Australia's New Frontiers

MR. KENT: I am delighted to present to you today, His Excellency David O. Hay, D.S.O., M.B.E., High Commissioner for Australia in Canada.

We are delighted to welcome to the Empire Club, this distinguished representative of our sister nation in the Commonwealth and are delighted to break bread with him and congratulate Australia on the wonderful welcome its people have extended to Her Majesty, who is the Queen of both of our nations.

During the First Great War, I spent sometime as a junior officer in the British Army under General Allenby in Palestine and I shall never forget the tremendous courage and power of the Australian forces, particularly its Cavalry. They were a most important part of that campaign. Of course, you are all familiar with the story of the Aussies in the Anzac forces in the last war.

Mr. Hay served in the Australian Infantry during World War II. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order, made a member of the Order of the British Empire and was wounded in action. Since then he has become a career officer in the diplomatic service serving in various countries. He has twice been a delegate to the General Assembly of the United Nations, has been Australian representative on SEATO Council and has attended the Imperial Defence College in London. He is accompanied in Canada by his wife and one son. Another son is at school in Australia. He will now address us on the subject: "Australia's New Frontiers."

MR. HAY: For an Australian representative adressing a Club of this name, the timing could scarcely have been happier, because at this time Her Majesty the Queen, accompanied by Prince Philip, is in the midst of a triumphal tour of Australia. I think it is still true that those members of the Commonwealth who share the ties of loyalty to the Throne are closer to one another within the great family of the Commonwealth than those who have chosen to become republics and acknowledge the Queen not as their sovereign but as a symbolic Head of the Commonwealth of Nations. There has never been doubt of Australia's position in this matter. As Mr. Menzies, the Prime Minister of Australia, has put it: "We in Australia are Queen's men." This feeling is reflected in the spontaneous warmth and enthusiasm with which the Queen is being greeted wherever she goes during her present tour.

This same tie binds us in a special brotherhood with Canada. It reinforces the historical links which bring our two countries together-links of common history and tradition, forms of government, respect for the law, nonpolitical civil service, and regard for the rights of all citizens. These links have in turn been fortified by the fact that Australia and Canada have shared great common enterprises in times of war and in peace. One of the happiest recollections of my many trips across Canada, since I have been representative of Australia in this country, has been the number of occasions when Canadians have told me of the friendships made with Australian airmen who were here in thousands as part of the Empire Air Training Scheme during the Second World War. I recall, too, many affectionate stories told of the relationship between Canadian and Australian forces in the First World War. There was, it seems, a spirit of competition between our two Armies, competition in the military sense in winning distinction on the field of battle. That competition bred a comradeship which still persists. It was certainly thought fitting by Australians in Korea not so long ago that Australians and Canadians should fight together as members of the British Commonwealth Force which served under the United Nations flag in Korea.

I chose the words "New Frontiers" as part of the title of this address not because I was transplanting to Australia a phrase that is essentially of this continent, but because I thought the words accurately reflect the sense of change, adventure, and challenge which is current in Australia. For we are in a period of discovery which is going to do away with some of the frontiers that have tended to confine us to certain relatively small areas within our great island continent and which might have prevented us from fully occupying its vast land spaces. It is a period of discovery of resources which were not guessed at as little as twenty years ago-either new resources altogether, such as uranium and bauxite, or else new deposits of resources which we had always exploited in a limited degree but which we did not realize we had in quantity. Copper is one example. Iron ore is another. Until 1960, the total of high-grade iron ore in Australia was thought to be no more than 350 million tons. Indeed our resources were so small that in 1938 the Government of the day banned all export of iron ore. It was only in 1960 that the law was relaxed to the extent of allowing export of half of any new discovery of iron ore. By 1961 it was discovered that there were no less than 2,000 million tons of iron ore in the Pilbara district of Western Australia. And further investigation since that time has indicated that those deposits amount to 600 million tons of high-grade iron ore and 5,000 million tons slightly lower grade iron ore.

You are of course aware of the tremendous efforts that are being made in the discovery of oil in Australia. These efforts have, in the last year, been attended with some success, and in the Moonie oil field, not far from Brisbane, Queensland, some 13 successful wells have been drilled. However, this does not mean that Australia is a producer of oil in significant commercial quantities and much remains to be done before we are. But this is a vastly different picture than the one which an Australian High Commissioner would have been able to paint to this audience as little as ten years ago. These great new discoveries are clearly important in adding strength to Australia's economy. But they are also important in forcing back the frontiers of climate which have confined our main areas of settlement to the coastline. For these new discoveries have, by and large, taken place in the less settled parts of Australia. Many of them are in the tropical north. Others, notably the iron ore resources, have taken place in sparsely settled areas of Western Australia.

These discoveries will tend to open up new areas of Australia to more intense settlement. As is clear from Canadian experience in building up communities in areas in the north of this country which were thought to be inhospitable, once the incentive is there, then communities can become established and thrive. Facilities for living a normal life, such as in our case air conditioning, will soon be provided.

Occupation of our island continent, roughly the size of Canada, is a fundamental object of policy. As yet it is relatively sparsely settled. Only in the temperate zones of the coastal areas is there any substantial density of settlement. There has always been a vast area in the centre of Australia, and in the north, which, for climatic reasons, seemed bound to remain sparsely populated. These open spaces must be attractive to some of the overcrowded, highly populated countries of Asia, particularly if governments arise which are unfriendly to Australia and are dominated by an urge to expand. It is basic Australian policy that our continent should be occupied without delay by people of our own choosing. This is why we are tremendously encouraged by this frontier-breaching effect, even though it is of secondary importance to the economic effect, of our period of resource discovery.

Indeed this sound economic reason for population movement has given impetus to groups in Australia who feel that now is the time to bring science to bear on the root cause of our underpopulated centre, the uneven distribution of our water resources. Rainfall is only abundant in the coastal areas. Even here the fast flowing rivers, rising in our coastal mountain ranges, tend to drain off the greater part of that rainfall straight into the sea. Is there not some way whereby the waters can be drained not into the sea, but into the centre of Australia? Alternatively, or additionally, is there not some way by which sea water can be economically converted and piped into the central part of Australia? Diversion of coastal rivers has been suggested many times before, but it was thought to be a rather expensive and visionary idea. However, since the war, it has proved to be entirely practical, if, of course, extremely expensive. The proof is to be seen in the large-scale engineering project which is being executed by a government authority in the Snowy Mountains area in the southeast corner of Australia. This scheme had its origin in the needs to produce reserves of electric power for the growing industries of the States of New South Wales and Victoria and to increase the amount of water available for irrigation from the Murray and Murrumbidgee Rivers.

Power is being produced by impounding water from coastal flowing rivers at a high level, diverting it by means of tunnels through a series of underground generating stations. The water thus diverted, having produced electricity, flows out into rivers which water the inland. It can be used for irrigation. It is not lost to the sea. This is a costly project, but its success suggests that it might be repeated on a smaller scale elsewhere in the country.

I spoke of the alternative possibility of using salt water as a means of overcoming the uneven distribution of Australia's water resources. Just the other day one of Australia's leading scientists, Sir Marc Oliphant, said that nuclear power would revolutionize Australia's water resources. Sir Marc, who is Director of the School of Research in Physical Sciences at the Australian National University in Canberra, said that the latest information indicated that a nuclear power plant costing perhaps one billion dollars could convert one billion gallons of sea water into fresh water every day, which was more than enough, as an example, for the complete needs of Sydney and Melbourne, each of which has a population of some two million persons. Sir Marc Oliphant went on to say that at the same time such a plant would produce more than enough power to pump water into reservoirs miles from the sea and would yield large quantities of chemical by-products. Sir Marc added that he would not be surprised if nuclear power was being used in Australia in the foreseeable future to create huge reservoirs filled with fresh water processed from the sea. And so it is no longer just visionary to think of our empty spaces being eventually much more heavily settled than they are now.

I have spoken so far of developments within Australia. The story of Australia's new frontiers would not be complete without a brief word on two important external developments. The first of these is the realization in terms of political and economic, as well as military, facts that Australia's destiny is closely linked with the destinies of the nations of the Asian continent, old and new. This has been brought to our attention in many ways. For the younger generation of Australians, the point is best illustrated by the fact that at any one time in Australian schools and universities there are no less than ten thousand students from Asia taking part either as private students or as Colombo Plan students in the academic and scholastic life of our country. The experience of this younger generation is very different to that of their parents. Our younger generation is entirely conscious of our Asian destiny, because Asia has come to Australia.

The same thought, for different reasons, is very much in the minds of our business community in Australia. More than half of the world's population of 3,000 million lives in Asia. Asia's population will increase by perhaps 500 to 600 million in the next two decades. The potential significance of this for Australia in economic terms can be illustrated when I say that Japan is now displacing Britain as our greatest single market. This has come about because of the rapid rise in the wealth and economic growth of Japan. The prospects of other countries in Asia breaking through in a similar way in the foreseeable future are somewhat less certain. True, China has provided a substantial market for our wheat and also for our wool in the last two or three years.

But the new countries of Asia, with their tremendously increasing populations, are, for the most part, at a very low standard of wealth and development. The sorts of products on which they would most wish to spend their limited funds available for imports are not necessarily those which Australia produces for export in great quantity. But there will be some gains, and I think we can legitimately expect to share in providing the vital capital goods for the industrial development of these new nations. Our exporters are certainly active in seeking such a share. Essentially I am describing a long-term trend and not a short-term panacea. Certainly we cannot look immediately to Asia to provide alternative outlets to compensate for export losses to be faced if Britain's next attempt to enter the European Common Market is more successful than her recent one.

The second development arises from the first. We have in fact a new frontier. For the first time, since last October, we share a physical land frontier with an Asian countryIndonesia. This frontier lies in the middle of the island of New Guinea, a large island to the north of Australia. There is no need to remind you that the western half of that island will, on 1st May next, pass from the control of the United Nations to the control of Indonesia, subject only to the commitment of the Indonesian Government to eventually giving to the people of West New Guinea an opportunity to determine for themselves whether they shall become forever part of Indonesia or whether they wish to have some other future political alignment. This is a significant event for us in Australia, and not only because we have the responsibility for the eastern half of the island of New Guinea. Our Government is determined to live in friendship with Indonesia, as with the other nations of Asia, and hopes that the commitments undertaken by Indonesia to the United Nations, and her commitments to countries such as Australia, will be duly observed.

We are on the edge of Asia, geographically. Our new frontier lies with Asia. It has always done so, but it is only in recent years that we have become conscious of that fact. It means that we are more and more sensitive to developments of a political nature in Asia. We have to have regard to our own security, primarily by seeing that our country is developed and occupied and populated in the way that I have been talking about earlier in this address, but also by ensuring that we contribute with our allies and friends, such as Britain, Canada, and the United States, to the defensive needs of the area.

THANKS OF THE MEETING were expressed by Dr. Z. S. Phimister.