A Modest Member of Parliament [Bert Kelly],
“… and then you can use those lovely long words,”
The Australian Financial Review, November 18, 1977, p. 3.

When I was passed over on the last occasion a Ministry was formed, Mavis decided that I should keep a book of quotations culled from the sayings of the good and the great. She explained:

You’ve got to do something different. If you always have this book handy you can quickly quote from it at meetings and everyone would think it was your work.

And you could use lovely long words instead of those silly little short ones you use now.

So she bought me a fine vellum volume with an embossed leather cover and in it I have been jotting down the words of wisdom that fall from the lips of the wise ones.

It has been a big help to your Modest Member, but sometimes the utterances of my superiors do not seem to mesh together as you would expect and this makes me confused.

It goes without saying that I pay particular attention to everything that the Prime Minister says and if I sometimes get a little careless and behind with my work, Mavis steps in and helps by laying all the Prime Minister’s speeches out on the dining room table with the best parts ringed in purple.

When the Prime Minister made a rousing speech earlier this year, Mavis pounced on it and soon had this fine quotation singled out for my attention:

People and governments have fed off one another’s weaknesses.

People have wanted more at no cost; governments have sought popularity through promises. These two weaknesses pose a great threat to democracy.

If they are to be overcome people must develop a greater awareness of the things that the government can and cannot do.

People must question their own demands on government. Governments must foster this awareness and tell the truth more plainly.

When Governments promise any programs, they must make it plain that all the people of Australia must pay. The day of the cargo cult must be banished.

When I read this I got excited and took it round to Eccles. I said proudly:

Look Eccles, the cargo cult is going to be banished. People are going to stop asking the government for things like subsidies and tariff protection and so on. A new day has dawned.

But Eccles has a nasty, cynical attitude towards politicians and their pronouncements. He said cautiously:

We will wait and see. We all know the tariff is a subsidy paid by exporters but this is not generally admitted.

Perhaps the Prime Minister doesn’t know about the weight of the tariff burden. He often doesn’t seem to.

Just when I was getting despondent about this I found a quotation from another of the good and great, admittedly from one on a slightly lower plane than the PM but most authoritative all the same.

It was in a speech made by Mr W. Henderson, the director-general of the Associated Chamber of Manufacturers of Australian and I quote him:

I fully accept the IAC argument that the consumer must pay for tariff protection. There is no question about this. I will also accept the arithmetic that the cost is around $4,300 million annually.

So Mr Henderson admits that there is a tariff burden and has even agreed about the size of it. But he is wrong when he says it is carried by the consumer. It isn’t.

Consumers can pass the $4,300 million tariff burden along to other groups further down the production line because wages are tied to the cost of living, so the wage earners do not pay their share of the $4,300 million.

And tariffs, too, used to be almost automatically increased as costs rose, so secondary industry has not been paying its share.

I refer to a quotation from the Brigden report, which is recognised as the most authoritative source of wisdom on this subject:

One of the main effects of the tariff is the reduce the income received in the exporting industries.

Part of this loss of income reflected the higher real cost of producing goods locally rather than importing them, but part also was the redistribution of income in favour of the groups who, with the aid of the tariff, were able to raise prices and were against exporters.

To go back to the banishment of the cargo cult. Surely it must be recognised by all thinking people that there is indeed no such thing as a free feed, which I presume is what the PM had in mind.

But there seems to be a great difference between precept and practice where tariffs are concerned.