Maiden Speech To The House Of Representatives
Supply Bill
March 19, 1953
Mr WHITLAM (Werriwa) [8.36] - Before the House
grants Supply, I too, should like to make some comments on the record of the
Government which proposes to expend that appropriation. The matter of finance
was very dear to the heart of my predecessor, the late Hubert Peter Lazzarini.
At the time he died, he was the father of the Labour party in this Parliament.
There were only two persons in the House who had spent a longer time in it than
he had. One was the Minister for Health (Sir Earle Page), who founded the
Australian Country party and, I am happy to say, looks as if he will survive it.
The other was the late right honourable member for Bradfield, Mr. Hughes, who,
in his last 40 years in this House, had joined and left every party represented
in it except the Australian Country party. Mr. Lazzarini had always belonged to
the Labour party, had always adhered to its principles, and had given strength
to both -----
Mr. McEwen.- No, he was in and out of
the Labour party.
Mr. Pollard.- And the Minister was
in and out of the Australian Country party.
Mr.
SPEAKER.- Order! It is one of the courtesies of this House that an honourable
member shall be heard in complete silence when he is making his maiden speech.
I ask that that courtesy be observed now.
Mr.
WHITLAM. – I thought that the Minister for Commerce and Agriculture (Mr.
McEwen) had returned to the more congenial climate of Disraeli’s day. I
recollect that Disraeli said, on the occasion of his maiden speech, “The
time will come when you shall hear me”. Perhaps I should say, “The
time will come when you may interrupt
me”.
The Minister for Commerce and
Agriculture said that the Government had encouraged the erection of modern homes
for the workers, and that he was proud of its housing record. I concede that
the volume of home construction is as good a criterion as any other with respect
to the financial and economic health of a community, but to disprove the
statement of the Minister, I shall cite some figures from the Quarterly
Bulletin of Building Statistics, No. 19, issued by the Commonwealth
Statistician, for the quarter ended the 30th September, 1952. It
shows that the number of buildings commenced in any quarter reached its peak in
the quarter ended the 30th September 1951, when the construction of
22,000 homes was begun. But in every subsequent quarter, the number has
decreased. In the quarter ended the 30th September last, which is
the last quarter for which the figures are given by the Statistician, the number
had declined to 15,500.
I need not go further than
my own electorate to cite figures showing the decline. In the municipality of
Fairfield, which is largely comprised within my electorate, 636 building permits
were issued for the erection of houses during the first half of 1951. In the
subsequent three half-yearly periods, the number has not exceeded two-thirds of
that total, the figures being 438, 442 and 449, respectively. In the
municipality of Liverpool, which is largely comprised in my electorate, the
number of building permits issued in 1951 was 195, but was only 121 in 1952. In
the shire of Sutherland, which is wholly comprised in my electorate, the council
issued permits for the erection of 2,900 dwelling houses in 1951, and permits
for 2,046 dwelling houses last year. This decline by one-third is marked all
over Australia, and not the least in my electorate. The plain reason why people
are not building houses now is that they cannot afford to do so. Twenty years
ago, during the depression, the first thing on which people retrenched was their
accommodation. Food and clothing had to come first, and people continued to
live in crowded circumstances, because they could not afford better
accommodation. No one thinks that, twenty years ago, the people of Australia
were adequately housed; and nobody thinks that they are adequately housed now.
Can there be any excuse for a reduction of the building rate of dwelling houses
to two-thirds of what it was less than two years
ago?
The Minister for Commerce and Agriculture also
cited the record of the Repatriation Commission. I quote the figures which were
supplied by the Minister for Social Services (Mr. Townley) to the honourable
member for Franklin (Mr. Falkinder) on the 24th February last. It
appears from those figures that there was an allocation of £25,071,000 for
war service homes in the financial year 1950-51, £28,075,000 in the
following year, and £28,000,000 in the current year. No one will assert
that the £1 to-day has the same value as the £1 of two years ago or
even one year ago. Fewer houses will be erected by the War Service Homes
Division out of the allocation this year than were erected last year and in the
preceding year.
Another respect in which the
present Government has hurt housing has been by the increase of the interest
rate. A man who borrows £2,500 – a typical amount – to finance
the construction of a home and agrees to make repayments over a term of 30 years
will pay £2 9s. a week if the interest rate is 3 per cent., £2 16s. if
the rate is 4 per cent., and £3 2s. 6d. if it is 5 per cent. Over the
period of 30 years, if the interest rate is 5 per cent., he will pay twice as
much as the amount he borrows. Housing has also been provided by the housing
commissions of the various States, pursuant to the Commonwealth and State
Housing Agreement. One of the gravest indictments of the present regime is that
it has repudiated the solemn undertaking that it made with the six States in
1945. I shall read clause 6 of the agreement, which appears as a schedule to
the Commonwealth and State Housing Agreement Act 1945 –
The Commonwealth will advance to each State.......the moneys that shall be here
after required for the carrying out of the State’s housing projects as
notified to the Treasurer of the Commonwealth from time to time pursuant to
Clause 7.
Clause 7 reads as follows: -
Each State shall at least fourteen days before the first days of January, March,
June and September in each year notify the Treasurer of the Commonwealth of all
housing projects which it proposes to commence in the ensuing period of three
months and in respect of the dwellings included in that housing project or
projects shall furnish particulars to the Treasurer of the Commonwealth of the
proposed nature and type and estimated cost of each dwelling or group of
dwellings.
I have the New South Wales figures showing the
performance of this Government in the last two years under that solemn
agreement. In the financial year 1951-52 New South Wales notified the Treasurer
of the Commonwealth that it would place contracts under that agreement to a
value of £14,000,000. The Commonwealth granted only £8,514,000. An
amount of £11,123,000 was expended. New South Wales, therefore, had to
find from its own restricted resources the sum of £2,609,000. I quote now
from the eleventh annual report of the New South Wales Housing Commission
concerning the effect of that reduction.
The
report says –
The immediate result was the virtual cessation as from November, 1951, of the
letting of buildings contracts, the cancellation of contracts for homes, the
termination of negotiations for favourable contracts for large numbers of
houses, the drastic curtailment of day labour housing works and other actions
calculated to reduce expenditure. Associated grave disadvantages were the
inability to honour obligations to firms established locally and/or developed in
the interests of the Governments’ housing operations (some from overseas)
with which there existed understanding from some continuity of work to ensure
reasonable prospects of return on finance invested at the Commission’s
instigation, and the disruption caused by the sudden severe limitation of
activities to the programming and planning for the future.
A statement on page 9 of the report reads –
The number of contractors actively engaged on Commission work at 30 June, 1952,
was 497. Prior to the imposition of the financial restrictions in November
1951, the number of contracts so engaged was 549..........
In an annexure to the same report is shown the
number of houses contracted for in the financial year 1950-51 and in the
financial year 1951-52, which shows that the number decreased from 3,512 in
1950-51 to 1,980 in 1951-52. That is not the end of it, because New South Wales
has notified the Treasurer that a sum of £17,190,000 can be expended in the
current financial year on contracts let under the agreement. The Commonwealth
said, first, that it would grant New South Wales a mere £8,800,000, but it
later repented to some degree and increased that sum by £3,300,000, making
a total of £12,100,000 to be expended on the erection of houses. That
amount was only 70 per cent. of the amount the Commonwealth was due to pay under
the agreement.
There is no question in my mind that
the Commonwealth has broken and repudiated that agreement. It has defaulted on
it, and there is no doubt that New South Wales and the other States could seek a
declaration from the High Court that the agreement is binding on the
Commonwealth, and that the Commonwealth has broken
it.
That is not the only agreement that the
Government has broken. Another agreement that it has broken is the Financial
Agreement of 1927, which is enshrined, in its present form, in the schedule to
the schedule to the Financial Agreement Act 1944. A great deal of mystery
surrounds the operations of the Australian Loan Council, because it meets in
secret. No communiqués are issued after its meetings. Its meeting are
like political party meetings. One has to read the press to find out what goes
on at them. Clause 3 (8.) of the Financial Agreement reads –
The Commonwealth and each State will from time to time .....submit to the Loan
Council a programme setting forth the amount it desires to raise by loans during
each financial year.....
Sub-clause (9.) of the same clause states –
If the Loan Council decides that the total amount of the loan programme for the
year cannot be borrowed at reasonable rates and conditions it shall decide the
amount to be borrowed during the year.....
Sub-clause (15.) states –
A decision of the Loan Council in respect of a matter which the Loan Council is
by this Agreement empowered to decide shall be final and binding on all parties
to this Agreement.
The agreement, therefore, is binding not only on
the States, but also on the Commonwealth. Clause 4 of the agreement reads
–
.......The Commonwealth, shall.......arrange for all borrowings for or on behalf
of the Commonwealth or any State...................
It is a common impression that the Commonwealth
should run the Australian Loan Council. It may, in fact, run it but that was
not the intention of the States and the Commonwealth when the agreement was made
in 1927, nor was it the intention of the citizens of the States and the
Commonwealth who, for once in their lives, voted affirmatively in a referendum,
and approved the agreement. The fact is that the Commonwealth and the States
jointly decide how much money should be raised, whether it is possible to raise
that amount on the open market, and what the interest rate shall be. The
present regime has flouted the decisions of the Australian Loan Council. It
appears that the Loan Council voted, by a majority consisting of the six States,
three of which at that time were under Labour governments, two under Liberal
governments, and one under a Country party government, for the raising of loans
amounting to £247,500,000, during the current financial year. The States
decided that it was necessary and possible to raise that amount, but the
Commonwealth representatives on the council said in effect, “You can vote
as you like. We shall disobey the decision of the council”. That is a
flaunting of the Constitution. The Commonwealth decided that the loan moneys to
be raised should amount to about £185,000,000. In this financial year New
South Wales will be allowed only £51,000,000 out of that sum. That appears
to be a great amount, but in the previous financial year the Loan Council voted,
and the Commonwealth approved, an amount of £64,000,000 for New South
Wales. In order to obtain a complete picture of the situation one has to
realise that in that second year there was available £13,000,000, or 20 per
cent., less than was available in the previous year. The Minister for Commerce
and Agriculture said that in this financial year the Commonwealth was making
available to the States £125,000,000 for their public works programmes. He
did not state that in the previous year it made £153,000,000 available to
the States. It is impossible for a State to budget adequately and plan for
works that will keep people engaged in useful employment, if the amount of money
available is to fluctuate so much. We all know it has varied in value,
consistently downwards. However, the amount, on its face value, has fluctuated
now up and now down. If it was right for the Commonwealth this year to make
available £125,000,000 for State public works it was foolish of it to make
available £153,000,000 the previous year. There has been no consistency in
its policy. The consequence of these reductions in public works has been that
the people of New South Wales are not adequately housed, and have not the number
of public buildings to which they are entitled.
I
consider that I can speak with authority on that subject, because I represent an
electorate that has grown very rapidly. There is only one other electorate more
populous than mine, and it is represented by the right honourable member for La
Trobe (Mr. Casey). I hope that I shall not be guilty of vanity if I hazard the
opinion that the number of electors of the Werriwa division who wish me to
represent them here exceeds the number of electors in the La Trobe division who
wish the right honourable gentleman to represent them. The figures are more
impressive when one realises that at the re-distribution of electoral boundaries
in 1948 the number on the rolls in Werriwa was 38,000. At the end of 1949 it
was 46,000 and at the end of last year it was about 57,500. Those figures show
an astonishing growth of population. The electors of Werriwa are mostly people
from the inner city area who have moved to the periphery of the city, where they
had hoped to be able to erect homes in more pleasant, congenial, and spacious
surroundings. As a result of lack of loan moneys they are without homes. Many
of them are still living in the garages that they built as a temporary measure.
They are without hospital and high school facilities. I think it can be said
truthfully that those outer suburbs have the highest birth-rate in the State.
Three 250-bed hospitals were planned at Fairfield, Liverpool, and Sutherland in
my electorate, but the contracts have been cancelled. No one in public life
would venture to say that any of these hospitals is other than a necessity but
the construction of each has had to be delayed because of the 20 per cent. cut
in the amount of money made available to New South Wales for works in the
present financial year. No high schools are being erected in the electorate,
and as a consequence children have to undergo the tedium and hazards of up to 20
miles travel each way to school on five days a week.
The Commonwealth has not restricted only the
activities of the States. It has also restricted those of its own activities
that it regards as non-productive, inflationary or unnecessary. I believe that
my electorate has the most unhappy distinction of having more unsatisfied
telephone applications than any other electorate. Brazenly displayed on the
sixth floor of the General Post Office building in Sydney is a list of telephone
exchanges with the number of unsatisfied applicants shown against the name of
each exchange. The number shown against the Werriwa exchanges is 2,500. That
is not the total number of people in the electorate who are dissatisfied because
of the lack of telephones. It represents businesses and families, and there
must be many more thousands of people who are without telephones. It probably
does not make those people feel much happier to think that money can be found
for television but not for the provision of telephones. I can take any
honourable member to at least six unfinished telephone exchanges which have
remained in that state of tardy construction to which the Prime Minister
referred yesterday, for at least three years.
The
restriction of new building affects employment most markedly. I need not cite
figures from official statistics to show that in the last eighteen months
unemployment has risen. Any Monday morning 300 people can be seen queuing up
for unemployment benefit outside the Commonwealth Employment Office at
Liverpool, and the same number outside the Commonwealth Employment Office at
Sutherland in my electorate for the first time since the right honourable
gentleman was last Prime Minister.
I quote from the
Monthly Bulletin of Employment Statistics, No. 134, issued in January
last by the Commonwealth Statistician, which shows that civilian employment in
Australia reached its peak in November, 1951, when 2,643,000 people were
employed, and in January last the number had dropped to 2,522,000. Each
intervening month shows a decline. The total decline in those fifteen or
sixteen months was 121,000, and in that time at least 30,000 able-bodied men had
come into the country from abroad, and at least the same number of able-bodied
youths had left school and were seeking jobs. It may be that that was
completely fortuitous and inevitable, but I shall quote a statement made by the
Treasurer in the Marcus Clark case in November, 1951, at the time when
employment reached its peak. In justifying the Defence Preparations (Capital
Issues) Regulations to the High Court the right honourable gentleman said that
it was necessary that we should be ready for mobilisation at the end of 1953,
and for that purpose it was essential that the number of persons employed in the
defence forces should be increased by 130,000 and that the number of persons in
defence employment should be increased by 158,000. At page 20 of the demurrer
book in that case the Treasurer is reported to have said –
If, as in 1939, there had been available currently
unused economic resources and manpower, substantial defence preparations would
have been carried out before the necessity arose to withdraw resources and
man-power from present employment. No such unused resources or man-power,
however are at present available. On the contrary, at the present time
practically all resources of man-power, materials, plant, buildings, and
equipment are being fully used, or employed. Indeed, many types of man-power
and materials are extremely scarce by comparison with the current demand for
them.
At 30th June, 1951, the total
number of persons receiving unemployment benefits in Australia was 449. This
position may be contrasted with June, 1939, when there were 298,000 unemployed
in Australia.
The right honourable gentleman then
described the various methods by which the same happy result could again by
achieved. He said that it might be brought about by legal compulsions, which
would be highly disturbing, by giving higher prices and wages, which would be
inflationary, or by limiting and reducing various economic activities of the
nation, particularly those related to the provision and sale of civilian goods.
The last method was the one that he chose. At page 32 he is reported to have
said –
These objectives are being sought by
taxation of individual incomes directed to reduction of consumer demand, by
sales tax and excise taxation for the same purpose, and also by increased
taxation upon companies, thereby curtailing further investment and reducing
consumers’ income. Public expenditure upon less essential public works is
also being curtailed.
One can read between the
lines and learn that hospitals, schools, telephones and all those things which
may make for better communications or better living and a better trained
population, are all regarded as unnecessary. Honourable members of the
Opposition believe that good communications, a trained population and adequate
hospital facilities are defence assets in the long run, and they do not agree
that they are merely State matters which are to be squeezed out by other matters
considered to be more important.
Now I shall answer
the rhetorical questions of the Minister, who has just left the chamber to make
way for another Minister, who, like Hansard takes his quarter hourly
stint. Australians will respond to a national emergency frankly disclosed, and
repudiate one which is used as a smoke-screen. The decline in popularity of the
Government parties has been made obvious in every election that has been held
under adult suffrage in Australia in the last year, whether it has been a
federal, State or a municipal election. There have been two exceptions, one in
the electorate of Bradfield, where the victory was pyrrhic, if every a victory
was such, and the other was in South Australia, where an extraordinary position
arose in which one party won the general elections by gaining 21 of the 22 seats
it contested with a total of 162,000 votes, and the other party lost the general
elections and gained fourteen seats of the 22 it contested with a total of
162,000 votes. At the recent by-election in my own electorate, 6,000 people who
voted for the Liberal party eighteen months before changed their minds and voted
Labour. One of the Liberal members of the Legislative Assembly of New South
Wales, who then represented part of my electorate, advertised congratulations
upon my victory, in which he said –
The
increased majority on this occasion registers a positive protest against the
financial policy of the Menzies-Fadden
Government.
The decline in popularity of the
Government is not due merely to the evaporation of their financial reserves, to
the defection of the mercenaries who helped them on the last occasion or to the
retrenchment of many of their paid organizers. It is due to the disillusion and
frustration of thousands of Australians, particularly young ones who want to
raise families under decent Australian and British conditions. It is clear that
the people of Australia want a better deal. It is no less clear that they
deserve a better deal.
Mr. OPPERMAN (Corio) [9.6].-
I take this opportunity of congratulating the honourable member for Werriwa (Mr.
Whitlam) on his maiden speech. It is obvious that his legal training has
afforded him a clarity of thought and expression which is admirable. It is to
be hoped that the principles of logic and common sense, which he has obviously
developed, will always be applied to his contributions in this House, and it is
also to be hoped that political considerations that must arise will not divert
him from the path of reason and fair-mindedness. Honourable members listen to
his speech with great attention, but I am afraid that the next time the he
speaks he will not conclude without some interjection upon the contentious
points that he may raise. He has shown a tendency to parochialize the debate by
citing housing figures which are obviously State figures from the districts of
Fairfield and Liverpool. Fairfield has been the centre of a special housing
effort, and a reduction of building applications in that area is a sad reflex of
the tragic waste for which the New South Wales Government has been responsible
and of its failure to provide housing for the people.
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