Bert Kelly, The Bulletin, February 23, 1982, p. 102.

For many years we farmers have been looking anxiously over our shoulders, hoping desperately that the miners and other exporters would join us in the battle to get our trade barriers lowered.

Most of these other exporters knew that the campaign the National Farmers’ Federation was waging was also their fight because they had to carry the same burden of tariff-increased costs and exchange rate increases that have damaged farmers so grievously for years. But usually they explained that, although they knew we were right and they would help us if they had the guts, they thought it was safer for them to keep their heads below the parapet and leave the fighting to the farmers.

I suppose they thought we were too simple to know when we were beaten. “Keep it up, lads. Fight the good fight even if it kills you,” they would cry encouragingly. “We are on your side really, only we don’t want to get offside with the government.”

I suppose it was some comfort to know that these powerful people knew that we were right, even if they were too nervous to say so publicly. But although they admitted the rightness of our cause, they begged us to realise that the Australian Mining Industry Council included some very big companies such as BHP, who had their trotters well in the tariff trough, so the council had to take a very wishy-washy position regarding tariff reductions.

The AMIC is like a sheep before its shearer and is dumb because BHP feels that it has to keep in with the protectionist camp in spite of the stirring statements about the desirability of gradual and general tariff reductions made by its head, Sir James McNeill, and other BHP deities.

However, recently there have been some straws in the tariff wind that seemed significant. One small straw appeared when the head of CRA, Sir Roderick Carnegie, generously supported the publication last year of my book, Economics Made Easy. That I appreciated this goes without saying because it showed that the principles I had been preaching for so long were now recognised as being right after all. I know that this demonstration of support meant more to me than to the world at large; still, it was a significant straw.

Then came a truly gigantic straw. On January 18, five big mining companies — CRA, WMC, MIM, Renison Goldfields and Cliffs Western — presented a powerful case to the Industries Assistance Commission asking for a definite and substantial lowering of trade barriers, which they felt were damaging them as much as us farmers.

They kindly sent me a copy of their submission. It was, of course, a bit hard for me to understand, but when I handed it to Eccles he said that he could not have done better himself — and that, as you know, if the highest form of praise.

A lot of people will be unaware of what a relief it was for us farmers to have some of the really big companies helping us push the large trade barrier barrow we have been pushing wearily for so long. The Gang of Five, as these five mining companies were quickly dubbed, have a combined capital investment in Australia of more than $7000 million and they directly employ 35,000 people, so they are not poor relations.

Too often lately the government seems to be on the side of the big battalions such as GMH and other big car firms. We farmers have known that we have never counted for much in the tariff war because we are, like consumers, little people without great influence and wealth like the big lobby pressure groups. Now we find that we have some really powerful friends on our side and it is a nice feeling after all these years.

However, according to the newspaper reports, it is not only what the Gang of Five said that attracted attention in Canberra; even more important was the status of the men who said it. When such people as Sir Roderick Carnegie, Sir Arvi Parbo, Bruce Watson and Max Roberts think that their IAC evidence is important enough to justify coming to Canberra to present it in person, then the good and great start to pay attention.

The Financial Review on January 20 reported that Malcolm Fraser was so impressed by the attendance of these important company executives at the IAC hearing that he asked for an urgent examination of the Gang of Five’s evidence.

Farmers and economists have bleated for years about the damage protection has done to us and to the country, but no one has cared — not enough to do anything, anyway. Then along comes the Gang of Five and everyone springs to attention. It is indeed a queer world.