Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise in support of the condolence motion and to recognise the distinguished contribution of a former parliamentary leader of the Liberal Party and 22nd Prime Minister of this Commonwealth, the Rt Hon. Malcolm Fraser AC, CH.

When I was growing up and first became aware of who and what a Prime Minister was and what they did, it was Malcolm Fraser who was occupying the office. I am not sure whether it is because I was shorter back then or that Mr Fraser and his predecessor, Gough Whitlam, were both so tall, but they really did seem like giant figures to us in those past times.

Although I was alive at the time of the Dismissal, I was much too young to really fully appreciate what it was all about or what its significance would come to mean to me as I came to my political consciousness. My appreciation of and fervent faith in our nation's constitutional arrangements would emerge a little later in life. But, listening to the contributions of other senators this morning and early this afternoon, it has become obvious to me that much of what happened in my earlier life was the direct consequence of a man known as Malcolm Fraser. His decisions affected the life of an ordinary Australian family, the Smiths, first of Port Hedland and later of Nollamara in Perth's northern suburbs.

His strident belief in the causes of Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War meant that my father, as a young soldier, was to serve in Vietnam in 1967-68. His pursuit of national service for young Australian men, in order to fulfil our commitment in Vietnam, meant that my father's youngest brother was to be conscripted and to serve in Vietnam.

I remember as a young Western Australian primary school child being put in front of the television to watch the opening of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow and being ever so slightly conscious of the controversy that was to surround Australia's participation in those events. I remember as a young child travelling to Western Australia and to the township of Albany, in the Great Southern part of the state, in the 1970s and witnessing for myself the operations and activities of the whaling station and the whaling industry that had been such an important element of the local economy in Albany. Of course, as we have heard from contributions today, in November 1978 that whaling station was to cease, whaling was to end, as a direct consequence of the decisions of one man, Malcolm Fraser.

In 1983 I remember watching the local Liberal campaign in the federal electorate of Stirling with astonishment that the local federal member, Mr Ian Viner, was operating a very lacklustre campaign, a campaign that lacked energy. Little did I realise that I was witnessing firsthand the end of Malcolm Fraser's prime ministership. Of course, I come to this Senate as a senator for Western Australia as a result of one of the successful constitutional amendments that were stewarded under his prime ministership. The vote on the constitutional reform initiative that was known as the Constitutional Alteration (Senate Casual Vacancies) 1977 proposal, which became law on 29 July 1977, was a powerful demonstration that sensible constitutional reform, and reforms seen as making an addition or an improvement to our constitutional structures, can and will be endorsed by the electorate.

But I think it is worth acknowledging today that, of all the things that can be said about our former Prime Minister, he was not someone lacking in courage. He was a man of courage in thought, courage in convictions, courage in action. He looked at a situation, he made his judgements and he backed himself. And, for a long time at least—he is the nation's fourth longest serving Prime Minister, no less—that judgement has proven to be correct. Indeed, in dealing with the situation in the so-called constitutional crisis of 1975, Mr Fraser, it has to be said, put himself in quite an exposed position. He put himself in a position where he would be shown to have been right or he would have been shown to be very, very wrong, and where the verdict would be rendered by the whole electorate, and in a very public way.

Gough Whitlam's style has often been referred to as 'crash through or crash'. I believe Mr Fraser was a less bombastic individual than his predecessor as Prime Minister, but nonetheless he was every bit as determined and tenacious as Gough Whitlam. Ultimately, as history shows, he was far more shrewd. Mr Fraser is someone who gives rise to various shades of opinion within the modern Liberal Party. That is, of course, the nature of politics. A more embarrassing legacy, however, would be to have been a former national leader and not have invoked any reaction, not have invoked any critical analysis.

But all Liberals and, I would argue, all Australians are in Fraser's debt for rescuing the country from the economic carnage left behind the Whitlam government. The idea that you would cut spending and make efforts to reduce the size of government were not, in 1975 or 1976, orthodox ideas. Margaret Thatcher had only just become leader of the Conservative Party and was not considered an odds-on favourite to win office at the 1979 British election. Ronald Reagan was pushing his message of smaller government, but it was not finding enough of an audience—he had lost his fight for the Republican presidential nomination in 1976 to Gerald Ford.

So, although Mr Fraser is criticised for failing to follow the Thatcher/Reagan pathway with 'sufficient zeal'—and today is not the time for those arguments in depth—it is worth bearing in mind that, in many ways, he was actually blazing the trail on economic policy, at least in those ways of imposing spending restraint. Those ideas would not gain widespread acceptance in the United Kingdom or the United States until Malcolm Fraser was into this third term as Prime Minister.

Importantly for me, I would add that, throughout his time in office, Mr Fraser remained steadfast in his support for Australia's federalism, something that was, and still is, very important to Western Australia. It is interesting to look back to 1979 in this respect. The Labor Party, at its conference that year, passed a motion supporting constitutional change, such that instead of referendums requiring the 'double majority'—a majority of voters in a majority of states—Labor wished to change to approvals requiring only a simple majority. Needless to say, this would have entirely destroyed the basic framework of our national Constitution, the framework of our Australian federalism. The whole point of the 'double majority' is that it protects smaller states from being overridden by the larger ones. Mr Fraser as Prime Minister put the case when he told the House of Representatives in October 1979:

The Government is not prepared to contemplate that kind of proposition. It needs to be understood that this federation is a compact between six States. The States entered into the federation under certain terms and circumstances.

The States that are smaller in population believed that in a country as large as Australia, they would need some protection against the capacity of those in New South Wales and Victoria to change the Constitution to suit themselves at the expense of those in South Australia Western Australia, Queensland and Tasmania.

Therefore, the provision in the Constitution that one needs not only a majority of voters but also a majority of States is a very real safeguard and a very real protection for the less populous States. It is a protection that the Government believes is appropriate to Australia's circumstances.

Fortunately, Labor's proposition failed to impress and Labor governments have since had the good sense not to go near it.

In paying tribute to Mr Fraser today, I would like to acknowledge his commitment to federalism and thank him for standing up and being a bulwark against the kind of reactionary constitutional inanity that abounded in the aftermath of 1975. Because what happened in 1975 showed that our Constitution was not broken; it showed that it works well under stress. On behalf of the many, many Liberals across Western Australia, I extend my condolences to Mrs Fraser and the Fraser family. Vale, Malcolm Fraser.