Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

I too welcome the opportunity to briefly speak about the Right Honourable Malcolm Fraser. I have listened to the speeches of others in this contribution and I have done so with interest. There have been some very good speeches in respect of Malcolm Fraser. For many people, the passing of Malcom Fraser brings to a close the Whitlam dismissal era. In my lifetime, it was the most turbulent period in Australian politics that I can recall. It was also, in my view, a low point in political ethics and indeed caused a major test to our Australian Constitution—a test that, to this day, I do not believe has been properly resolved, and there are still differences of opinion as to what was right and what was wrong at the time.

It is an era that I can well recall. Immediately after the dismissal, I was working for Senator Jim Cavanagh, a member of the Senate, and I was working for him for most of the time that Malcolm Fraser was Prime Minister of Australia. I recall in those years the deep passions of the people on both sides of politics and the hostility Labor supporters had towards Malcolm Fraser. Malcolm Fraser, along with John Kerr, became the focus of Labor supporters' rancour.

I therefore begin my brief contribution by putting the 1975 dismissal in context as I saw it at the time, because it was indeed the 1975 dismissal that Malcolm Fraser is most identified with. The dismissal came after a series of attempts by the coalition to disrupt the Whitlam government. Coalition governments had dominated both state and federal politics for decades in the lead up to 1975. It was clear to me that conservatives around the country simply could not accept a Labor government being in office in Canberra. So they attempted all they could possibly do to disrupt the government of the day.

We had the Vince Gair affair, otherwise known by many as the Night of the Long Prawns. Then came the replacement of Lionel Murphy, on his appointment to the High Court, with an independent Cleaver Bunton, by then Liberal New South Wales Premier Tom Lewis. Next came the appointment of Albert Field, a non-Labor nominee, by the Bjelke-Petersen government to replace Labor Senator Bert Milliner, who had died. It had always been the convention to replace senators with nominees from their own party, but that was not the case when it came to replacing Labor senators during the Whitlam era by conservative state governments. Finally, when there was a High Court challenge to Field's appointment, and Field had to take leave from the parliament as from 1 October, the Liberal opposition refused to grant him a pair—again, quite different to what I expect would happen in any other parliament.

These were deliberate Liberal Party tactics clearly intended to enable the opposition to control the Senate and to block supply, thereby setting the groundwork for the dismissal. I can only presume that Malcolm Fraser, as the leader of the Liberals from 21 March 1975 onwards, was complicit in the breaking of those conventions by not replacing senators with nominations from their respective parties, by not agreeing to pair an absent member and by threatening to block supply—with the sole motive being that of bringing down the duly elected government. Even worse for Malcolm Fraser at the time was that he was portrayed as a puppet of the Queen and perhaps the USA. Indeed, his foreign affairs policies of the time provided further grounds for that portrayal.

I make those recollections because the Malcolm Fraser I saw in the years subsequent to the Dismissal and particularly subsequent to Malcolm Fraser's retirement from parliament I believe would not have acted or condoned the very actions that he was a party to in the lead-up to the dismissal. Of course, I will never know whether that would have been the case, but I do know that years later Malcolm Fraser and Gough Whitlam not only reconciled; but Malcolm Fraser became a champion of policies and views that Gough had also subscribed to and in many cases had initiated. The Malcolm Fraser I saw post federal politics was an honourable person committed to fairness and natural justice.

Other members have spoken about Malcolm Fraser's commitment to Indigenous equality, and I will make a comment about that in just a moment, but also his support for environmental protection, his universal defence of human rights and, very notably, his stand against apartheid and support of Nelson Mandela. That is all true, and I am not going to cover ground that has already been covered by other speakers in this contribution. I do want to make the point about the land rights legislation. The land rights legislation at the time that was introduced by the Fraser government was almost identical to the draft legislation that the Whitlam government had in place—I cannot recall if it was before the parliament or ready to go to the parliament—at the time of the Dismissal. And so I commend the Fraser government for carrying on with that, but I want to make the point very strongly that it was almost identical legislation that Gough Whitlam had brought into the parliament before he was dismissed. I know that because Senator Jim Cavanagh, who I worked for, was in fact responsible for that legislation being introduced into the Whitlam-era parliament, and his first job as shadow spokesman for Indigenous affairs whilst he was in the Senate was to in fact analyse the new legislation. I have to tell you that, having been given the task of trying to find out if there was any difference between the two, I found it incredibly difficult to find a spot of difference between the two versions of the legislation.

I also noted, in more recent times, the position of Malcolm Fraser on the Palestinian issue and on Australia becoming a republic, again positions he took that went generally against what I would refer to as conservative politics in this country. Indeed, many of his views did not sit comfortably with those on the conservative side of politics, and ultimately Malcolm Fraser ended his membership of the Liberal Party. Of course, Malcolm Fraser's views on refugees were very much at odds with those of his contemporary Liberal colleagues. He not only opened the doors to Vietnamese refugees 40 years ago; but he was openly critical of the harsh refugee policies of recent years.

I will always be critical of Malcolm Fraser in that he was complicit in the dismissal of Gough Whitlam, robbing Gough Whitlam of another two years in office and, with that, the reforms that the Whitlam government would undoubtedly have brought in, but I nevertheless have the utmost respect for the Malcolm Fraser I saw in more recent years: a man who publicly stood for the values that I hold dearly, who devoted his later years in life fighting for those values and who had the courage to do so. His contribution to Australia has been well articulated by other speakers. Every person in a major leadership role, I believe, can claim some level of achievements during the term of that role. Australia is today the proud nation it is because of the collective achievements of many since Federation. Malcolm Fraser can rightfully take his place amongst the names of those Australians who have significantly changed our nation. For that I thank and pay tribute to him. It is for those public achievements that I hope that Malcolm Fraser is best remembered.

To Tamie and Malcolm's family I offer my sincere condolences. May he rest in peace.

See this speech in context