I think this could be quite a good operation. It is our great aim to find useful and profitable occupations for these people. Honorable members have probably noticed reports in the Press that quite a number of them are engaged in asparagus picking in the Gundagai district, where they are earning most satisfactory wages. This is a most important development. It stems from a visit I paid to the Riverina early last year, when 1 was impressed by the need for seasonal labour for the picking of vegetables and so on. I formed the opinion that this was an excellent operation for Aborigines. We brought down 60 or 70 of them last year, with very great success. We have had requests to bring many more. They receive full award rates and they have made a very good impression in these areas. The asparagus picking in the Gundagai district is one manifestation of this scheme and I hope it can be extended further. The honorable member for Melbourne Ports (Mr. Crean) criticised the Government for not spending enough money in Papua and New Guinea. I believe that we are spending to the very limit of our resources in that country. In this connection I would like to quote some figures. This being a kind of progressive operation, I may say that in 1954-55 the total budget for Papua and New Guinea was $20.5 million while in 1966-67 it is $120 million. This shows a very steep rise. Australia's contribution per capita in Papua and New Guinea is far greater than that of any other developed country to any other underdeveloped country in the world. Tn Kenya, for instance, the contribution from outside is about $5 per capita. In Ghana it is also probably $5 per capita. Australia's contribution in Papua and New Guinea amounts to $35 per capita, and I think this is something we can be very proud of. We are making a mighty effort in trying to advance the people of the Territory. There is a lot more to be done, certainly, but we are developing a country ourselves and we are quite short of many resources. I very much appreciated the contribution of the honorable member for Riverina (Mr. Armstrong), and particularly his remarks about the Northern Territory. He has had a good deal of experience in the pastoral industry and obviously his comments are ot great value. His observations on Papua and New Guinea were also of great interest because he served there with much distinction during the war and he obviously appreciates the great advances that have been made. The honorable member for Dawson (Dr. Patterson) was probably a little more moderate than the honorable member for Hindmarsh (Mr. Clyde Cameron), because the honorable member for Dawson has a better understanding of the position and has not as much imbalance as the honorable member for Hindmarsh has. Nevertheless I was rather surprised at the way in which the honorable member for Dawson went off at a tangent with his suggestions about the areas into which this country should be cut up. If we study the history of land settlement in Australia we will find that great tragedies have occurred because districts have been cut up into areas that have been far too small and completely uneconomic. With all the goodwill and hard work in the world, men have suffered a great deal of hardship. I am particularly concerned about what has happened to the wives and families of men who have worked so willingly to help them on these small areas and have suffered great hardships in consequence. Of course this suggestion of cutting districts up into small areas is quite characteristic of Labour land policy in Australia, which has been a failure in whatever area one might study its application. When honorable members criticise the large station owners in the Northern Territory they should look at the history of land settlement in the Territory. It is only in recent years that pastoral activity in the Territory has been in any way profitable. This has been a most isolated area and in a sense it has been simply a breeding area for cattle that have been fattened in districts to the south. This was the only profitable operation for years in the Northern Territory. Most of the owners of stations in the Northern Territory sent their mobs of store cattle south and fattened them there. There has been recently a rise in prices, but I might remind the Committee that after cattle prices dropped to disastrously low levels in 1920-21 there was a period of about 25 years when property owners in the Northern Territory received no reasonable profit at all. lt is only in recent years that these people have had any decent return on their investment. I was rather glad that the honorable member for Dawson commented on the excellent management of Brunette Downs before it was taken over by the King Ranch organisation, because two cousins of mine were successive managers of that property. I agree with the honorable member for Dawson because I think these two men knew something about the industry and the district and they set a pretty good example of development there. One field in which we are at a disadvantage in the Northern Territory is that of land laws. The land ordinances are completely out of date. They have been amended and added to and so on, and they are completely inflexible. Soon after I became Minister and had to make decisions on matters of leases I became aware of this and realised that we must have a completely new set of land ordinances. I have had a study group working on this for the last two years and I hope to bring something forward soon and to present it to the Northern Territory Legislative Council. It will be laid on the table of that Council and there will be discussion about it. We have a great history of land laws in Australia and I believe we will be able to devise something very useful for the Northern Territory. The honorable member for Gippsland (Mr. Nixon) commented on the necessity of providing reasonably cheap superphosphate in the area, and of course I quite agree with him. But, despite its high cost, superphosphate is being used to an increasing extent. The use of this commodity increased from 171 tons in 1963-64 to an estimated 3,000 tons this year. It is making progress but I agree that before we can achieve very effective use of the land in the higher rainfall areas of the Northern Territory we will have to provide superphosphate at much reduced rates. Again I may say that the use of superphosphate will increase most substantially when it becomes economically possible for one of the superphosphate manufacturers to operate in the Territory. Then there is another factor, of course, which has to do with the use of certain grades of rock phosphate from Christmas Island. We may be able to get some of these grades in. bulk to the Northern Territory, which would make for a cheaper operation. I was impressed by the comments of the honorable member for Batman (Mr. Benson). He has a great understanding of the Territory of Papua and New Guinea and his comments were most relevant. 1 was particularly interested in his suggestions on the possibilities of developing the Christmas Island phosphate operations. As he said, very great opportunities exist there. Over the last two years we have been able to establish very much larger reserves of rock phosphate on Christmas Island. Only a couple of years ago the estimated reserves were 90 million tons. So far we have been able to establish reserves of 200 million tons, which will ease our dependence on other areas in the world. Of course, it will take a year or two to take full advantage of those reserves. Production will be stepped up from about 750,000 tons a year at present to about one million tons next year and probably to more than 2i million tons by 1972. These deposits offer great prospects for increased production. The honorable member for Canning (Mr. Hallett) commented on the difficulties of the freight situation in the Northern Territory. This is always a problem in any isolated area. I believe that the situation will gradually right itself, with the tremendous operations of the mining companies in the Territory. There are the present operations on Groote Eylandt; the iron ore operations that will be starting soon south of Darwin, as a result of which exports from the Darwin harbour will increase by about 100 per cent, over the next two years; the operations of the Gove bauxite enterprise when it commences production; and the McArthur River operations. These will mean more ports and considerably more shipping to and from the Northern Territory. There will be a two way cargo operation, compared with the one way operation that has existed up to the present time. Obviously, this will be a big factor in the reduction of freight charges. 1681 6U4 0 0 WHITLAM, Gough Mr Whitlam - Under what flag will the ships operate? 1681 JOA 0 0 BARNES, Charles Mr BARNES - Let us hope that the trade will open to ships of all flags. That is the best way to achieve cheaper opera tion. God help the people of the Northern Territory if they had to depend on cargo shipping under only the Australian flag, because that is a most expensive operation. It is certainly all right for bulk cargo operations, but not for general cargo operations. The high cost of operation has wiped Australian cargo vessels off our coast. The honorable member for Wills (Mr. Bryant) commented on the necessity for education in Papua and New Guinea. I agree that it is very necessary. I believe that we have education going hand in hand with economic development because, after all, if we educate people we have to have jobs for them to go to. He mentioned the commencement of new industries. This is important, too. But where he and I differ is on his view that these new industries should be government industries. We will have no hope in the world if we try to develop a country on government spending. We have to provide an economic incentive for private enterprise. That is what we are doing. We are encouraging the very great advance in industrial development in Papua and New Guinea. We have introduced a pioneer industry scheme under which, for a period of years, a company receives taxation relief. Eleven new industries have been granted pioneer industry concessions. Applications from another 12 industries are coming up. These are small industries, but I hope they will grow. The important thing is that they will provide job opportunities for local people. That is what we are setting out to do. 1681 2V4 0 0 CAMERON, Clyde Mr Clyde Cameron - They will provide opportunities to exploit the natives. 1681 JOA 0 0 BARNES, Charles Mr BARNES - The honorable member again mentions exploitation. I cannot help feeling that he has a warped mind in most directions. He is difficult to understand. He said that we should pay Australian award wages to plantation workers. That shows that he has a complete misunderstanding of the economics of the Territory. It produces coffee, copra and cocoa in competition with the rest of the equatorial countries which have probably the lowest wage conditions in the world. If the wages were increased these industries would be put out of operation. Many of the local people are engaged in these industries. These are The honorable member for Hindmarsh concluded his remarks with his estimate of the relative competency of the people who put in for the ballot for the Alexandria holdings. Who is going to assess the relative worth of applicants for land areas? It will certainly not be the honorable member for Hindmarsh and it certainly will not be the Minister for Territories. There has to be some body of men with experience and honesty, and thoroughly impartial. What better can be done than to have a land board set up? This is done in the States. The people in the Territory who handle these matters are completely impartial, experienced and honest. I believe this is the only satisfactory way in which it can be done. As I mentioned before, these overseas companies cannot be excluded, because the land laws of the Northern Territory do not provide for this rather irrational attitude to what is called absentee ownership by foreign companies. This thing has to be looked at in its true perspective. The honorable member for Dawson was not quite as irrational as his leader, whom I heard quoted as saying that 60,000 square miles were owned by foreign companies. Half of that area - 30,000 square miles - is British owned. Are those people foreign? Are we going to call our close ancestors, in many cases, foreigners? This is a new attitude to British people. Certainly the rest of this area, 30,000 square miles, is owned by American, British and Chinese interests, the Chinese being of British nationality. That is out of a total of 500,000 square miles in the Northern Territory. I admit that probably only half of this area is capable of useful land development, but this is only a fractional operation. It is leasehold land. It is still Crown land, it is only leased. It will not be owned by these foreign interests. Opposition members should get into their minds that this land is still owned by the Government. That is all I have to say, Mr. Chairman. Thursday, 13th October 1966. Proposed expenditures agreed to. Proposed expenditure - Department of Works, $32,930,000- agreed to. Total proposed expenditure, 5875.474,000, of which $300,000,000 is chargeable to Loan Fund. Department of Defence. Proposed expenditure, $17,765,000. Department of the Navy. Proposed expenditure, $193,673,000. Department of the Army. Proposed expenditure, $328,498,000. Department of Air. Proposed expenditure, $253,739,000. Department of Supply. Proposed expenditure, $78,052,000. General Services. Proposed expenditure, $3,747,000. Progress reported. 1682 bill Bill returned from the Senate without amendment. 1682 adjournment 1682 Motion (by Mr. Freeth) proposed - That the House do now adjourn. 1682 12:21:00 JZX Kalgoorlie 0 0 COLLARD, Frederick Mr COLLARD . - The matter I wish to raise is one of considerable importance to a large number of people in Western Australia and particularly in the electorate of Kalgoorlie which covers nine-tenths of the State. I refer to the provision for establishment of television in the districts of Kalgoorlie and Geraldton. Although we have been pursuing this matter for five years and have been pressing the Postmaster-General (Mr. Hulme) and his predecessor to provide such a service, we are no nearer today to receiving a definite answer than we were when we started. Because of our continuing representations over a long period of time, the first point to which I direct attention tonight is an article which appeared in the " Kalgoorlie Miner " on 15th September. This is a report of a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce in Kalgoorlie. It stated - Kalgoorlie-Boulder people had spent about $40,000 on the installation of television receivers and masts in their homes, chamber was told yesterday. A chamber member, Mr. K. Willison, was commenting on a letter received from the goldfields branch of the Democratic Labour Party. The letter contained answers by the Postmaster-General, Mr. Hulme, to questions asked in the Senate by the D.L.P. Leader, Senator McManus. Mr. Hulme said that although T.V. transmissions could be made over the proposed East-West microwave link which will pass through Kalgoorlie, no provision had yet been made for the link to service a station here. Then the report stated - Mr. Willison said the Postmaster General had claimed he had had no indication that goldfields people wanted a television station. Unfortunately I have not been able to locate any reference in the Senate " Hansard " to the question which the newspaper reports was asked by Senator McManus so I have not been able to determine whether the report is correct or not. But if the report is correct and the Postmaster-General said he had no indication that the goldfields people wanted a television station it is a remarkable and, in fact, a dishonest statement. I would hate to arrive at that conclusion because while the Postmaster-General has been very evasive on this matter of television for the district, I would not suggest for a moment that he had been dishonest. Why should he say he has had no indication that the people require a station on the goldfields? Even if the Minister does not accept my representations - and they have been several - as being an approach on behalf of the goldfields, and even if he discounts approaches made by the Chamber of Commerce and the Shires of Kalgoorlie, Geraldton and Esperance, and treats their request as of no consequence, surely he cannot ignore the petition signed by hundreds of goldfields and Geraldton people which was lodged in the Senate a considerable time ago. So I hope the Minister will oblige us with either a substantiated denial of this report in the newspaper or give some explanation of it. 1683 KIF 0 0 HULME, Alan Mr Hulme - I did not say it, if that is of any help to the honorable member. 1683 JZX 0 0 COLLARD, Frederick Mr COLLARD - If this article is a correct report of what the Minister said, and it must be coupled with the information I have received regarding a meeting between the Minister and the Managers of TVW Ltd. and Swan Television Ltd., then one must have very grave doubts whether the Government ever intends to extend the television service beyond phase 4, or whether it intends to do so after a long time. We must come to that conclusion from what the Minister has said in his replies to questions and statements. I suggest that he is either being deliberately evasive or he is using that method rather than give a definite refusal to our several requests. He has been reported as telling the television managers that it was impossible to expect that all country areas in Australia could be covered by television. He went on to say that television coverage when phase 4 was completed would be 91 per cent, of the Australian population and he considered that this was an exceptionally good figure. If he has been correctly reported in that respect it must surely mean that he considers that when phase 4 is completed Australia will be sufficiently served by television and that at least for some time it would be unwarranted to extend the service any further. Honorable members will be aware that it has been decided to install a microwave telecommunication link between Adelaide and Perth and that it will pass close to Kalgoorlie. As recently as the 15th of last month I asked a question on whether this would make it possible to extend television to Kalgoorlie. I received the usual evasive reply that it may be relevant to the provision of television for Kalgoorlie. The Minister went on to say that he had asked the Control Board to prepare a report with regard to a further extension and that full consideration would be given to the question of providing television in Kalgoorlie. As I said earlier, it is five years since we really started to push television for Kalgoorlie, yet we find today, after a very full examination of all the pros and cons of the microwave link that must have been made well prior to' the decision to install it, that the Minister is saying he has only just decided to call for a report on whether a television link should be provided in the communication link. It does not just sound right. Let us look at something else that the Minister has told us. On the 21st of last month I asked the Postmaster-General whether with regard to low power stations in remote areas he would consider extending or relaxing the existing limitation of control of commercial television stations. I think that was the only time that I ever received a deliberate answer. He said he certainly would not. However, he went on to say that the Department had not been able to get any application for a licence for the areas I had referred to. Of course, it would not have been surprising if he had not received any because the fact is that the licence limitation is an obstructing factor. What I wish to point out is that both TVW Ltd. and Swan Television Ltd. of Western Australia claim that the Postmaster-General's statements about not having received any concrete proposals for the establishment of television stations if the Act were amended with regard to licences were quite misleading. They point out that they have made several approaches. This seems to be borne out by an article which appeared in yesterday's issue of the "West Australian". I should like to know what the Postmaster-General's attitude is in relation to this. The article is headed " TVW Offers Early Service for Fields, Geraldton " and goes on to state - Kalgoorlie and Geraldton could have television in 9 to 12 months under a proposal made to the Australian Broadcasting Control Board by TVW Ltd. TVW managing director J. W. Cruthers said yesterday that the company had submitted a $250,000 scheme for package stations at the two centres. The article goes on to explain what that would mean and then states - Mr. Cruthers said that the TVW proposal could not be carried out if the board insisted on classing the package stations as separate operating licences A little later it states - When television began in W.A. in 1959, TVW offered to co-operate with the board in extending services to country areas, Mr. Cruthers said. Further down this appeared - TVW had made a number of approaches to the board in an effort to speed the expansion of country television, but nothing had come of them This, I suggest, refutes what the Postmaster-General has said, that is, that there would be no approaches or applications in regard to those stations if the Act were amended. The General Manager of Swan Television Ltd., Mr. R. J. Mercer, said on the day before yesterday that his company would be interested in establishing a package television station in either Kalgoorlie or Geraldton if existing legislation were altered to allow the operation of such a station without its being regarded as the subject of a second licence. It would seem to me that here is a possibility of obtaining some type of service - certainly not as good as I would like to see - in those areas, but if the Minister is to be adamant in relation to limitation of licences it is idle for these people to pursue this particular offer. I suggest that the time has arrived for the Minister to make a definite decision in relation to national stations in these places. Will they be made available and, if so, when will they be made available? Also, is this offer of TVW Ltd. to be examined to see whether it has any value, or is it just to be scrapped because the Minister is not prepared to relax the provisions of the Broadcasting and Television Act in relation to the control of low powered stations? 1684 12:32:00 KWR Bradfield 0 0 TURNER, Henry Mr TURNER . - What I have to say could have been more properly put during the debate on the estimates for the Prime Minister's Department, but unfortunately the Whips were not able to find time for me on that occasion, and because this matter is not unimportant I feel it reasonable that I should put it now. I want to refer to our diplomatic representation in Great Britain. On the outbreak of World War II, we had precisely one diplomatic post abroad, and that was in London. Today we have 70 such posts. No doubt it v/as reasonable at that time that, not having a separate Department of External Affairs, Australia House should be administered by the Prime Minister's Department. But many years have gone by. No other dominion, no other part of the British Commonwealth, so far as I know, has a High Commissioner or an Ambassador in London whose department is administered from the prime ministers office in the country of origin. We alone retain this situation. It is anomalous and it ought to be changed. Indeed, I shall be pursuing the matter further. Tonight, all that I want to do is to adumbrate the situation. We have indeed in London, at Australia House, a representative of the Department of External Affairs. He is quite a senior officer, who represented us for many years with great distinction in Kuala Lumpur. But he ranks about fifth, I think, in the hierarchy of Australia House, and his task is not to report upon the situation in Britain at all but to report upon British policies abroad - British policies outside United Kingdom. Now, Sir, what needs to be done at any diplomatic post? Of course, if we have an Ambassador or High Commissioner - it does not matter which - in a place like Britain, what we want to know is what is going on in Britain that affects us; what is going on in the political field. For example, if there is a Labour Party conference at Blackpool or wherever the Labour Party chooses to have a conference, or if there is a Conservative Party conference and the Conservative Party is likely to find itself in government, we want to know what are the policies that may affect us in future - policies on defence, policies on trade and so forth. That is what we need. That is the kind of reporting we want from any diplomatic post. We do not have that situation in London. No doubt the High Commissioner himself, who is a former distinguished member of this House, does report along those lines. I have the highest respect for him. Nor am T raising the question whether a former member of Parliament or a former Minister should be a High Commissioner, or whether he should be some man with a diplomatic training. I am not raising this issue at all. Indeed, I believe we are very well represented by Sir Alexander Downer with whom I sat in this House for a number of years and for whom I have the highest regard. Anglophile as he is, I could not imagine anybody who would be more acceptable in Britain to represent us. So I am not raising that issue at all. What I am saying is that his staff is not a diplomatic staff because the High Commission is administered by the Prime Minister's Department and not by the Department of External Affairs. 1685 KDA 0 0 DUTHIE, Gilbert Mr Duthie - That is right. 1685 KWR 0 0 TURNER, Henry Mr TURNER - -Well, it is wrong. Everybody here knows that in an embassy you have not only the ambassador himself but also the various officers who get around among the people in the country concerned - in England these would be the people in Whitehall - and who obtain information that is of immense value to us in this country. In London we do not have that kind of staff because it happens that the High Commission is still administered by the Prime Minister's Department. We do not have these skilled people who are able to get around and supplement what the High Commissioner can do. The High Commissioner in London is a particularly busy man. He is busy with many other things. As we all know, vast numbers of Australian visitors go to London and no doubt they occupy some part of his time. Also, a number of other departments, including the Department of Immigration, the Department of the Treasury, and the Department of Defence are represented in London and these all involve for the High Commissioner's staff considerable administrative duties. What I suggest is that the time has long gone by when the post in London should be regarded as other than a diplomatic post from which we should be able, because it is properly staffed, to get the sort of reports we get from other countries. This is a throw back to the past, a historical accident, an anachronism and it is high time it was altered. I do not want to let the matter simply rest there. I have drawn attention to an anomaly, and something ought to be done about it. The time has come when we should revise many of our old ideas and get up to date. I was going to ask the Minister at the table but he is no longer in the chair, so I ask whoever is in charge of the House - if anybody is - to convey to the Prime Minister what I have said because it is not unimportant. I would like the Prime Minister to confer with the Minister for External Affairs and see whether something can be done to correct this anomalous situation. If the Government, the Prime Minister and the Minister for External Affairs take the view that what has persisted for so many years is still correct, then I would expect that an explanation will be given to the House. I am raising a serious and important matter and Parliament - this House - and the public are entitled to be told the answer. If what I have said is right, then the position should be remedied. If the Government believes that what has been done for so long is still the best thing that ought to be done, then I think the Parliament is entitled to a defence of the Government's policy. In any event, I have raised a not unimportant matter and I would ask whoever is in charge of the House to see that it is drawn to the attention of the appropriate people and that an answer is given. Question resolved in the affirmative. House adjourned at 12.40 a.m. (Thursday). 1687 ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS UPON NOTICE The following answers to questions upon notice were circulated - (Question No. 2047.) 1687 1687 KUX 0 0 STEWART, Francis Mr Stewart asked the Postmaster-General, upon notice - How many (a) national and (b) commercial television stations are now in operation in Australia? Where are the stations located? Is he able to say how many adults view each of the stations nightly between the times of (a) 6.30 p.m. and 7.30 p.m., (b) 7.30 p.m. and 8.30 p.m., (c) 8.30 p.m. and 9.30 p.m., and (d) 9.30 p.m. and 10.30 p.m.? 1687 KIF 0 0 HULME, Alan Mr Hulme - The answers to the honorable member's questions are as follows - At 27th September 1966, 38 national and 40 commercial television stations were in operation. The area in which each station is located is shown in the attached list. In reply to the honorable member's question No. 1765 ("Hansard" 16th August 1966) I furnished estimates of the number of adults viewing television in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide during the hours specified. This is the only information I am in a position to supply. I explained that the figures were based on surveys by the McNair Survey Pty. Ltd. This organisation has not undertaken surveys of the audiences for all television stations. Further, audience figures for individual stations are confidential between McNair Survey Pty. Ltd. and those subscribing to the service. (Question No. 2090.) 1688 1688 6U4 0 0 WHITLAM, Gough Mr Whitlam asked the Minister representing the Minister for Supply, upon notice - How many (a) resignations and (b) retirements have there been from each professional and technical category in the Aeronautical Research Laboratories during each of the last five years? How many vacancies are there now in each category? 1688 KEN 0 0 FAIRHALL, Allen Mr Fairhall - The Minister for Supply has supplied the following information - The resignations and retirements from professional and technical categories at the Aeronautical Research Laboratories have been as follows - The number of vacancies at present in each category is compared to the number of staff engaged as follows - By coincidence, the total number of vacancies in the scientific field is the equivalent of the number of resignations during the period covered. In fact, during that period the Aeronautical Research Laboratories have recruited 19 scientists and a further three have accepted appointment and will take up duty in the near future. It is confidently expected that other scientists will be appointed from the applicants who have responded to the intensified recruiting action pursued by the Department during 1966. Furthermore there are currently 24 officers studying towards Ph.D. degrees as holders of the Department's Post Graduate Studentship Scheme, and there are 27 other departmental officers studying for their Ph.D. degrees either in Australia or overseas under various scholarships or other Commonwealthapproved arrangements. Upon completion of their studies, these officers will return to the departmental research and development laboratories, including Aeronautical Research Laboratories. (Question No. 2101.) 1688 1688 6U4 0 0 WHITLAM, Gough Mr Whitlam asked the Postmaster-General, upon notice - When did his Department install the thirty telephones in premises in Kent Street, Sydney, which were discovered on 13th May to be used for illegal betting? What other premises have been discovered to be so used since the report of Mr. Justice R. L. Taylor was tabled on 23rd May 1963? What directives had been broken in the cases of illegal betting in the respective premises? What directives for the purpose of curbing illegal practices have been issued since Mr. Justice Taylor's report, and when were the directives issued? 1688 KIF 0 0 HULME, Alan Mr Hulme - The answers to the honorable member's questions are as follows - On 27th November 1962. 144 other premises. The purpose for which the services were stated to be required by the applicants were legitimate business activities. Comprehensive directives aimed at preventing the use of Post Office facilities for illegal activities were reissued on 19th June 1963. The position was reviewed recently with State police authorities who indicated that the co-operation extended to them by the Post Office was completely satisfactory. (Question No. 2120.) 1688 1688 JO8 0 0 BARNARD, Lance Mr Barnard asked the Postmaster-General, upon notice - How many existing official post offices in Tasmania are to be replaced within the next two financial years? Where are they located, and on what dates are the replacements scheduled? How many additional post offices have been approved for construction this financial year, and in what areas will they be located? 1688 KIF 0 0 HULME, Alan Mr Hulme - The answers to the honorable member's questions are as follows - No replacements are envisaged in this period. No replacements are envisaged. No new post office building projects have been included in the 1966-67 building works programme for Tasmania. Replacement of the Beaconsfield Post Office was programmed in 1965-66, and construction is proceeding. Alterations to existing post offices at Latrobe, Devonport and Ulverstone will be put in hand during this financial year. (Question No. 2128.) 1689 1689 JZX 0 0 COLLARD, Frederick Mr Collard asked the Postmaster-General, upon notice - Is his Department erecting, or does it intend to erect, a high mast in the vicinity of the Geraldton Post Office? If so, what will be its actual height, and what is its purpose? 1689 KIF 0 0 HULME, Alan Mr Hulme - The answer to the honorable member's questions is as follows - There is no intention within the Department's present plans to erect such a mast near the Geraldton Post Office.