Malcolm Fraser: Bearer of the Menzies torch

THE 1983 election marked the end of Malcolm Fraser’s government and the beginning of a personal transformation that would see him change several of his long-held views, quit the Liberal Party 25 years later and become one of its most biting critics.

But in a series of mostly unpublished interviews with Fraser, the first in 2002, he said he contemplated staying on as leader after the election. And after Fraser quit politics, he considered a return to parliament as the Liberals became embroiled in leadership turmoil.

“It would have been difficult to stay on,” Fraser told this writer. “I did consider it. But I think time had moved on. I think the party wanted a new leader. But I made the mistake in thinking that John Howard and Andrew Peacock knew they needed each other. If the two of them had of worked together they would have been an unbeatable pair. The idea of returning was a possibility, but the party had already begun to change.”

Fraser was a window into political history. He spent a decade in parliament during Robert Menzies’ prime ministership. He served as a minister under Harold Holt, John Gorton and Billy McMahon. His three election victories made him the Liberal Party’s third-longest serving prime minister. Fraser was always generous to me. In recent years, we talked at length on the phone. He sent occasional messages and letters. I conducted several long interviews with him in person. I found him a fascinating and compelling figure to talk to, much unlike his aloof and arrogant image.

Australians never warmed to him. Labor can never forgive his ruthless role in Gough Whitlam’s dismissal. Nor did many in the press gallery. Many Liberals loathed Fraser, branding him a turncoat. He was very aware of these views. After I interviewed him for this paper in 2013, noting his critics and contradictions, he sent me a message. “Very fair article,” he said. “I hope my enemies don’t ­attach feelings for me to you. My friends liked the piece.”

Fraser felt he was misunderstood. The Liberal Party, he argued, blamed him for the 1983 defeat. He had seen the party distance itself from Menzies, who resigned at a time of his choosing, a generation earlier. “I had lost an election,” Fraser said. “They were certainly going to try and disassociate themselves from me.”

Menzies also became disillusioned with the Liberal Party. He voted DLP in 1972 and probably in 1974. Fraser visited Menzies in his retirement years. “He had a fair degree of contempt for two or three leaders,” Fraser said. “He thought John Gorton was a wild man who was going to destroy the party.”

Menzies “didn’t disapprove”, Fraser said, when he stood in parliament in 1971 and denounced Gorton as “not fit to hold the great office of prime minister”. Menzies, in a phone conversation with Tony Staley, backed Fraser’s leadership challenges to Billy Snedden in 1974 and 1975.

Fraser didn’t have much time for Paul Hasluck, who had lost a leadership ballot to Gorton in 1968, and described him as “sneaky and snaky”. But he later thought Hasluck would have made a better prime minister.

Gorton’s elevation to the prime ministership came after Holt was lost at sea. Fraser said plotting was already under way to remove Holt and pointed the finger at Gorton. Fraser admired Holt and said he was “tormented” by the Vietnam War.

Country Party leader John McEwen was appointed prime minister. Fraser said McEwen wanted to remain in the role, and thought the Liberal Party should have supported him. “McEwen was probably the most underrated Australian politician,” Fraser said. “He could see Australia’s future.”

Although Fraser saw the dismissal as an “exhausted” subject, we discussed it at length. He never regretted his actions.

Fraser thought he had to do everything he could to remove the Whitlam government. He said governor-general John Kerr was a “lonely” man who was obsessed about “his place in history” and “frightened” of being recalled by the Queen on Whitlam’s advice.

In the 1980s and 90s, Fraser became estranged from the Liberal Party. He lamented the break with the small-l Liberal philosophy evident during his prime ministership. He claimed the Menzies mantle and accused John Howard of betraying it. “Menzies was a thoroughly liberal and progressive prime minister,” he said.

He accused Howard of introducing “racist attitudes into the body politic”. He saw Tony Abbott as “dangerous” and rejected his plea not to resign from the party in 2009. He saw Malcolm Turnbull as “the great hope” for the ­Liberals.

Looking back, Fraser rated Menzies as Australia’s greatest prime minister and Billy Hughes as the worst. He praised John ­Curtin and Ben Chifley. He saw Bob Hawke as “a consummate politician” and admired Paul Keating because he “would take on a fight for a cause”.

How did he want to be remembered? “For helping to build or to cement a multicultural Australia and to make sure that there were not racial differences (to) build a cohesive society,” he said.

Fraser was a significant prime minister who dedicated his life to public service and left a varied ­legacy, for good and ill. The Liberal Party should do more to recognise that legacy, even though it will never fully ­embrace the man who made it happen.

“The Labor Party makes heroes and builds myths out of its failed leaders,” Fraser said during one of our interviews.

“Those who want to denigrate the Liberal past, denigrate and diminish the party as a whole.”