There are several sound reasons for writing belatedly about the former prime minister Malcolm Fraser, for whom I worked as a senior ministerial officer for seven years: I esteemed him highly but neither my wife nor I could attend his funeral service, which was the day before our State elections.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
He was a turning point in Australian political history, demonstrating in his prime ministership that the old ways no longer met the needs of a country dominated by a powerful trade union movement.
And he was completely misunderstood by the media which failed in those days as it fails in these days to understand what it is that they are seeing and which they are theoretically supposed to be reporting to the country.
Fraser was a tough administrator, able to impose his will on the bureaucracy, for which he had an excessive respect, but he was not a hard-hearted, ruthless brute. If he were, then why did the electorate vote for him, as they did three times.
His record in office gives the lie to the near universal media judgement that Fraser after he lost office became a changed man. From what? From the prime minister who introduced land rights for Aboriginals, from the prime minister who preserved the world’s largest sand island from mining, from the prime minister who set up refuges for women fleeing from domestic violence.
Was he no longer the prime minister who sat down with a group of uranium miners and guaranteed them their jobs, and then with a group of Newcastle shipbuilders. Had he changed from the prime minister who had talks with miners who broke down the doors of parliament house and trashed the Parliament House shop.
On all such occasions Fraser was understanding, indeed soft –hearted. Those journalists who had been beating him up in print for seven years only discovered when it was all over qualities that were always there, and which it did not suit them to see.
He did not perceive the need to shake up the trade union movement, but then nobody did, except right at the end John Howard, when it was too late. The Australian in those days preached consensus, which then was part of the national death wish.
So today it is different? No. It is not. The media has joined the ALP, the Greens and the other motley Senators, whom Paul Keating described as “unrepresentative swill”, in dragging down the first Abbott-Hockey budget, and apparently in destroying the government’s will to keep trying.
Even worse, there are no hard-heads like Keating and Bob Hawke waiting to take over and implement a reform programme and no opposition leader like Howard willing to support a government doing what has to be done.
