Territory Stories

Debates Day 4 - 20 August 1975

Details:

Title

Debates Day 4 - 20 August 1975

Other title

Parliamentary Record 5

Creator

Northern Territory. Department of the Legislative Assembly

Collection

Debates for 1st Assembly 1974 - 1977; Parliamentary Record; ParliamentNT; 1st Assembly 1974 - 1977

Date

1975-08-20

Notes

Made available by the Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory

Language

English

Subject

Debates

Publisher name

Hansard

Place of publication

Darwin

Format

pages 457 - 498

File type

application/pdf

Use

Attribution International 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)

Copyright owner

Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory

License

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Parent handle

https://hdl.handle.net/10070/221835

Citation address

https://hdl.handle.net/10070/694874

Page content

498 power? I invite attention to recent newspaper reports that the Chinese Navy is now the third most important naval force in the world. I would also invite attention to the Chinese naval exercise which took the Paracel Islands in the last days of the Vietnam conflict, almost unnoticed by the world, by one of the smoothest amphibious operations since the second world war. What I am advocating is a complete review of our defence forces and expenditure on them. I am saying this because people in this part of Australia are in a particularly exposed position if anything happens-and pray God it doesn't. I think that we can live by compromising with persons of other political creeds in the world. I have nothing against the governments in Indo-China, in North Vietnam and Cambodia. They can do what they like; it is their business. I believe that the government in China today has given the people of China a square meal 3 times a day which was a damn sight more than the DEBATES-Wednesday 20 August 1975 governments of China did for 200 years before the collapse of that particular dynasty. Therefore I am not preaching any war, any aggrandisement. I am not in favour of imperialism. I just want to make sure that we look after our own back yard. That is why I am particularly disturbed at the amount of $1.9m which has been allocated in the present Budget to the Darwin Reconstruction Commission to pick up the tabs for capital expenditure on defence projects in this area. Have a look at it gentlemen, it is there for you to see. What will it do? They wouldn't be able to rebuild their wrecked houses on the RAAF base with that sort of money. It is just a laugh. With the unrest happening to our north, our government which says that we have 15 years before Australia thinks in terms of another war is just taking drugs. It is in an unreal world ifit believes that. We should not be ready to fight an aggressive war, but we should be ready to protect ourselves and fight a preventative war at any time. Motion agreed to; the Assembly adjourned.