Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

Today is a day of reflection, a day to remember. It is a day on which we pause to remember Australia's 22nd Prime Minister, a man who stood up for his convictions and fought for decency, for liberty and for justice. The Rt Hon. Malcolm Fraser will be remembered, as many have said, as a man of courage and a man of conviction—a leader who was a tireless champion of freedom and free enterprise, a Prime Minister who advocated against apartheid and oversaw enduring reforms to the structure of government.

He entered this parliament in 1955 at the age of 25 to represent the great seat of Wannon in Victoria's Western District. There is a story, a story that is perhaps apocryphal, that when Malcolm Fraser had been here for almost a decade, he went to see Prime Minister Menzies, lamenting the fact that he was languishing on the backbench after all that time—to which Menzies apparently replied that he should stay here rather than go back to Wannon and continue farming. Indeed, the next year, in 1966, Fraser was appointed to the ministry as Minister for the Army. Then in 1969 he was appointed to cabinet as the Minister for Defence. It was in this role, as Minister for Defence, that he established the Tange review of Defence that led to the modernisation of the structure of the ADF and the defence department in Australia. Despite the fact that Fraser had resigned by the time that report was given—indeed it was given to and implemented by the subsequent government—it was an initiative of his which has had lasting consequences in this country.

During his life, Malcolm Fraser was a beacon of all that is good about our great democracy. His achievements in office were conspicuous; his stewardship of the nation was commendable. His vision and achievements in the journey towards a multicultural Australia were, as so many speakers have indicated this morning, considerable.

When we leave this place, all of us, we would like to be judged on what we sought to achieve, what we wanted to do. Although it is the fate of public men and women to be judged on what they achieved rather than what they intended, it is also true that history will be a better judge than anything that is said or written in the current times. Public figures should be judged against the issues and the challenges they faced at the time according to the circumstances, the mores and the expectations of their era—not against the contemporary, often subjective, standards of a different era. It is against this mark that we should look at the life of Malcolm Fraser. There will be plenty of commentaries in coming days that claim much for and against him, many of which will reflect a desire to claim him for one modern cause or another—without the scrutiny that history demands.

Nonetheless, Fraser remains an enigmatic figure. I suspect he was affected by the significant criticism that he suffered from having brought down a popular Labor leader and then, in a sense, being overtaken by the sweep of economic history—led by Hawke, Keating and Howard—in the subsequent years. Regarded favourably and unfavourably from time to time, and by all sides of politics as ideological, Fraser will remain that enigmatic figure—a man, though, who in his own mind was always on the side of rightfulness and justice. History will say that was appropriate.

Today we honour a man who attained the highest political office in this nation, became then the second longest-serving Prime Minister and did much good in public life. The judgement of history about motivations, intentions and influences is beyond today's discussion. Nevertheless, we cannot altogether ignore or dismiss it, as it underlies why a person enters public life and participates in it for years—or, in Malcolm Fraser's case, for decades. Every person who has become or will become Prime Minister is a complex knot of competing interests, desires and ambitions. In seeking to understand this, we shed some light on the significant role of national leadership in responding to the issues before it—and should be judged, as I said, according to the challenges and circumstances of that time.

By the time I stood for preselection in 1991, things in some senses had moved on. The Fraser years were seen by many, rightfully or wrongly, as an era of economic promise that had been wasted. I recall going to see Mr Fraser a few months after I was elected. There was already a sense of a man who, in some respects, was at odds with his party, who pined, I think, for a different, earlier, economic order and who had trouble supporting some of the changes that occurred even in a relatively short period of time. Nonetheless, he gave me one piece of advice that I have always recalled—and that was: always stand up for what you believe in.

To Tamie and the entire Fraser family, I echo the deepest condolences of a most grateful nation. Our nation is all the richer for the enormous contribution that Malcolm Fraser made. Malcolm Fraser was Australia's leader, Australia's Prime Minister, but in the regions of my home state he will always be remembered as their leader, as Victoria's Prime Minister. May he rest in peace.

See this speech in context