Archived at the Flinders Academic Commons:

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1 Archived at the Flinders Academic Commons: This is a scan of a document number DUN/Speeches/0025 in the Title: On Dit questionnaire and correspondence Please acknowledge the source as: Dunstan Collection, Flinders University Library. Identifier: DUN/Speeches/0025 Copyright Estate Donald Allan Dunstan

2 COPY EMENDATION Best book(s) read: There haven't been for me any best books in the last year. "Portnoy's Complaint" (in America, 1969)» "The Selling of the President", Durrell's "Tunc" and "Nunquam", and Lorenz' "On Aggression", immediately come to mind as interesting books I read, but with the exception of Lorenz they're all a bit gothic* As for "Portnoy's Complaint", although this history of one man's explorations of onanism is a bit repellent and even boring, I include it because it is nevertheless a book of considerable literary and social significance*

3 ANSWERS TO 'ON PIT' QUESTIONNAIRE BY DON DUNSTAN AGE: 43. ELECTORATE: NORWOOD. 1. In the formation of your political beliefs, which authors, theoreticians and/or philosophers have most influenced you? 2. In the formation of your beliefs and attitudes to life, which authors, books and/or philosophies have most deeply influenced you? I'd like to answer questions 1 and 2 together, since I don't believe that a meaningful distinction can be drawn between one's political beliefs and one's attitudes to life generally. It is hard to name particular authors, theoreticians or philosophers, saying that they were favourite or especially influential gurus at some particular time. It would be true to say that Sophocles, Euripides, Abelard, Shakespeare, Milton, Donne, Swift, Johnston, Mill, Byron, Marx, James, Keynes, Koestler, Durrell, Galbraith, Kazantzakis, Hesse, Lorenz, Winnie the Pooh, and Snoopy, to mention just a few, have all, in very various ways, had some effect on my view of the world and the role of Australian representative government in that world. Basically I suppose I could say that it is the highly civilized and widely informed minds of writers like Etoestler, Shaw, the Webbs, or Lorenz that I admire most. Also, at a different level of experience, the names of poets like Eliot, Ginsberg, Auden, Oavafy, and Catullus should be included. 3«Would you list the following (over the last 12 month period: Best film(s) seen: There wasn't much time for films, but I did see three memorable ones, "Midnight Cowboy", "Romeo & Juliet", and "I am Curious (Yellow)". 2/

4 2 3 cont. v Best book(s) read: There haven't been for me any best books in the last year. "Portnoy's"Complaint" (in America, 1969), "The Selling of the President", Durrell's r 'Tunc" and and Lorenz ' "On Aggression", immediately ^tmc^f- Me/^i^^ come t0 mind as interesting books I read, but with exception of Lorenz they're all a bit gothic. 4i.te>m< rf ^ c / a B o o t e d (T^P^'eUo^^'Y ' Best live theatre production(s) attended: "Winter's Tale" by the Royal Shakespeare Company, "Hair", and "Rosencrantz & Guidenstern are Dead" (at St. Peters College). Best television programme(s) viewed: Kenneth Clark's "Civilization" series, the Noel Coward trilogy on Channel 2, and the hilarious Policy Speech by John Gorton. Best radio programmed) listened to: 'AM', *PM', quite a number of ABC music programmes, a few good segments of pop, the Boyer lectures by Zelman Cowan on 'The Private Man', and John Gorton's Policy Speech through the hi fi input. Which man or woman do you most admire (living or dead)? I admire many people. For instance, Harold Wilson, Gough Whitlam, Gerald Gardiner, Lee Kuan Yew, Gunther Grass, Olaf Palme, Raquel Welch as Myra Breckinridge, etc. etc. 5. At what stage did your formal education terminate? It hasn't - but I have a Law Degree.

5 In your opinion, what are the three most important areas in our present civilization that need urgent attention? Could you attempt to briefly say what, in each case, you think should be done to improve those areas? Peace - we need it in South East Asia, the Middle East, Harlem, Belfast, Africa, South America And that will mean the ending of race hatred, the achievement of economic and social freedom by the Third World, the setting of rational productivity goals for all nations, and the acceptance of democratic and humane principles by all nations and groups of nations. Civil Liberty - this area is related to peace, but also includes the social liberties that have been traditionally available,or sought in western countries. Urgent attention must be paid to this area to preserve those liberties we have, regain those we have lost, and to achieve those we do not yet have. New computer technologies, refined bureaucratic procedures, bugging devices,.and the inertial effects of affluence, are all beginning to curtail traditional liberties and individual privacy. The ultimate effect of this drift will mean an insufficient measure of dissent and intellectual adventure on all levels in the community, resulting in social, political and even racial atrophy. Environment - for which read not only the biosphere and the problems of pollution and matters mentioned in 1 & 2. But specifically, we need urgently to set international and national population limits and productivity limits. And we must control and treat present known environmental and industrial pollutants, as well as pursue a far more enlightened approach to conservation of natural areas and wild life forms. (In South Australia, we intend to introduce an V

6 Environment Act,that covers all known forms of pollution, and which will have a full time administration to oversee its effective operation).