Peter Hendy (Eden-Monaro, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak on this condolence motion for the Right Honourable John Malcolm Fraser AC CH, the 22nd Prime Minister of Australia. He was a giant of Australian politics. I did not agree with him on all matters, especially some of his more controversial positions in later life, but I note that he had a great sense of noblesse oblige, with a great many humanitarian works to his credit. To me, he was a man who put his views with great conviction, marshalling his arguments to put a rational and reasoned argument.

Beyond that, I note that he was the principal person who saved Australia in 1975. He saved the country from economic disaster. As the Treasurer has said, he was the right man at the right time for the nation. It was his strength of character above the slings and arrows of his critics that saw the demise of a disastrous Whitlam government. Young Australians misled by so-called history lessons in our schools have no real conception of the critical importance of Malcolm Fraser's role in saving Australia and beginning the repair job that was to become the bedrock of Australian prosperity over the last four decades. If he had not dealt with the uncontrolled spending of the Whitlam government, Australia's future would have been in doubt. According to the journalist Paul Kelly, federal spending as a share of GDP had massively increased from 24 per cent to 30 per cent in just three years. Inflation had skyrocketed from 4.5 per cent to 19 per cent and then back to 13 per cent. Unemployment had more than doubled from a decades-long average of two per cent to just under five per cent.

It should not be forgotten that Malcolm Fraser won the largest parliamentary majority in Australian history—in fact, twice—in 1975 and 1977. His work in environmental protection, national heritage, Indigenous rights, care for refugees and wider multicultural issues when he was in government honour the man. These achievements, of course, make a lie of counterclaims that Liberal governments ignore these vital issues. He was instrumental in creating the SBS television network. He oversaw the creation of the Australian Federal Police and the Office of National Assessments, thus strengthening Australia's long-term security infrastructure. In 1980, his government established the Australian Maritime College in Launceston; also, self-government was conferred on the Northern Territory; the Commonwealth Ombudsman was established; the first freedom of information laws were enacted; and his government introduced legislation to establish a Crimes Commission following the Costigan Royal Commission.

Significantly, he commissioned the Campbell report of 1981 which laid the foundations for the eventual reforms of our financial system that were carried out by the subsequent Hawke, Keating and Howard governments. As a result, he directly contributed to laying the framework that allowed Australia to weather the subsequent Global Financial Crisis of 2008. Ironically, for a man who supported industry protection, his government negotiated Australia's first free trade agreement and a closer economic relationship with New Zealand, which was to be fully implemented by subsequent governments.

Malcolm Fraser's government was an unwavering opponent of apartheid. He introduced the Aboriginal Land Rights Act in 1976; the first Australian sites were placed on the World Heritage List under his government; and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park was established. I note that he took great pride in the resettlement of tens of thousands of Vietnamese people in Australia. As the Sun Herald reported last Sunday, Vietnamese refugee and now proud Australian Dr Tien Manh Nguyen stated:

To us he is a true hero. He set a shining example …

Some of these refugees were boat people, but the vast majority came through the organised refugee camps in an orderly fashion that ensured domestic political support for what could otherwise have been a highly contentious policy. In that way, Australia benefitted enormously from this generosity as it still does from our humanitarian immigration program today.

Malcolm Fraser was a man with a genuine literary style. I was delighted to read in his political memoirs published in 2010 his description of living in the bush when he was a young man. As he reprinted from a personal journal that he wrote as a young man before heading off to study at Oxford:

All my life I will have memories of calm nights beneath the sky, of waking before dawn to see the sun rise in the east and of driving over the lonely bush roads with dust eddying all round. The deformed Mallee scrub and the ghost farms, the great plains and the endless sand hills, the majestic mountains, the beautiful valleys and pleasant hills. All these are part of Australia and part of my memories. Among them I will find my home.

Indeed, Malcolm Fraser also believed in the importance of rural Australia in terms of the national psyche. It is what I have talked about as the country-city compact. This compact supported a legitimate call on the nation on behalf of country people. From the time of Federation, our nation's founders recognised that the country needed to have a fair share of attention and resources. The country-city compact formed an integral part of the nation's economic and social fabric. It recognised the interdependence of the country and the city that was so crucial to the tremendous success of modem Australia. It recognised the mutual obligation to share the burden of the costs of living in the country. It also recognised that the country formed a critical part of our nation's character, producing much of our national narrative, collective memory, and many of our heroes. Malcolm Fraser inherently knew this and understood the national psyche in this regard.

In a wider context, this understanding that Malcolm Fraser had is part of what I called in my maiden speech to parliament the importance of pragmatic politics—that is, pragmatic politics while still maintaining the best traditions of liberalism. Indeed, the best, most concise articulation of what I was trying to say in my maiden speech was written by Malcolm Fraser in his 2002 book CommonGround. I would like to quote the relevant passage. It is a long quote but one worth hearing. He said:

Those who look for a perfect system of government are unlikely to find it. Those who look to general rules that can apply in all circumstances will be misled. Good government is essentially pragmatic. Decisions need to be guided by philosophy but based on empirical evidence. Government is not about a deductive system, it is inductive, based on circumstances and facts as they emerge. There are no formulas that can make government easy. Such conclusions, drawn from the great philosophers, provide a strong underpinning of the liberal philosophy. They also demonstrate why totalitarian regimes are generally arbitrary and brutal and why political theories of communism and socialism have so patently failed. In those theories, general rules are drawn and are sought to be applied for all circumstances. That is the antithesis of reason, of common sense, of judging circumstances as they are and making decisions accordingly. If we accept that liberalism must judge circumstances as they occur, that it must be pragmatic in its conclusions, we must also accept that liberalism has to be progressive, it has to evolve. Society cannot stand in one place.

I only had one chance of meeting Malcolm Fraser. It was in 2008, and I was Chief of Staff of the then federal Liberal Party leader and opposition leader, Brendan Nelson. Brendan was meeting with Malcolm Fraser at the Commonwealth offices at Treasury Place, in the centre of Melbourne. It was a friendly and constructive meeting. Despite his differences with the party overall, Malcolm Fraser remained supportive of many prominent Liberals and many of the various positions of the party. I particularly recall that, as I led Mr Fraser out of the building, I said to him that the opposition had been instructed that we could not use the front entrance of the building but had to use the back door for our guests.

In a forthright manner he simply said that, as a former Prime Minister, he could depart from whichever exit he chose. He then proceeded to stride, with the aid of a walking stick, out the front entrance. He was the sort of man who did not often brook opposition and, unsurprisingly, the security guards did not raise a murmur.

Finally, I end focusing on the quote for which he is famous. While he had been repeating the quote for years, he got to national attention when it was included in his Alfred Deakin lecture speech on 20 July 1971. He noted that George Bernard Shaw, in his play Back to Methuselah, had stated:

Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be delightful.

In fact, it was in the very same play, in 1921, that Shaw wrote the other memorable lines:

I hear you say "Why?" Always "Why?" You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?"

Malcolm Fraser was one of those who said, 'Why not?' and lived his life to the full. What a fitting tribute to a great Australian. We pray for his family. Vale Malcolm Fraser.

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