Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

It is thankfully a comparatively rare thing for a parliament to gather to farewell a former Prime Minister, and yet it has fallen to this 44th Parliament to send two giants of our political life on their way. Malcolm Fraser was an extraordinary man, a big strong-willed man who did not hesitate to use his force of will to insist on what he saw as the right outcome for his country. The years 1975 to 1983 were the Fraser years full stop. Much to the chagrin of our party, and many in his own party, he dominated his government completely and he dominated the parliament like few others have. Important as those years were, his life should be seen as a whole. He was elected to parliament in 1955 at the age of just 25. He was a substantial figure as the Minister for Education and the Minister For Defence and he was Prime Minister at the age of 45. In retirement he was a famous man keen to contribute to important debates in his nation and in the world.

There would hardly be an adult Australian who has not been in both violent disagreement and passionate agreement with him at some point in the course of his public life. Perhaps James Killen, in his autobiography, summed him up best. They shared an office as backbenchers in Old Parliament House. Killen wrote many years later: 'Sharing that office gave me an understanding of one of the most complex characters this country has ever known and an insight into a mind that could display a bravura of intellect, a hopeless sense of obstinacy, a grasping, almost oppressive, sense of detail and a capacity to wield the skills of politics with a singular ruthlessness.'

In losing Malcolm Fraser we have lost a link to an era—not just his own era but the Menzies era before it. Having cut his political teeth as a backbencher in the Menzies government, he very much saw his own government as a continuation of the Menzies-McEwen tradition. He believed in nation-building. He believed in national institutions. He believed in government building stronger national institutions. He longed for and predicted a mining boom that would require massive investment in infrastructure and would transform the country. He was right. It occurred 30 years later than he predicted, but he was right.

When you consider some of our important national institutions, there is a list that he either conceived or defended against attack—the SBS, the Australian Institute of Sport, this very important building. When the Treasury and the Department of Finance suggested abolishing the Australian Institute of Sport as a savings measure, he angrily wrote on the briefing note: 'If you want to see the Australian flag fly high, put money into it. Dries see everything from an accounting point of view. There are other things that are more important.'

Malcolm Fraser's hallmark was courage. It took courage for him to adopt multiculturalism as the official policy of the government. It had been a concept first promoted by the Whitlam government but formalised under his government as government policy. Bipartisanship has been important in multiculturalism and for that Malcolm Fraser deserves credit. It took courage to oppose apartheid. I have seen it said in recent days that his rejection of apartheid was unremarkable because it was conventional wisdom to oppose apartheid in the 1970s. I disagree. Let us remember that Fraser had to sack one of his own ministers because of his support for apartheid. Interestingly, so affronted was Prime Minister Fraser that one of his own ministers would support apartheid that he recommended to the Government-General that he not only be dismissed as a minister but be removed from the Executive Council, an employment which is normally for life and which meant that that individual was not entitled to be called 'the honourable' for the rest of his life. Of course, it also put him on a course of conflict with other prime ministers in the Commonwealth of Nations.

Malcolm Fraser also showed great courage in taking on the scourge of tax evasion. I have not seen this commented upon in the obituaries in recent days, but his courage deserves to be remembered. The Costigan Royal Commission and the McCabe Lafranchi reports exposed widespread taxation, as blatant as dumping company records in Sydney Harbour; hence, the schemes being known as bottom-of-the-harbour schemes. Fraser was personally affronted by this sort of behaviour. But this was not a universal view with his own party, I say as a historical observation not a partisan point. But Fraser did not care. State executives of the Liberal Party carried motions condemning their leader. Former Prime Minister McMahon led a backbench revolt against legislation to crack down on tax evasion which saw members crossing the floor. Fraser did not care. He knew he was right.

He was always prepared to do the controversial when he thought he was in the right. He did so in ways not always to the liking of our party and in latter years not always to the liking of his own. People and principle were always more important to him than party. I remember early in my time as Minister for Immigration sitting in my office and we had a young receptionist in the ministerial office not long out of school. She sheepishly came into my office one day and said, 'There's a man called Malcolm Fraser on the phone and he wonders if you might take his call.' I said, 'Of course I will take his call.' He was lobbying on behalf of an individual refugee. I gently asked her later whether she knew who Malcolm Fraser was. I thought by her tone that she might not have realised that she had spoken to a former Prime Minister. She said she did know who Malcolm Fraser was, but she was surprised that a man as humble and polite as that could really have been a former Prime Minister on the phone talking to her. I thought that was a telling anecdote and a mark of the man.

Malcolm Fraser has our respect. I have been struck in recent days by the number of rank and file Labor Party members, who have expressed their condolences to me on his loss. We respect him and mourn him. We imagine him with Gough in another place, comparing notes on our most recent battles. In doing so, we remember the Hebrew proverb:

Say not in grief: 'He is no more,' but live in thankfulness that he was.

See this speech in context