Reappraising Malcolm Fraser
Alan Jones worked for Malcolm Fraser during his challenging time as Prime Minister. He delivered a fascinating, frank and generous assessment of our 22nd Prime Minister at the Sydney launch of Fraser in Office by Denis White. The author also spoke about his experience working with Fraser and what inspired him to write this book. John Howard, who served as Treasurer in Fraser’s government, delivered some closing remarks.
The following is an edited transcript of their speeches.
Alan Jones
I want to thank you, Denis. What a job you've done. This is a very difficult job because anyone could write five volumes and 40,000 words, and you've actually not done that. And in doing so, I think you have honoured Malcolm as he deserves to be honoured. Before I say what I have to say tonight, I just want to say that I'm delighted to have been asked to do this, because I feel that Malcolm Fraser has been much disprized in the history of Australian politics and indeed in the history of the Liberal Party. And I think tonight is an opportunity, Tammie can't be here, but I want Tammie to know that I'm delighted to be able to give some perspective to Malcolm's Prime Ministership, in which perspective has been singularly lacking and the one person in the room, or two people in the room, but perhaps one person who understands this better than anybody is the young man who was the treasurer after Phillip Lynch and went through the very, very difficult times.
And what I'll be saying shortly is that we had two young people, virtually young people. Malcolm Fraser was 45. John Howard was 37. And the pressure on them at that time has never ever been appropriately acknowledged. I just want to start though with a little bit of background to what I have to say, because at the end of the day, a lot of this stuff is not understood. Malcolm, had he lived today, would've been 92. And so you just realse how quickly time passes. What people don't understand is that Malcolm stood for preselection for the seat of Wannon at the age of 23 and was beaten by a Labor candidate by 17 votes. He was 23 years of age. He then became the permanently endorsed candidate for Wannon. And then at 25 years of age, became the member for the seat in 1955, he was then the youngest member of parliament.
You see one of the things about Malcolm Fraser is, he's virtually been credited for nothing. It's as if the Prime Ministership and the governments, those three election victories, were just a waste of time. That's the way people would argue. I'm going to disprove that tonight. And Denis has done that courtesy of this monograph, but you see in September 1969, he was the first person ever to use the word multicultural, which was unheard of at the time. But he argued basically that loyalty to Australia was not incompatible with differences in culture. Then in November '69, he was Minister for Defence under John Gorton. This was at the height of the Vietnam War, when they were marching in their thousands, in the streets of Melbourne, in particular. Many of those marches led by Jim Cairns.
These were terribly difficult times for a minister, let alone a young man finding his way in politics. And I won't get tired of praising you John Howard, tonight, because this required courage as well as judgment. At a time when the pressure was being exerted to move people, the government, away from a perceived position. So, Minister for Defence, then in 1972, the Coalition was defeated after 23 years in office. And I think we could say deserve to be defeated. Well, it’s interesting to note that the argument that was ventilated at that election to defeat them was that unemployment had got to less than 2%. That was regarded as a profound negative. In December '72, then Billy Snedden became leader of the Liberal Party. And in May 1974, the ALP retained government with a reduced majority. In November '74, Malcolm unsuccessfully contested the leadership, opposed Billy Snedden for the leadership, and was beaten.
Now I can say something which Denis doesn't even cover here, but I know for a fact that in that Christmas of 1974, the family sat down on their own, Malcolm and Tammie and the four children, to answer the question, should I continue? Malcolm's disposition was, he was unwanted. He basically got very few votes in that contest with Billy Snedden, but it was the kids who said, "Dad, you've got to keep going." After all, he was a very young man and ironically circumstances, I suppose, moved in his favour. In that, notwithstanding the ability, or lack of it, that Billy Snedden might have had, he was unable really to prosecute the case that was emerging against the Labor Government. Because in December '74, and about the same time as Malcolm was deciding whether he should continue or not, Rex Connor was the Minister for Minerals, Energy, and basically pursued a Middle Eastern loan with Tirath Khemlani.
These were extraordinary times. In December, then at the same time, Cyclone Tracy struck Darwin and in January, just not many months, weeks later, the Tasman Bridge in Hobart collapsed after being hit by a ship. I'm saying all of this, because it presents the background in which Malcolm Fraser became Prime Minister. Very, very, very difficult times. In February, Lionel Murphy, 1975, then resigned controversial circumstances and appointed to the High Court. So then in March, as it was perceived that the Liberal Party wasn't prosecuting the case against Labor, Malcolm challenged again, and won the leadership from Billy Snedden. By June, Lance Barnard left, and there was a byelection and Malcolm's first test really, this unwanted and unpopular man, allegedly. Well, the byelection was won with a swing of 17.5% against the Labor Government. Well then in June '75, more issues, difficult to deal with. Labor's Bernie Milner died and was then controversially replaced by this bloke Albert Field.
In other words, Joe, didn't appoint someone from the Labor Party. Again, the Malcolm Fraser who did nothing, subsequently at a referendum, ensured that the Constitution was so changed that a person to be replaced in the Senate would have to be replaced by someone from the same party. But poor old Albert Field arrived in... I think he was a... What was he, John? A cleaner or something, or a furniture polisher, I think. Furniture polisher. And he arrived in Canberra and didn't know where the Senate side was. So, he was wandering around Canberra, wondering, do I go in the Reps? Where do I go? Dear, Albert Field. It was too much for him. So then the rot started. So, in July '75, Gough Whitlam dismissed Jim Cairns for misleading Parliament about the loans affair. In October '75, Gough Whitlam dismissed Rex Connor for misleading the parliament over the loans affair.
So on the 15th of October 1975, Malcolm Fraser announced that the opposition would block supply. This was an extraordinary moment. And I was present for this because Bill Hayden had given what was quite an extraordinary budget speech, a responsible budget speech. Basically challenging everything that had been done before him. And he made this famous quote that, "You can't get quarts out of pint pots." Because these days, no one knows what a quart is or what a pint is, but it's more than a beer, but you can't get quarts out of pint pots. So I was charged to write a budget reply speech. The Government, Malcolm's, in opposition. And I'll never forget. The night I walked in and Malcolm was of course sitting here and Ian Sinclair was there and Ralph Hunt was there. And Peter Nixon, Martha Marvelous, Peter Nixon was there and there were no Liberals.
"Yes, Alan." You know, Malcolm. "Yes, Alan." Well, I said, "Prime Minister, it was a very responsible budget speech, really difficult to answer." And before I could finish saying anything, Peter Nixon said, "We'll be rejecting supply." Well, my knees buckled out, that we don't need your speech. In other words, chuck that in the bin. And it was at that night that the wheels were set in motion for the difficulties that lay ahead. So November though, and the pressure as Prime Minister Howard would know, was enormous on the opposition, enormous to back off, same as today. All these pigeon livid, woke people who can't actually get into the ring and endure a fight. At the first sign of grape shot or a headline in the paper, they disappear and wither, but Fraser never wavered. Having made the decision, he stuck to it. And he was like that, right during the Prime Ministership, and this young bloke up here was with him all the way.
They were very, very difficult times. So it was then on the 2nd of November, no, the 3rd of November 1975, that Malcolm made an offer. Basically, he said, "Well, we'll pass the supply bills, but you'll have to call an election by May '76." Which was what, the people are screaming for and Gough said, no. Gough was an arrogant man. He had a bit to be arrogant about, I have to say, but nonetheless about the economy didn't know much. But anyway, he rejected that overture. So on the 11th of November, as we now know, Kerr dismissed Whitlam. They were unbelievable scenes. Absolutely, I've never seen anything like it. And quite frankly, I wasn't the only one who was frightened by what we saw. There were only, the Prime Minister then, had only three staff. That was all. I don't know how many you had, Treasurer, I suppose two? But you had a subsequent leader as one of those staff members I have to say.
But anyway, there they were. And I remember John Wilson saying, "Oh, you've got to come out into the Kings Hall and have a look what's going on here." And now he goes, "Oh." I said, "John, shut up. Someone will knock you out here." It was amazing. Kings Hall was packed. And before we knew where we were, there were thousands and thousands of people in Jackie House singles at the front of the Parliament, screaming. And you thought ... Everyone thought, well, we're going to get wiped out in an election, because look at the public mood. But this man here, he stuck to his guns. So Malcolm became the 22nd Prime Minister in a caretaker role. This also is an extraordinary story, because when the house adjourned for lunch and in the entering convening period, Gough had been sacked. Kim Beazley was at the dispatch box. So technically when the house resumed, Beazley got the call from the Speaker Skulls and had Beazley stayed there, reading basically Encyclopaedia Britannica into the Hansard. Who knows what kind of constitutional crisis might have occurred?
But nonetheless, he sat down after his time and the House was adjourned. And so on. Meanwhile, Gough had gone back and told absolutely no one. He'd gone back to have a meal, as he always had. He used to have steak at luncheon. And Brian George was the Butler. Margaret was in Sydney. Gough didn't tell anyone and let alone Ken Wriedt who was the leader in the Senate, that Malcolm had approved supply. So basically by two minutes after two, the government had the very supply that had caused the difficulty initially. So they were capable really of governing, they had the money. Malcolm arrived back for lunch and sat down and he was grumpy and he said, "Get me a pen, get me some paper." He said, "How are you going sir? How are you going sir?" He said to Gough and Gough said, "The bastard had sacked me."
"I beg your pardon sir." "The bastard had sacked me, you heard what I said." "Who sir?" "The Governor General." Says Gough and Gough's making notes that he's going to then deliver in a speech in the Parliament. They're extraordinary scenes. And so he set up the back and Skulls gave the call and Gough moved a motion of no confidence in the Government. Malcolm had announced that he'd been asked to form a Government and the conditions of it and the house is charging and everyone's rubbing shoulders. I think as John would remember, they're rubbing shoulders and bumping into one another, the anger was there. So on three occasions, Whitlam spoke urging Skulls to approach the Governor General, urge him to invite the member for Werriwa to form a Government and so on. And Kerr wouldn't take the call. I say this because when he became Prime Minister, everyone expected the world, they expected, he was going to turn all the Whitlam excesses overboard, which was just not possible. And particularly since the nation was so divided. And I remember we'd have these meetings and he'd say what he couldn't do. He said that the place is divided, the atmosphere is toxic and electric. We've just got to go quietly here in terms of what we seek to do. So they won the election then, amazingly, by 55 seats. There were 127 seats in the House then. And the Fraser opposition won 91. That means 30 seats changed hands, won 91 seats. 30 seats changed hands and Whitlam won 36. There was a swing of 7.4%. So I just put in my notes here tonight, do nothing, because if you read and evaluate the Fraser Government, this is the argument.
Although do nothing government, I can assure you that at that time, it was really very, very difficult, to identify the tensions, the difficulties, the divisions, and the emotion, about the Coalition forming government and the circumstances under which they had come to government. Just a couple of things before I get down to the achievements of all of this. You see, there's a great woo ha, you made reference to this Nick, and what you spoke, great woo ha about we've only just found our commitment to Indigenous Australia. In 1978, it was, that Tammie and Malcolm Fraser toured all these Aboriginal communities in Arnhem Land. Oh, a lot of them, you'd never know that. No one writes that about Malcolm Fraser, Alice Springs. And he spoke to them about policy issues, where he wanted to improve. His words, "The social economic, and health outcomes for indigenous communities." Malcolm Fraser, 1978.
In 1979, he attended a Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Osaka. And he argued for majority rule in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, head of his time. 1980, oh my god, I remember these meetings and he was sick upstairs and he's in his blue pyjamas. And here we were, he was wanting to say, we've got to boycott, the Moscow Games because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Now the significant point about this is, this was 1980. We've just had the appalling Biden withdrawal from Afghanistan. This has been going on ever since all of that. So he said, "Can we allow the Soviet Union to use sport as propaganda?" And he urged the AOC. We had meetings with the captain of the Olympic swimming team about all of this difficult, very difficult times, but the AOC said, "No, we're not going to accept the dictates of the government." And Malcolm accepted that. Then Malcolm Fraser visited Washington for the first time in 1980, to discuss with Jimmy Carter, the Afghanistan response.
Then of course we had the opening of the High Court in 1980, the beautiful building of the High Court and Malcolm was given four minutes to speak. So we'd actually go into the cabinet room, shut the door, and rehearse the speech. That was exactly four minutes. He was fastidious and he was immensely deferential and Barwick was given six minutes. It was a blisteringly hot day. The Queen is sitting there with the umbrella overhead and at six minutes, Garfield Barwick, hasn't got to 1914 at 10 minutes, he hadn't got to 1920 at 15 minutes, he hadn't got to the World War II at 25 minutes, he was nowhere near contemporary Australia or whatever. I thought the Queen's going to get up and walk out here. And Garfield Barwick spoke for 28 minutes on this blisteringly hot day.
The Queen got up and she did her thing, but it's the nature, isn't it, of her majesty. Then I proposed, if I might say modestly that there were problems with the funding of sportspeople and Malcolm bought this. And I said, "Look, we need an Institute of Sport here." Now when we're having all this sort of success and everyone talks about scholarships from the Institute of Sport and haven’t we done well in the Olympics, hang on. Malcolm Fraser agreed to the establishment of an Institute of Sport and the provision of scholarships, which started Australia's international sporting progress. Does he get any credit? None. Absolutely none. It's never ever mentioned. Then having opened that, he announced a double dissolution and Hawke went right at the end of his career. A double dissolution. I remember that clearly as well, because I wasn't there then, but I thought, well, I'll ring him.
He was in Townsville doing something about industrial relations. So I rang and I was quite surprised that he took the call because he was busy and I was no longer on his staff. And I said, "PM, what are you doing? Hawke's just knocked off Hayden." And I said, "This bloke's so unbelievably popular. Put him in the Parliament, he'll know nothing about procedures and you'll eat him alive." Which was borne out subsequently when he made his maiden speech. He couldn't even get the 20 minutes. It went beyond 20, 21, 22. And he asked for extensions and so on. And Malcolm said, "I'll kill two birds with the one stone." Meaning that Hayden was gone because they thought Hayden couldn't beat Fraser. And as a result, we know the rest. But after winning, then he'd won in, as you know, '75, '77 and '80. And then Hawke, there were 125 seats and Hawke won 75, 24 changed hands. Then six days after that, Malcolm resigned as Prime Minister and only a handful of days after that, he retired from the Parliament. What a waste. You see all of these people at 52 years of age.
So I say that by way of background. These were immensely controversial, divisive times for everybody. And yet in spite of that, the achievements were extraordinary. What about Fraser? Fraser knew how to chart a course. Yes, I'm not suggesting it was easy. We all know how difficult he was to live with at times. And dear David. And thank you for making mention of David Barnett. He was magnificent. He towed the line. Malcolm was terrible to him at times, but David Barnett was a wonderful, wonderful servant of the Liberal Party. And he had very strong commitment to Liberal values.
And that continued right throughout his life. And as I said on television this week, I don't think his contribution will ever be properly acknowledged. And I hope the Liberal Party does something about it. But if Malcolm wanted to shift opinion, and Denis makes this point, he was fastidious about facts. And if, for example, he said that the inflation rate was 5.6. It was 6.5. He had to correct him immediately, otherwise it would be 6.5 forever. And at all hours of the morning, we'd be reading, ringing people in Washington to get the right information. His language was always simple, always simple and always precise. And he could unravel loose thinking. He hated humbug. He hated grandstanding. In spite of his wealth, he had lived as a child growing up through recession and depression and then terrible, terrible droughts.
But as Denis says, I'm, quoting Denis's words here, "He never made life easy for himself or for others." Hey, I can prove that. I can tell you, but nonetheless. These two men were Titans, Titans of their time. Fraser, big, powerful, aggressive, confident people who were quite prepared to argue persistently their position in life and in politics. See, Fraser made a speech in here. Where are the Liberals today? You see, you're talking about the difference between what Liberals should stand for and what Labor stands for. And Malcolm said, in a major speech in 1975, the difference between the Coalition and Labor. "The difference is in attitude of mind, the socialist will turn to government sponsored solutions, while the Liberal asks, can individuals solve it for themselves? Can the government create the climate in which that can happen only if the answer is no, should the Liberal turn to direct government solutions.” We're heading for trillion dollars of debt because we've yielded to the view that government will solve everything with taxpayer's money, doesn't happen.
Elsewhere, he staked out a very significant view, which was unfashionable at the time on both sides of Australian policy. He said, "The balance between the individual and the state has been overthrown. The state yearly seeks a larger share of resources. People struggle to maintain their share. One group presses against another, gaining only momentary advantage while all the time their efforts to preserve themselves against the state actually result in a great addition to the share of the state at the expense of resources available to individuals. This process results in a withdrawal of effort, a destruction of the work ethic, that makes the fabric of the state even more costly to maintain." Now I would argue, and I've argued publicly, that this whole coronavirus thing has destroyed entirely the work ethic. We just threw 750 bucks at everybody, many of them should have been at work. Many of them before coronavirus were on 250 a week, they suddenly got 750.
And suddenly now you've got this crisis in employment where businesses can't get people to work. And yet there are half a million people on welfare. So he made this point and historians noted this. Denis, you've done a wonderful job here. On page 40, one of the historians made this point and it was Wallow who said, "Fraser's public commitment to reigning in the state." He gets no credit for this, predated similar strong campaigns in Britain and the USA by Thatcher and Reagan. But of course he had a soulmate in the man up here. This was the man who was charged with making sure that happened. And he did. And he was very young and it was a very, very difficult time in the '74, '75 Whitlam budget. The increase in Commonwealth expenditure was 46.4%, 46.4%, 24.4% in real terms. Now this was something that was anathema to Malcolm Fraser.
His charter, as I said, wasn't deprived and included 15 years of depression and drought and world wars and so on. But when the crunch came in 1975, Denis has pointed this out very clearly. He was under, as I've said already, phenomenal pressure. He needed a straw to break the camel’s back. He waited and he got it. Rex Conner pursuing a loan of several billion dollars after his authority to do so had been withdrawn. It was a dramatic story. And Prime Minister Howard would remember that they brought Khemlani to Australia and Labor Party were feeding him at the... What was that hotel at the corner? Wellington. What was the hotel's name right at the corner there, they were giving him chips. They were feeding him with lemonade and chips . And those were the days of fax machines. And the fax machines were acres of this paper coming out of the tax machines over the loans of Tirath Khemlani. And all this time, I have to say, such was the power of persuasion of within his leadership that he was able to keep the team together and they backed him.
All of them backed him to the end, waiting for the trigger to be pulled. And at the ensuing election, the electorate backed him too. As I just said, 91 seats out of 127. But the point about this is this, as John Howard would know and others have since found out. Strong majorities in both houses don't actually provide you with unlimited power to govern. Often Prime Ministers will say, "I can't believe how limited my power is." And that's the nature of the Westminster System. You can't jump across the territory belonging to somebody else. The Minister for Defence can't talk about education. And governments, this is what those people who've written about Fraser, don't understand. Governments can't always, much as we might like it, they can't reverse the actions of their predecessors.
In Malcolm, I can't repeat often enough, inherited bitterness and division, so he had to carefully manage the power and authority. He was criticised for not taking on the unions, but the constitutional power available to the Commonwealth Government to take on the unions is quite limited, such that, in the election that he lost, he was prepared to basically change all of that and give power to the Commonwealth. Well, of course he lost the election and that was a result of the frustration with the lack of Commonwealth power. But Denis writes, "Restraint, responsibility and reduction of government were key things which Fraser emphasised throughout his Prime Ministership." Think of that today, restraint, responsibility and reduction of government. We just had a New South Wales Government here who has increased spending by $27 billion. This is ridiculous. Basically percentage of GDP is greater than it was in the Whitlam years.
Where has liberalism gone? Malcolm Fraser was fastidious. He used to say, "Alan, make sure you write in there that governments have no money of their own, other than what they take for the taxpayer, where have you written that." And that had to be in almost every speech that was separating him from the other side. He saw economic management as his ultimate responsibility, his foremost responsibility. And as I said, I can't praise this man up here enough because he actually acted all of that out. It was John Howard's responsibility to see this happen. Denis writes, "His commitment was to the reduction or containment of government expenditure of taxation and of the deficit." He talked about, of course, full tax indexation. That was idealism. It got him nowhere. He had to have revenue foregone in the end, it was half indexation. And then that sort of lost itself on the radar.
Therefore, what significant achievement, some of this is addressed by Denis here. I mean the deregulation issue was a big one for Malcolm Fraser. He wanted private enterprise to flourish. And at the same time, of course, he used to say, "We've got to make sure that the social fabric is not damaged, but we have to foster an open economy." Fraser, we've lost our way on that. Both sides of politics. He established the Campbell Committee Inquiry. You never read about that. The Campbell Committee, but when the report of course came in, he was about 16 months out. I think it was 16 months or so from an election. And so basically the conclusions of that, much of which now is embraced in terms of the economic management of the nation. But Malcolm was the person who pioneered the Campbell Inquiry. Denis writes, "Fraser is one of the few to highlight the importance of fiscal responsibility, an outstanding feature of his Prime Ministership."
Then of course, there's this question, the big tough Fraser, the Easter Island image. But this was a man who gets no credit for the fact that he was the first person to prosecute the need for Indigenous Australians and initiated Aboriginal land rights legislation. He talked about his words, the generations of neglect and discrimination against Aboriginals in education, health, employment, and housing. As I said, he was the first man to coin the phrase, multiculturalism. We want people here. We want an integration of cultures, loyalty to your own country. Doesn't deny you the right for loyalty to the country you've come to. And he hammered that theme with deep affection. He talked about how you are entitled to have a deep affection for your homeland. He introduced family allowances. Family allowances, and they went to all families, first person to introduce family allowances.
And of course, he cut back. He removed the Child Endowment Scheme, but nonetheless helping families at difficult times. When one breadwinner and the harvested judgment way back in the early 20th century, wasn't enough to sustain families. So he identified the need for family allowances. And then I made this point about referenda. He was successful in getting three referendums, or referenda, through the Australian public. The first one, as I said, was designed to make sure that state governments would fill casual Senate vacancies with appointees from the same party. The second was to impose a retiring age of 70 on judges. And the third was to give electors living in territories, a vote in any referendum. He had always a strong sense of what ordinary people would accept. And basically he was always conscious of the fact that any referendum should not seek to increase power in Canberra. The funny story he had to open the Verona Motor in. It was before one of the elections, I can't remember.
And I was commissioned to write the speech, but I rung everybody up and did some homework. And they said, just tell the Prime Minister, it doesn't matter what he says so long as he mentions Barramundi up here because they just love their Barramundi. It's fresh, it the best Barramundi, whatever. So Malcolm said, what are we talking about? He said, "I want to talk about the drift and the movement of communism through Southeast Asia, the domino effect." He's gone on. I said, "Prime Minister, we're going about it." "Alan you heard what I said, I want this. “So I've written this dreadful boring stuff. And the worst thing was that Mount Isa was about five and a half hours away. So you can get no relief, whatever. So I wrote this, we went through the speech in the plane and I said, "Prime Minister, I'm telling you, I don't know who's going to be there, but the Verona Motor Inn, all that mob want to hear from you is you sort of giving a plug to the Barramundi farmers up in Northern Queensland."
Anyway, he gets up there and there's a mob of people and this Verona still there. The Verona Motor Inn, there's a mob of people in the room. And Malcolm starts out on the script and he's reading this stuff and it's dreadful, turgid, boring, rubbish about whatever. And suddenly he had this wonderful capacity to identify the mood. He could judge the political mood and he saw these people were switched off and he had this thing here. And he said, "I forgot to say, when I started, I heard all about the Barramundi." Well they cheered. Malcolm was a hero. He switched onto the Barramundi, straight away and won the day. He had that capacity to identify. But at the same time, the courage of the man, we had to do something. I can't think what it was. Is it called Exhibition Square or something in Melbourne?
And we were warned by the security detail that there were going to be massive protests. And that could be violent. The Prime Minister, you sure you want to go? Yes, we go. So Malcolm sat in the front and Tammie and I were in the back and immediately we got out, these eggs were chucked everywhere. One egg hit Tammie on the front of her body here and another one Malcolm. Out of the side of his mouth, he said "Keep going, keep going. There's votes in this." And here we were being belted with eggs. Keep going, keep going. And indeed there were. Malcolm Fraser conducted a plebiscite to choose the new National Anthem. Does he get credit for Advance Australia Fair? They don't identify Malcolm Fraser with that.
He decided to build the new Parliament House. Denis covers this rather beautifully in the book. Denis, it's a lovely turn of phrase because the building was underground. And Denis said, because Malcolm was keen on the design of the whole building without in fact imposing limitations on the necessary expenditure elsewhere. But Denis writes in his book that ordinary Australians could therefore walk over their politicians. So it was a nice line Denis in the book. And then of course in the environment, he was the first person to talk about protection of the Barrier Reef. He was the first person to talk about support for our first world heritage listings. And he developed national parks, including the proclamation. He was the person responsible for the proclamation of Kakadu National Park. He banned whaling and eliminated mining on Fraser Island. He welcomed on the international stage, international sphere, those who were fleeing from the atrocities of Vietnam and were coming here and he welcomed them to Australia, and he was a bloke from the Western districts, allegedly with money, but with an enormous sense of compassion. And it was often significant.
Denis quotes in the book, Henry Kissinger, who wrote that Fraser was "Not a practitioner of classical power politics, though he understands the importance of power. In his attitude towards equal justice in Southern Africa, he's constantly made clear that in a democracy, foreign policy must reflect the moral convictions of its people." Kissinger also highlighted that Fraser's farsighted approach to developments in the Pacific and Asia. So that Australia, in Denis's words, would be then at the vortex of world affairs. He constantly talked about us being a middle ranking power. I remember when we went to visit Carter in the White House over the whole business of Afghanistan, how shall we respond? And Carter had rung Malcolm Fraser and wanted him to be an emissary for the West. So his job and we all trotted off to ... It's quite funny. We were welcomed in the Oval Office and Jimmy Carter was a speed-reading person.
So he'd always done his homework and Malcolm Fraser's name was John Malcolm Fraser. So he knew all the people. He knew all of us. And he walked up to the Prime Minister Fraser said, "John, lovely to have you here. Lovely to have you." He called him John, because his name was John, John Malcolm Fraser. However, he saw us as a middle ranking power and he said, "You can exert influence." He said, "You may lack the power to impose Australia's will, but you can count for something." And you beautifully highlight the difficulties over the Sinai Peacekeeping Force where Malcolm basically said, "Look, I think it's a very important initiative for the Middle East and I'm prepared to support America, but we're not going on our own." And he stood firmly with America and he said, "You get two other major powers on board and we'll be on board, but we're not going on our own with you." Malcolm won the day.
I repeat the election was lost and as I said, coincided with the day that Hawke became leader. These were very difficult times in which to win an election because Australia was suffering from a dreadful, dreadful drought at the time. Then the Ash Wednesday bushfires overtook Australia at the same time as the election. And he was doomed of course. And post-election he led an eminent person's group to South Africa to seek the abolition of apartheid.
I just want to end here with a couple of points. Since this is a podcast and hopefully Tammie and others might see it to know that her husband was a very singular, an important figure. Tammy was 39, Malcolm was 45. These were massive challenges. John up here was 37. I think for young people like this to inhabit that kind of political environment, forget it, it doesn't exist today.
These were very tough times. But for example, women, we've got all this push now about women and someone's now on the bandwagon. Well, this is what Malcolm Fraser said in 1976, "There is obviously a great deal that can be said on the subject of equality of employment opportunity in our community. But one matter on which there is surely no doubt is that every future history of our times will give a significant place to the subject of women in the workforce." In 1976, "The full significance of the changes that have been taking place is not easy to assess. And while it's not easy to find an historical benchmark from which to start, I find some interest in the fact that in the original Liberal Party platform of 1946, there's a section entitled status of women, which contains the following simple, but comprehensive statement, equality of opportunities, liberties, and status for men and women." He said, these words were farsighted in many ways, women. Does he get credit for that?
Then on page 67, he talks about big government, again. "We don't want big government nor do the Australian people. Limited government has a far greater capacity to improve care." You think of all this, what is it? What's it called? That thing that they had during coronavirus, the national cabinet, come on. "We don't want big government nor do the Australian people. Limited government has a far greater capacity to improve care for those who need assistance. Society has immense resources for achieving what people want without the need for counterproductive intrusion by governments." Pretty visionary stuff, private versus the public sector.
He said this, "Australian's commitment to free enterprise is not grounded simply on the fact that it's the most efficient provider of the resources required to produce a better life for all Australians. There is a consensus of support for free enterprise because it is the most democratic system. It confers on the individual, maximum freedom of choice. It allows the individual maximum opportunity to innovate, to strike out on his own, to try out his own schemes and dreams. It makes the individual consumer, the ultimate arbiter of taste, the ultimate allocator of resources."
I'd love to hear one or two Liberals make this point now. In relation to China, he had this to say, this was in 1976 at the National Press Club in Washington, "Whatever view one takes of China's ideology, it's clear that Chinese society manifests a sense of purpose and self-reliance, a stable equilibrium. International relations is not possible, unless China is more fully involved in the international community." 1976, on democracy, he had this to say, "If the people cannot call to account the makers of government policy, they ultimately have no way of controlling public policy or the impact of that policy on their lives."
What about the business of education? Fair income. We're an absolute mess in education. He said, "Unfortunately, it's a fact in recent times, academic freedom has been threatened. It's sometimes easier to make a speech on the Melbourne waterfront before members of the Waterside Workers Federation than it is to get a hearing on some tertiary campuses. The plain fact is that members of a union, with one of Australia's most radical traditions, are more ready to listen to argument and debate than a minority of students who believe that they have the right to suppress views different from their own. If the views of this tiny minority of students prevail as they do today, then the academic freedom of tertiary institutions will have been undermined by their own members and much of the sympathy which the wider community has for universities and colleges will be forfeited."
And then finally this issue of responsibility and he made this point, "Children need to know and want to know what is permissible and what is not. Families who believe." This was in 1980, "Families who believe they can raise children in an environment, devoid of rules, risk the moral development of their children and their capacity to adjust successfully to the demands of an adult world. There is no doubt that a family model will always be the basis for a child's learning."
And of course, Prime Minister Howard made the famous comment that the best welfare system in the country is the family. So Denis, look, I just want to thank you on behalf of the Fraser family and those of us who worked for Malcolm, because we are constantly regarded as having inhabited a hostile world. And yet I hope, I wanted, tonight to do justice, to just some of the achievements of this very, very difficult time in government. Where yes, there was unlimited support from the electorate, but that didn't necessarily mean you had unlimited opportunities in government to do what the electorate wanted from you.
I think at the time the electorate were over-demanding and there were many people in that government, one of them is here tonight, who made very, very significant contributions under very difficult circumstances. So, thank you for your scholarship, but thank you for the service that this monograph does to the Fraser family. On behalf of them, I thank you.
Denis White
I was moved by something Alan said, this was at the time people saying that Fraser did nothing. And the fact is that there was absolutely no criticism in the press after his first budget that he had not done enough. No criticism, nobody said Fraser had not done enough. Everyone thought in that first budget that he'd gone as far as anyone could go. It's a fascinating thing. And I can't help thinking, Alan, you talked about a serious speech in Northern Australia when they wanted to hear about Barramundi. And I recall two occasions down in Tasmania where I'd prepared a very heavy, serious speech, and we went along and there was a dinner in a Hobart restaurant and people were quite happy, and halfway through my meal, a note came from Malcolm, “Make the speech into dot points.”
He was very adept, as you said, at picking things. Alan, thank you very much for what you've said and your contribution to the 1980 election. On the night when the news was bad, only a couple of days before the election, Tony Eggleton was asked by Malcolm, "How do things look?" and Tony Eggleton really said, "It's hopeless." Malcolm turned to you, and I think to John Rose and to Kathy Keely, and he said, "Well, we are in for a long night." He didn't say, "Well, we've got to give up." And John Rose's story was that they worked all night. Kathy Keely was typing the speech and actually fell asleep on the typewriter and Malcolm found her there in the morning, still asleep. When he came in early, he used to pick up the speech.
He wasn't the sort of man who gave up, and Nick, thank you for your support with this book. You said it was reappraisal time and it is fascinating that it's seven years after his death. And I thought I can't help thinking of the day of his funeral. When I walked down Collins Street to the church and looking down towards the church, I could see some hoardings and my heart fell because I thought here are protests, they're still protesting. But as I got closer, I saw that and there was no shouting. And I saw that one of the placards said, "Farewell to our true champion of humanity, Malcolm Fraser." And the other one said, "You are forever in our hearts."
And there were Vietnamese. They were old by then, but they were people who had fled from Vietnam. I met one of those people once, she had gone to America and she told me that as a little girl, she and her parents had got her into a little boat. And they somehow got past pirates. They got through to Malaysia and got to the shore and they were pushed out to sea. They were pushed out to sea, and they had to destroy the boats out at sea and only then could they come ashore. This commitment of Malcolm's to refugees, he might have gone too far in later years and all sorts of things happened, but it was deep in his heart.
But of course, to reappraise the Fraser years, we have to go back 50 years. As Alan said, it was back in the 1950s that Malcolm went into Parliament, but it was in the '70s, 50 years ago, half a century ago, that these events that we were talking about happened. And Alan said that it was Malcolm who challenged Snedden. I was very close at the time to Tony Staley, who was a very, very young member of Parliament.
And he'd seen that Fraser really needed to take over. But one thing is fascinating. Tony Staley said to me at the time, Malcolm would never endorse what he and his friends were doing to try and move Snedden on. Malcolm would never endorse it. They had to carry the whole responsibility themselves, putting their careers absolutely on the line. And then as you've said Alan, 1975 was like a great tragedy. Malcolm didn't want to block supply, but there was an inevitability about what happened as that government fell apart. And as you've said, he did extraordinary things. There were all sorts of limitations and so on, but he won three elections. He restored standards of respect and ministerial standards.
I don't want to talk for too long, but I do recall that there were issues. And we say this occasionally about ministers being given gifts overseas. And I didn't know much about what had happened when I was working there, but I did see one day in an office. I was working and saw a beautiful sort of Mexican saddle up there in a room in the Prime Minister's Office. And I wondered what it was. And I inquired. And I discovered that what had happened was that Malcolm brought in a rule that if Ministers were given gifts and they wanted to keep them, they would have to pay for them themselves if they were worth more than $50. So Malcolm brought in that rule, a fantastic rule. And I said, "What's that got to do with this saddle?" And people said to me, well, Malcolm had it valued. And they put a value of $3,000 on it and Malcolm's view was that it wasn't worth $3,000. So there was this argument. He wasn't willing to take it of course, if it was against the rules, but he wanted to contest the rules. And so this saddle sat there. And a year later I looked at it one day and what I thought was leather was peeling off. The thing was plastic. So he'd been right all along. And I said to him, "Prime Minister, you can take the saddle, it’s worth nothing." But he'd lost interest by then and then he didn't care about it.
He tried, as Alan said, to find a direction. And as said, Mr Howard was instrumental in this as well. He tried to find a direction for economic reform in the latter period of his government, but he didn't trust the banks. And he wasn't willing to risk going down a path that he thought would prevent people from having a fair go. That was his great commitment. But what he did, he built Australia's influence overseas. He did a lot in Australia and we often talk about the great Hawke years and the great Howard years. And it was really the phase of governments, which paved the way. For that to my mind, there's no doubt that without the Fraser government, then the Hawke government could not have gone down the route it went. So there was the beginning of something.
It's been a privilege to write the book. And it's a privilege to talk to you, and it's marvellous that Alan's here to talk about it because you gave so much yourself Alan, to Malcolm. I remember when I came into the office at the start of 1982, you were about to leave. And you were just exhausted. You told me you were exhausted. It was written away because you'd been working so hard with Rosie. As you called him, Professor John Rose and founder of the Melbourne Nursing School, one of the great economists. You and he and a few others, there hadn't been many who stayed with Malcolm. And thankyou Nick again for the opportunity to edit this book and make this book available.
John Howard
I'll simply say to you that we are in debt to both Alan and to Denis. Alan for the passion he brought to his recall of Malcolm Fraser's achievements and to Denis for his studied academic skill in committing it to paper. I remember those years very well, not just because I was Treasurer, but because I saw the monumental challenge that the Fraser government had. Winding back, as Alan said, a mindset on expenditure, it's easy to give, but it's very, very difficult in politics to take back. And the lesson from that is you shouldn't give if you can't afford it. And that's something that I think Fraser did understand.
The other thing he did understand was the importance of not just economics, but the importance of the humanity of governing. I believe history will say the greatest thing he did was the compassion he displayed towards the Vietnamese boat people. Who was the person who took out parashooter Kristina Keneally, she was a young woman of Vietnamese descent. I don't pretend to know all the background, but I do know that the legacy of that great act of humanity and those sorts of things don't happen unless they're driven from the top.
Now, I'm not going to pretend Malcolm Fraser and I didn't have our differences. We did, and I'm not pretending otherwise, but I am reminded of that wonderful injunction that the things that unite us are greater and infinitely more enduring than the things that divide us. And the things that may have divided us as in the Liberal Party, are minuscule compared with the things that united us. And Malcolm Fraser and I worked very closely together in great professional harmony as Prime Minister and Treasurer.
I had the opportunity on three occasions of casting a ballot for the leadership of the Liberal Party, when Fraser was a member of the party, on each of those three occasions. The first two ballots against Billy Snedden and then the final ballot in the standoff between he and Andrew Peacock. I voted for Malcolm because I thought he was the best person to lead the Liberal Party. I was always attracted to his commitment on things like foreign policy and defence. And I remember the debates about our involvement in Vietnam, which first attracted me to Fraser. He could put the case better than anybody else in politics. The only person who could put the case, as well as Fraser, wasn't in politics in a formal sense. Although I think he was in a real sense, quite involved in politics and his name was B.A. Santamaria. And Santamaria and Fraser could put the case better than anybody.
But can I just finish by saying to all of you, thank you for coming. I think Denis has done a singular service to our party and the memory of a great Prime Minister and a great leader of our country. And to you Alan, thank you for your compassion. Thank you for the feeling and zeal you've brought to tonight, because nobody can do that job well without having great staff and great advisers and great supporters. I had them in people like Arthur Sinodinos and Tony Nutt and Michael Thawley. And you are an example of that and thank you. And to you, Nick, you do great service to the Liberal Party and you do great honour to somebody who’s part of the pantheon. Thank you.
Fraser in Office is published by Jeparit Press. Buy the book here
