Speeches by Patrick White

SPEECHES

Margaret Preston, Australian Legend No. 3 (1957)

Novels | Plays | Short Stories | Memoir | Screenplay | Essays | Music | Poems | Letters | Speeches | Interviews | Other works| Unpublished works

By the late 1980s, “Patrick White unleashing a torrent of invective at Event X” was an Australian stereotype as infamous as a meat pie. But until his 60th birthday, White only gave one public speech (as far as the record can tell). Happily, the texts of most of the remaining 28 speeches have been preserved and published in the collections released shortly after the author’s death.

I would always be interested to hear about any I’ve missed.

  1. Miles Franklin acceptance speech (1958)

Acceptance speech for the Miles Franklin Award win for Voss; the first time in his life PW had to speak in public (outside of a school/military construct). The award was presented by Robert Menzies, the Prime Minister, and H.V. Evatt, the Leader of the Opposition (can you imagine!). Speech not recorded, beyond some quotes in the newspaper.

  1. The Living Living-Room (1972)

18 June 1972. Alongside Harry M. Miller, Jack Mundey, and Vincent Serventy, PW spoke at Centennial Park at a rally opposing the building of a stadium on the park, which would have greatly reduced open space for the people of inner Sydney (including PW himself).

Published in Patrick White Speaks.

  1. Mad Hatter’s Party (1972)

18 June 1972. From the above rally, PW led a march to the Sydney Town Hall, solidifying himself as a supporter of environmentalism and the right for people to live in peace. Here he spoke alongside Neville Wran, Jack Mundey, and Kylie Tennant. The combined effect of these two rallies was to shift PW’s image from that of a well-known recluse to a vocal advocate. This would intensify significantly after Gough Whitlam’s dismissal in November 1975. 

Published in Patrick White Speaks.

  1. Civilisation, Money and Concrete (1973)

August 1973. PW spoke against the destruction of heritage homes in Victoria Street, Kings Cross, at a meeting of both sides – developers and activists.

“Civilisation is not a matter of money and concrete… Civilisation, as I see it, depends on spirit – human beings – human values.”

Published in Patrick White Speaks.

  1. Australia Day Awards for 1973 (1974)

Speech given at the Australian Of The Year 1973 awards, 25/1/1974, Melbourne. In the presence of the Lord Mayor and the Victorian Premier and Governor. It wasn’t the right audience for such a speech, as he criticised Australian culture and what white people had done to Indigenous Australians, while supporting notable radicals such as Manning Clark, Barry Humphries, and Jack Mundey. Referenced in the SMH 26/1/1974.

Published in Patrick White Speaks.

  1. Pro-Whitlam rally (1974)

Sydney Opera House, 13 May 1974. PM Gough Whitlam had to call an election due to the Liberals refusing to give him supply (an unheard-of act for a legitimate government). Whitlam spoke too. He won the election. Judith Wright, John Bell, and David Williamson were there. Cited in SMH 14/5/1974
First published in Meanjin 33.2 (Winter 1974). Published in Patrick White Speaks.

  1. Grenfell’s Henry Lawson Festival opening (1974)

June 1974. PW related to the famous Australian writer Henry Lawson, as the latter had himself “tried to escape” to other countries but found himself circling back to Australia. He also was a creative born too soon before the development of a truly Australian literature.

Published in Patrick White Speaks.

  1. Capitol Theatre (1975)

28/11/1975. Two weeks after the Prime Minister’s shocking dismissal at the hands of the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, artists gathered to call for him to be reinstated at the upcoming election. They lost.

The contents of the speech have not been completely published, but it was quoted at length in SMH 29/11/1975: “Patrick White sees ‘sinister’ overtones”:

“The events of November 11 reminded me of events in other countries in recent times. There was no use of tanks and troops but there are still sinister overtones in the event in the sense that we are moving away from democracy…Arts have flourished in Australia as never before under Labor – if the Liberals came to power I am afraid that we would slip back to those Philistine days that we had in their previous rules… Artists have an instinctive feeling for democracy – only in a true democracy is art free to survive and flourish. When democracy is weakened, art is weakened… Our central philosophy is this: the arts are not a luxury for the privileged elite. They belong to the whole community. They belong to the whole world.”

9. Kerr and the Consequences (1976)

11 November 1976 at a rally for constitutional change at the Sydney Town Hall, by the Citizens for Democracy group. Here, PW – like the rest of the group – called for an Australian republic. (This event caused political scrutiny for Manning Clark, who was attacked by the Liberals for being a socialist on account of his no-holds-barred view of Australian history). Donald Horne and Frank Hardy were in attendance too. Published in Patrick White Speaks.

John Halfpenny and Donald Horne with White, Sydney Town Hall, 1976
  1. Citizens for Democracy (1977)

7 & 8 March 1977 – PW spoke in Brisbane (at UQ) and Sydney (Town Hall), as part of a series of nationwide protests timed with Queen Elizabeth II’s tour of Australia. He talked about his willingness to change his views on issues, and the disgrace of the dismissal. PW also talked about valuing ties to Britain and being respectful to the Monarch but acknowledging that Australians have to come together, peacefully, for “a democratic Australian republic.” Published in Patrick White Speaks and Selected Writings.

  1. A Noble Pair (1978)

30 Jan 1978, at Whitlam’s farewell party as Leader of the Labor Party (having lost the 1977 election), PW spoke after Judith Wright and before Manning Clark, in front of a huge crowd in Canberra, which included Gough and Margaret Whitlam. The speech generated some controversy when broadcast on ABC Radio due to PW’s descriptions of placid, plain Australia in the early days of his return after the War, and for his use of shocking words such as “bullshit”. It doesn’t help that he seems to have been misquoted as calling Australia a “dung-coloured scene”, when in reality he said “dun”!

Hubber & Smith list this speech as happening on 13 Jan and being broadcast on ABC Radio on the 14th, but this is sadly inaccurate. The speech was given on 30 Jan, and one assumes it was broadcast that same week.

Published in Patrick White Speaks.

  1. Speech for launch of Manning Clark’s History of Australia Volume IV (1978)

6 March 1978. Although the speech doesn’t survive, SMH (7/3) notes PW said that Australia has become increasingly abhorrent to men of good will, and that the search for truth is easiest for the novelist. Gough Whitlam, Xavier Herbert, and Thomas Keneally were there.

“The historian on the other hand is restrained by facts. He must ride the actual waves of history, eyes fixed on the distant shores – a kind of super-surfie who cannot afford to be dumped… The inhabitants of this plot of earth may even be taught to see and reason for themselves instead of exulting mindlessness and letting themselves be led by the nose.”

As he says of Clark’s book, “The mirror cannot lie, only warn and sometimes humble”. In his final years, PW grew frustrated by Clark’s engagement with the Bicentennial of 1988, and tried to shake him as a friend. But Clark didn’t give up, and was there to eulogise PW in writing after the latter’s death in 1990.

  1. The Reading Sickness, aka Libraries for Living (1980)

19/9/1980. Speech given in the Mitchell wing of the State Library of New South Wales to open Australian Library Week. PW praised libraries, and gave advice to librarians on how to keep people reading in the media age while also being true to their charges. Published in Patrick White Speaks.

  1. Truth and Fiction (1980)

10/10/1980. Speech given at the National Book Council Australian Book Week Literary Awards Dinner, Melbourne. Excerpts printed in The Age (as “Self-Portrait of an Intensely Political Writer”) and Sydney Morning Herald next day, and then in ALS 10 (1981). The speech is nominally about the prize winners but is also a general reflection on the difference between searching for truth and fiction in writing. Published in Selected Writings and Patrick White Speaks.

  1. And if a Button is Pressed (1981)

21/10/1981. Keynote speech given in Melbourne for the inaugural meeting of People for Nuclear Disarmament. This would be one of the defining causes of PW’s final decade. Published in Patrick White Speaks.

  1. Speech during the curtain call of Signal Driver opening night (1982)

5/3/1982. Not collected. The Sydney Morning Herald notes that PW self-deprecatingly called himself a “septuagenarian playwright working with young people”.

  1. A Letter to Humanity (1982)

Palm Sunday (4/4/1982). PW spoke at a march through Sydney on a rainy day, opposing mining uranium and nuclear weapons. What had been an occasional element of his diatribes in previous years now became a central focus, and he would give variants on this speech throughout the 1980s.

Published in Patrick White Speaks.

  1. Australians in a Nuclear War (1983)

31/5/1983. At the height of his anti-nuclear rage, PW delivered this speech which became one of his best known. It was played repeatedly on ABC Radio and released on a cassette tape entitled “Nuclear War”, alongside a piece featuring – in his words – “a doctor who carries on about sex education”.

In response to this speech, writer and professor Sean Regan wrote a fiery letter to the SMH (19/6) in which he said that PW “cannot claim any specific expertise” on these matters and “nearly everything he has said is unadulterated twaddle”. Union leader Jack Mundey responded (26/6) to say that White’s morality clearly trumped that of Mr Regan and many world leaders.

The speech was excerpted in The Age 1/6/1983 (“Finding the Faith to Save the World”). Collected in The Best of the Science Show (Nelson Press, 1983) and Australians and Nuclear War (Australian National University Press, 1983). Published in Patrick White Speaks

  1. Greece – My Other Country (1983)

October 1983. PW was invited by the Greek Government to celebrate their return to democracy, and it occasioned his last trip to Europe. He wrote a speech which, unsurprisingly, returned to his pet subject of nuclear war. However in the excitement of the event, the speech was never given. PW kept his draft, which was published in Patrick White Speaks.

  1. A New Constitution (1983)

11/11/1983. In a new Labor era, the Citizens for Democracy planned a series of “People’s Conventions” to engage ideologically with the colonisation of Australia, in the lead-up to the country’s much-vaunted Bicentenary. PW was nominated as Republican of the Year, and spoke at an event alongside Gareth Evans and the Deputy Prime Minister.

Published in Patrick White Speaks.

  1. From Wigan to Wagga (1984)

March 1984. Speech given at the Australian National University in Canberra, helping to launch the book Australians and Nuclear War in which his speech of the same title from 1983 was featured.

Published in Patrick White Speaks

  1. In This World of Hypocrisy and Cynicism (1984)

2/8/1984. PW was asked to give the final lecture in a series at La Trobe University Melbourne entitled “The Search for an Alternative to Futility”. PW discusses his feelings of being an outsider, and his favourite issues, including nuclear weapons, Aboriginal rights, and the corruption of politics. This speech marked a final political turning point for PW. Up until the 1960s, he had been a staunchly Liberal (that is, Conservative) voter. From around 1969, PW became a solid Labor supporter throughout the years of Gough Whitlam and Bill Hayden. He had endorsed the Labor party at the 1983 election, where Bob Hawke (pictured left) rose to victory and led to 14 years of Labor leadership in Australia. But, although Hawke was a passionate believer in some social causes, he was ultimately a centrist and a born negotiator, and PW saw him as a sell-out. From here until the end of his life, PW would be suspicious of the major Australian parties, and happy to speak out about this. On the 3rd of August, the SMH reported PW having said “Hawkie, screaming from under his cockatoo hairdo the platitudes he has got by heart”. Hawke replied later in the month (23/8), dismissing PW’s attention-grabbing ways.

Published in Patrick White Speaks.

  1. Hiroshima Day (1984)

9/8/1984. A speech given at Sydney Town Hall alongside Bob Brown. This was another of his anti-nuclear diatribes, and very well-received by those in attendance.

Published in Patrick White Speaks.

  1. Friends of Wolli Creek rally speech (1984)

This speech was delivered in October 1984 in absentia. Stored in the National Library of Australia archives. The Friends of Wolli Creek routinely held social protests for various causes.

  1. Peace and Other Matters (1984)

2/11/1984. PW made his last international trip in 1984 to New Zealand, after being invited by the Government to present the Media Peace Prizes to journalists at the Auckland War Memorial.

Published in Patrick White Speaks.

  1. Monsterail (1986)

10/5/1986. In late 1985, the Government of NSW announced the building of a monorail through the Sydney CBD. Local do-gooders felt this was another example of overdevelopment, incompetent expense, and unnecessary congestion. Many protests were held against the monorail, and PW joined one in May 1986 to speak against the so-called “Monsterrail”.

The monorail opened in July 1988 but it was “never embraced by the community”, to quote NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell in 2012. Never fully utilised – it really only connected areas of Sydney that were of interest to tourists – the monorail was decommissioned in 2012 and demolished in 2013. It had lasted only 25 years, and they never even needed to replace a single carriage.

Speech published in Patrick White Speaks.

  1. Imagining the Real (1986)

11/11/1986. PW was one of a slew of writers at the Australian Defense Force Academy, Canberra, at the UN International Year of Peace symposium for Writers Against Nuclear Arms. He talks about the complacency of Australians, being settled into their daily life and not concerning themselves with the problems of the world. But, PW says, if we don’t sort out Australia we can’t expect to adequately confront other countries like the US and UK that are getting aggressive.

The speech was released as an audiocassette by the ABC in 1986, and published in Imagining the Real: Australian Writing in the Nuclear Age, ed: Dorothy Green and David Headon, ABC Books, 1987.

Published in Patrick White Speaks.

  1. Speech at opening of Shepherd on the Rocks (1987)

Not collected. PW closed his speech by saying: “You have been in our hands all night; now we are in yours”.

  1. A Sense of Integrity (1988)

20/7/1988. PW made his last trip outside of Sydney to deliver the Meredith Memorial Lecture at La Trobe University, Melbourne. By now, his profile was at its height – especially with young leftwing students – and the lecture hall was at absolute capacity. The text was subsequently published in Arena 84 (Spring 1988).

Published in Patrick White Speaks.

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