David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I never met Malcolm Fraser, but, like all of us who have participated in this debate, I was touched by and well aware of his remarkable life. I need not recount all of the successes of that life; that has been done by others. I do not feel that I can add much to the economic debates of the seventies and eighties; I was not there. But I can observe that Malcolm Fraser showed remarkable leadership on the most important issue of the second half of the twentieth century: the defeat of the evil of communism.

Sometimes we forget that in the 1970s it was not fashionable to call Soviet communism for the evil that it was. In the seventies, detente with the Soviets was more than a fashion: it was the accepted wisdom. Presidents Nixon and Ford, for understandable reasons, sought to accommodate the Soviet presence rather than confront it. There was a near consensus in the United States, even among conservative Republicans, that the USSR was here to stay. In that decade, the West moved dangerously close to accommodations with the USSR which would have helped to ensure its ongoing survival.

One of Malcolm Fraser's first acts was to rescind Australia's recognition of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as part of the Soviet Union—a decision which had been made in the previous parliament. He correctly recognised that accommodation of the Soviet Union's expansionism was not in the interests of Australia or the wider world. In June 1976, Mr Fraser gave an eloquent speech in this place about the dangers of the Soviet Union. In that speech, he noted that, understandably, 'There is a yearning in the world for peace and security.' But he warned that this yearning should never obscure our view of the hard facts. In that June 1976 speech, he observed that in those times 'unrealistic notions that an age of peace and stability had arrived encouraged a neglect of power realities'. He worried that detente could lead to an overall weakening of the West's position, and said:

…the primary concern is an international environment which could progressively limit the capacities of Australia, her friends, and allies, to advance their interests and ideals, which reduces options, which almost imperceptibly weakens the capacity to pursue our interests and advance the cause of human dignity.

Again, with the benefit of hindsight looking back some 26 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, those words may not appear remarkable. But in 1976 it was not the conventional wisdom that anything other than containment could be pursued as a policy towards the Soviet Union. Containment, as I said, understandable though it was as a policy, also had the very real potential of helping to perpetuate that most evil of systems. In that same speech, Mr Fraser made it clear where he stood on the threat of communism. He said:

The time has come to expect a sign from the USSR that it understands this and that it is serious about reaching global accommodation with the West. A tangible signal is required from the USSR in the form of a restraint in its military expansion. The pace is being set by the USSR, not by the US.

And again, in 1976, that was very much the case. It was only in the 1980s that the Americans really began to catch up and then exceed the pace of development of the military capacity of the Soviet Union.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 made it very clear that Mr Fraser's concerns about the intentions of the USSR were entirely valid. In supporting President Carter's call for a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, of course Malcolm Fraser upset and enraged many Australians, including many Australians involved in sporting fields. But we can only judge a leader by their times, and in 1980 the boycott became symbolic of a hard line against the Soviets. The proposed boycott might have been a mistake; the hard line most certainly was not. I believe that it was the ultimate taking of a hard line by the West which led to the demise of the Soviet Union, and Malcolm Fraser in his public statements and in his policies in the late seventies spoke for a course that was consistent with that.

His abhorrence for communism was also seen in his acceptance of Vietnamese refugees. In the discussion about Mr Fraser's legacy, there has been a lot of debate about whether he was liberal or conservative or a combination of the two. I think that, when you look at his approach to Vietnam, you can see elements of both, strands of both philosophies, because it was liberal to care about the human rights of refugees in Vietnam; it was conservative to do something about it, and 56,000 people benefited from that very practical demonstration of compassion. Many of those people and indeed their descendants live in my electorate of Banks. As the member for Cowan said previously, the Vietnamese community right around Australia holds incredibly deep affection for the memory of Malcolm Fraser because he enabled tens of thousands of people to flee an appalling rule and come to our wonderful country.

I am pleased to have been able to contribute to this debate, and I pass on my condolences to Mr Fraser's family. I certainly think it is important that we all remember his legacy in this parliament and the strong stand he took for freedom in his period of prime ministership.

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