Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to be in continuation on this condolence motion for our 22nd Prime Minister, the Rt Hon. Malcolm Fraser. Last night I was going through Malcolm Fraser's greatest achievements and how time has shown that, on those big issues in his life, on the big decisions he made, he was on the right side of history. Something that I think all Australians today can be grateful to Malcolm Fraser for is the way he was able to end the chaos of the years of the Whitlam government. I would just like to quickly reflect—because we often forget—on the disastrous regime that we had here running the country and how important it was, in that 1975 election, that we had someone of Fraser's steadfastness and resolve who was able to go on to get rid of that government.

The Labor government from 1972 to 1975 actually increased government spending by an incredible 40 per cent over three years. Of course, they whacked up taxation by 30 per cent. As it has always proven throughout history, such reckless and wasteful spending, rather than actually creating jobs, destroys them. That is what we saw during the Whitlam regime. We saw a massive rise in unemployment. It actually reached, in that period, its highest since the Great Depression. Inflation at the time got to over 20 per cent, something that is almost unheard of today. Then we had the Labor government currying favour with the Soviets, when they recognised the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. We had the Khemlani affair, when the government was trying to secretly borrow $4 billion, a sum that at the time was one-sixteenth of our GDP. In equivalent terms, it is somewhere approaching $100 billion that they were attempting to borrow from a dodgy Pakistani loan shark. This was the government of the country.

But I think the greatest economic disaster that the country avoided can be shown by the way the Labor government in 1975 attempted to fund their election campaign. When I first read this in history, I thought, 'This simply cannot be true.' But it is. What happened was that the Labor leader at the time sought secret election funding of up to $2 million from the Iraqi Ba'ath Socialist Party. They sent someone who was actually a KGB operative at the time, with the codename of Kirk, to meet Saddam Hussein in Iraq to seek money to fund their election campaign. It is completely unbelievable that this would happen, but this was the government of the time that Malcolm Fraser faced. I want to quote Greg Sheridan about the enormity of the disaster that was facing the Australian public. He said:

… on any measure for an Australian political leader to seek secret electoral funds from one of the most brutal and bloodthirsty tyrannical regimes the 20th century ever saw was a monstrous moral failing.

That is what Malcolm Fraser was facing in 1975. If he had been unsuccessful then, we would have been well on the road not only to Greece or Argentina but to something much, much worse. All Australians have Malcolm Fraser to thank.

The second thing that we should all give enormous credit to Malcolm Fraser for—his decisions proved that he was on the right side of history—is reversing the previous government's shameful recognition of the Soviet annexation of those Baltic states. To think that our previous government would try and curry favour with the Soviets in Russia at the time and sell out the people of the Baltic states—it was an absolute disgrace and a stain on our nation. I have some quotes from Malcolm Fraser at the time. He said, on 30 November 1975:

We will immediately move to assert our commitment to freedom and democracy—our opposition to socialism and communism.

One of our first actions will be withdrawing recognition of the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states.

…   …   …

On December 13th, we will turn on the lights. …

Australia will come out of the darkness of the last three years.

Thankfully that was done. In a later speech that Malcolm Fraser made, when he was celebrating the 60th anniversary of the declaration of independence of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, is a quote that I think we all should live by. It applies every time we go to a citizenship ceremony and new citizens take that oath to become Australians. This is a quote that I will be using in future at those citizenship ceremonies. I would like to put it in the Hansard today. This is Malcolm Fraser, from 15 March 1978:

You have made Australia your new homeland. Australia has offered new hope to many who have fled oppressive authoritarian regimes—new freedom to achieve and create, new opportunity to retain and nourish distinct cultural religious and ethnic traditions.

Your communities have seized this opportunity, and it is to your great credit that you have succeeded in maintaining your identity, preserving your languages and cultures.

Australia is not a country whose culture and traditions are drawn from one source alone. We are a multicultural society and we are all the richer for it.

…   …   …

I look to you to play a most active role in helping with the Government to improve community services available to migrants in need of assistance and in helping to make our country a great country to live for all Australians.

These are wonderful sentiments from a truly great Prime Minister.

The other thing that we should be very grateful to Malcolm Fraser for was his attitude and acceptance of the Vietnamese refugees who came to the country. Given some of the way that this gets talked about and reported on in the media, Malcolm Fraser has not been given the credit he deserves. I was at a Tet festival a couple of weeks ago, and a senior member of the New South Wales Labor Party claimed that Gough Whitlam was there when the first boats arrived and spoke of the wonderful things the ALP did for the Vietnamese refugees in helping them come to Australia. The fact is that the first boatload of people from Vietnam arrived in April 1976, when the Fraser government was in power. They received a charitable reception from the Fraser government. The Fraser government went on to settle 2,000 people who came here by boat from Vietnam. Over 50,000 people were also resettled from camps in South-East Asia—Vietnamese people who were fleeing the Communist regime of Vietnam. I think that is a very important point to make, because often it is said that the people who left Vietnam were fleeing the war. The Vietnamese people that migrated to Australia had stayed and fought and helped the South Vietnamese. They migrated because they were fleeing the totalitarian jackboot of Communism.

It is also worth mentioning some of the sentiments of the day—which were from the other side of politics—that Malcolm Fraser worked against. There was a bipartisan report by the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence entitled Australia and the refugee problem, which was published in 1976. It found that Australia had failed to evacuate from Saigon the Vietnamese who had worked with Australian forces and whose lives were in danger, despite the Air Force having transport capacity available. It stated:

… we are unable to come to any conclusion other than one of deliberate delay in order to minimise the number of refugees.

That was the government before Malcolm Fraser. The opposition leader at that time, Mr Whitlam, when in government was reported in TheWeekend Australian of 26-27 November 1977 as saying:

It's not credible that, two and a half years after the end of the Vietnam war, these people should suddenly be arriving in Australia.

There are some other quotes, but I do not think they are quite suitable for a condolence motion. I suggest that anyone who is interested in this subject should read Clyde Cameron's comments in China, Communism and Coca-Cola to see what was said about the Vietnamese refugees who came to Australia and who have made such a wonderful contribution to our nation. Again, on that issue, Malcolm Fraser was on the right side of history.

The other issue where Malcolm Fraser was truly on the right side of history was when he lifted our ban on exporting uranium back in July 1977. I can remember at school the chants of: 'Export Fraser, not uranium.' Again, history has shown that Malcolm Fraser was right. If we look at the greenhouse gas emissions that have been abated by the nuclear industry around the world, it is the equivalent of 300 years of Australia's total emissions. For anyone who is concerned about the rise of CO2 emissions, the exportation of uranium from Australia and the expansion of the nuclear power industry worldwide has saved the equivalent of 300 years of CO2 emissions from Australia.

Perhaps the previous government could have done more in that area. We have one of the largest supplies of uranium in the world. This could have been an industry for us, with more guidance from government and without so many government bans—like Argentina. The OPAL reactor built at Lucas Heights in my electorate was designed and constructed by the Argentinians. The Argentinians are now doing small nuclear reactors for power generation. This is an area that we, with our great skills in engineering, could have been at the forefront of. Malcolm Fraser should at least be congratulated for that step to lift the ban on uranium sales back in 1977. Again, history has shown that he was correct.

The other area where history has shown that Malcolm Fraser was correct was in the area of competition law. The Fraser government held two inquiries into competition policy: one was the Swanson committee report in 1976 and the second was the Blunt report in 1979. Both those committees recommended the repeal of section 49, the provision against price discrimination in our Trade Practices Act. It was an overwhelming recommendation, but Malcolm Fraser stood solid. He knew the importance of small business to this country and he refused to repeal that section. Perhaps, in hindsight, it could have been modified. Anticompetitive price discrimination was finally repealed by the Keating government. It remains one of the greatest evils and greatest deterrents to small business and entrepreneurialism in this country that a small operator unfairly pays a higher price for the inputs of his goods and services in his business simply because he is small. Malcolm Fraser held the line on that, and for that he should be congratulated.

On our side of politics we also sometimes unfairly criticise Malcolm Fraser. Some on our side say he could have done more. They look at the work that Reagan did in the USA, creating so much wealth in that country, and at the reforms that Margaret Thatcher made. It is easy to look back and criticise Malcolm Fraser for not doing as much for our country as those great leaders did for their countries. To be fair to Malcolm Fraser, he was elected well before both Thatcher and Reagan. The success of their policies in their countries was not seen until Malcolm Fraser came to the end of his time, when he lost the election in 1983. Perhaps if he had continued on and had had the opportunity he would have followed more of those supply-side economic policies of Thatcher and Reagan that did create so much wealth in those countries.

In concluding this debate, I would like to make a particular comment, if I could, about comments unfortunately made in this debate by the member for Kingsford Smith about Margaret Thatcher, where he labelled her a 'racist'—such blatant partisan politics. The member for Kingsford Smith may have had disagreements with Margaret Thatcher in many areas, but to use a condolence motion to call another distinguished leader of another country a racist demeans this parliament—

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