Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today this House marks the passing of a giant of our modern political life. In John Malcolm Fraser our nation has lost a distinguished Australian in every sense. He was a passionate Liberal, a successful farmer, a devoted gardener, a talented angler and an extraordinarily skilful politician. When I met him for the first time, I was a student at Melbourne University and had been asked to present a paper on his government's policies towards southern Africa at an international conference. I thought it would be only polite that I should give him the opportunity to rebut some of his critics, so I called him seeking an interview. The request was met with an immediate 'yes', and two weeks later we had an hour and a half on his strident opposition to South Africa's apartheid regime, colonisation and communism. Never realising that I would one day represent his former seat, the thing that struck me above all else at this first encounter was the size of the man. He had the physical presence of a large draught horse, and gave the realistic impression that he would work just as hard. In fact, the local press, when he became the member for Wannon in 1955, reported that he was both the youngest and the tallest member of parliament. I should have copyrighted the next line because the member for Wentworth has unfortunately already stolen it, but we now have the youngest and smallest member of the federal parliament!

Malcolm Fraser approached politics with the same resolve as he did life's challenges: with a belief in hard work and the individual. He had a self-deprecating sense of humour. As we all do, he used to love telling campaign stories, but in his case only if it was at his own expense. David Hawker, who succeeded Malcolm in Wannon, recalls Malcolm laughing at himself when only one person turned up to a campaign event he had organised in Dergholm. Fraser suggested to the gentleman that they adjourn and have a chat across the road over a beer at the pub instead. The gentleman insisted he had turned up to hear what Malcolm had to say, and so the would-be PM started delivering his prepared stump speech. Five minutes in, Fraser was interrupted by the man's raised hand. 'Do you have a question?' he asked hopefully, 'Yes, could we have that beer?' This reflected one of his perfected campaign techniques.

Each election campaign, Fraser liked to have a beer at the front bar of the local pub, as he visited towns across the electorate. His record for this was 26 in one day. When I met with the former PM, on being preselected as a Liberal Party candidate for Wannon, he was extremely keen to impress on me the need to work hard for your electorate. He told me how he was one of the first parliamentarians to advertise in the local newspapers that he would be visiting towns and be available to meet with people at a certain time. As his good friend, Digby Crozier, reminded me, what we today politely call listening posts, Fraser called growling posts. Some things in politics never change.

His family farm in western Victoria gave him a great appreciation and understanding of regional and rural life. The news of his passing has been saddening for many Australians, but particularly so for the communities in his former home of western Victoria, where, due to his tireless hard work on their behalf, he was a much admired local member. Being a rural member was never lost on Malcolm. Ever with a mind to his local community, he strove to improve their lives, the lives of those that he represented.

He campaigned personally for the upgrade of the Port of Portland. While the upgrade was primarily for getting more crops and cattle to ships, it has now allowed for further improvements that have brought cruise ships directly to the heart of western Victoria.

He also pushed for the establishment of an education institution in western Victoria, which led to the Deakin University campus in Warrnambool. It now hosts over 1,300 students studying courses from arts and law to psychology and nursing.

His loyalty to Wannon was never far from his mind in Canberra. Upon hearing that the television antenna on Black Mountain was to be taken down, he requested it be put up on Mount Dundas, north of Hamilton. This caused some controversy at the time but certainly not with the viewers in Hamilton and surrounds, who before this had seen their local member on television with a large dose of, to them, very foreign snow.

Fraser's origins on the land led him to a great understanding of agriculture's place in Australia—its history, its economy and its future. Clean, fresh food in abundance to feed them and a surplus of wool to clothe them, he believed. Unsurprisingly, this attitude made him a natural ally of the Country Party, where he made firm friends with Doug Anthony, Ian Sinclair, Peter Nixon and others. While still in government, Fraser continued to run Nareen, where he established a well-regarded Simmental stud. One stock agent recalls that Big Mal was happy to turn a blind eye when enterprising agents labelled his bulls for sale as being from 'the Prime Minister' rather than from Nareen, especially when it led to a premium being paid.

When not running Nareen, Malcolm was often found angling in the rivers of the Western Districts and along its beautiful coastline. Those who accompanied him always delighted in his presence, particularly as he was known to bring one of Tamie's marble cakes as a thank you for getting him out of the house. When asked by the Portland Guardian now the Portland Observer, in 1953, what persuaded him to run for parliament as a Liberal, Fraser responded that 'Every man had the right to go his own way unhampered as long as he did not interfere with the rights of anyone else.' This commitment to the individual marked Fraser as a classical liberal and it remained an intractable part of his philosophy for the entirety of his life—a constant that was backed by hard work.

Hard work was not an ethos for Fraser; it was a simple necessity for being human. When delivering this sentiment again as part of his 1971 lecture, he summarised Arnold Toynbee's 12-volume work into one sentence: 'Through history nations are confronted by a series of challenges and whether they survive or whether they fall to the wayside, depends on the manner and character of their response.' For Fraser, the response, which remains as true today as it did then, involved: 'A conclusion about the past that life has not been easy for people or for nations, and an assumption for the future that that condition will not alter.' Later in his career, he would remark: 'If you want the kind of Australia we want it to be, you're not going to do it on a 35-hour week.'

His legacy of contrast and complexity is best summed up in his role as the creator of both the Commonwealth Ombudsman and the Australian Federal Police, institutions that are at the forefront of recent discussions on national security. In establishing the Special Broadcasting Service he said: 'We used to have a view that to really be a good Australian, to love Australia, you almost had to cut your links with the country of origin. But I don't think that was right and it never was right.' The over 56,000 Vietnamese immigrants who came to call Australia home are a reflection of how Fraser saw the individual as a means to change society for the better. A monopoly, he pointed out, cannot alter human nature.

There are those who have looked to Malcolm Fraser's public life as being only one of contradictions: a man of the Right who found his home in the Left. This is unfair to both him and his beliefs. In the years after his retirement from politics, particularly with regard to his views on immigration, he held steadfastly to his own beliefs. It is also unfair to overly criticise his lack of economic rationalism. His was a time when economic theory was more Black Jack McEwen than Bert Kelly. In the end, the economy proved to be the Fraser government's undoing. Australia suffered again from the boom-bust cycle that had plagued the Whitlam government's finances. No government can accomplish all things. Instead, Fraser's great economic achievement was his application of financial restraint on the national budget. As he outlined in 1971: 'Many have come to regard budget time as they regard Christmas. It should not be so regarded. No responsible government can behave like Father Christmas and look after the affairs of this nation.' As time would show, the establishment of his 'razor gang' to reduce the size of government, along with the Campbell inquiry's recommendations, laid the path to Australia's future economic reform.

No leader is without their flaws. In resigning his life membership of the Liberal Party, many lifelong supporters in Wannon were devastated. The only comparable feeling, I believe, would be if Jack Dyer, that great Richmond legend, had resigned his life membership of the Tigers and spent his final days supporting Collingwood. This was Malcolm's choice. Ever the champion of the individualism that drew him to the Liberal party, it was a path that he knew would disappoint many. As Liberals, we may not have liked it. But we must respect it.

Malcolm Fraser held only one title that was perhaps of more pride to him than 'Prime Minister of Australia'; Malcolm Fraser was 'King of the Camellias'. At his property in western Victoria, Fraser and his wife Tamie grew over 90 varieties of camellia, often opening their garden to the public and the community. So prolific was Fraser's green thumb that he accidentally crossbred a new variety of camellia. He named his one lifelong love after his other, the camellia japonica, 'Tamie Fraser'. This beautiful pink bloom can now be found just down from F Gate in Melbourne's Royal Botanic Gardens.

My thoughts are with those who knew this hardworking classical liberal, farmer, gardener, angler and extraordinarily skilful politician best: his beloved wife Tamie and their four children.

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