Obituaries — Rt Hon Malcolm Fraser AC, CH, GCL

I seek leave to move a motion without notice in relation to the death of Malcolm Fraser, former Prime Minister of Australia.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that course of action being followed? There is none.

I move, That this House express its sadness at the passing on 20 March 2015 of former Australian Prime Minister Rt Hon Malcolm Fraser AC, CH, GCL, aged 84. Mr Fraser served his country with distinction as Australia’s 22nd Prime Minister from 1975, when he was appointed in a caretaker role following the shock dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam by the Governor-General. This was arguably the most dramatic day in Australia’s political history. Mr Fraser went on to win the following three elections and served as Prime Minister until 1983. During that time he made a significant contribution to the strengthening of the Australia - New Zealand relationship. It was during his time as Prime Minister that Australia and New Zealand negotiated and signed the Australia and New Zealand Closer Economic Relations Trade Agreement, commonly known as CER, with its enduring legacy of shared prosperity.

He will also be remembered for his work with the United Nations and humanitarian agencies. Mr Fraser was a strong opponent of white minority rule in South Africa and what was then Rhodesia. He served on a number of UN and Commonwealth bodies with a focus on southern Africa, and was president of the foreign aid group CARE International. Mr Fraser was also an advocate for multiculturalism in Australia and for indigenous and human rights, overseeing the establishment of the Family Court of Australia and the National Aboriginal Conference, instituting the position of a federal ombudsman, and passing the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976. He also played an influential role in the Commonwealth of Nations. On behalf of New Zealanders, I would like to express our condolences to his family and to the people of Australia.

I just rise briefly to support the motion and to acknowledge and record the New Zealand Labour Party’s condolences at this time over the loss of Malcolm Fraser, and to note that Malcolm Fraser was elevated to the role of Prime Minister of Australia in arguably the most controversial of circumstances. He acquitted himself in that post until he was succeeded by Bob Hawke, and it was his post - prime ministerial and post parliamentary career that I think he will be most remembered for, certainly on this side of the House. He led the Eminent Persons Group on behalf of the Commonwealth Heads of Government to inquire into apartheid in South Africa, and he was very much a part of the diplomatic process of leading the change externally that subsequently led to a genuinely free and democratic South Africa, which ultimately saw the election of Nelson Mandela as President in the 1990s.

I saw Malcolm Fraser speaking in Australia, interestingly enough at a trade union conference, which reflected the political change that I think he underwent. He was a conservative Prime Minister elected in conservative circumstances who had the presence of mind and the independence of spirit to question what subsequent conservative Governments in Australia had done, and he challenged some of the economic nostrums that certainly the John Howard Government had pursued. He took up the cudgels of not just free trade but fair trade in Australia, and a more compassionate approach to the people and to economic change and management there. We note his passing.

On behalf of the Green Party I offer our condolences to the friends and family of Malcolm Fraser, and acknowledge the huge contribution that he made to Australian politics and society. My colleague Russel Norman described Malcolm Fraser as an outstanding Australian voice of sanity and humanity. Throughout his life, he stood up for what was right and championed a very progressive social agenda, with great concern for those who were the most marginalised. He was a fierce opponent of apartheid. He helped to form the Gleneagles Agreement, which insisted that South Africa end apartheid if it wanted to continue to compete in the Commonwealth Games, and he infamously banned the plane carrying the Springbok rugby team from refuelling in Australia on its way to New Zealand for the tour in 1981. He continued this work after leaving Parliament, including chairing the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group against apartheid in South Africa.

He had a deep interest in the advancement of indigenous people, and it was his Government that recognised Aboriginal land rights by establishing the land rights regime in the Northern Territory. He also established the National Aboriginal Conference, a national organisation that represented indigenous Australians. His Government also established the Human Rights Commission. He was a champion of a multicultural Australia, and he set up the SBS, a channel to provide multilingual broadcasting for Australia’s migrant community. He was instrumental in Australia accepting 70,000 Vietnamese refugees displaced by the Viet Nam War, including 2,000 who arrived by boat with no documentation. He also worked to ensure that these refugees were embraced once they were in Australia. This cause stayed with him for life, most notably expressed by his quitting the Liberal Party in 2009 after its election ad portraying asylum seekers swamping Australia. He described the ad as “a throwback to a racist past, and not just for the Liberal Party but for Australia”.

His legacy also extends to environmental concerns. His Government prohibited exploration and drilling for petroleum on the Great Barrier Reef, and later declared the Great Barrier Reef a marine park. He also banned sand mining on Fraser Island, passed legislation to create national parks in Australia, and under his leadership the first Australian sites were placed on the World Heritage List. His Government also enacted the Whale Protection Act, ending whaling in Australia, and it achieved greater protection for Australian wildlife. Malcolm Fraser was also staunch on climate change. Back in 1980 he said: “The planet’s capacity to support its people is being irreversibly reduced by the destruction and degradation of the biosphere, and the need to understand the problem and take corrective action is becoming urgent.” Over 30 years later he put his name to action on climate change, saying: “The overwhelming body of scientific evidence supports the need for change. Many countries are well ahead of Australia. We need to act or we will fall further behind.”

When asked what he considered his badge of honour, there was a list of administrative law reform, including establishing the Human Rights Commission, and he said: “Because they all go to how Governments treat its people.” Thank you.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support the motion. It would appear that we are marking the end of the generation of Western political leaders from the 1970s. Malcolm Fraser’s death follows that of the other two major players in Australia’s biggest ever political crisis. [Interruption]

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order!

It is a respectful motion for a man who was important in politics. It is a shame that some members of the House do not feel that way, but New Zealand First does and does not take this lightly. Mr Fraser is one of the last political players in what was Australia’s biggest ever political crisis, with Gough Whitlam passing last year and Sir John Kerr passing in 1991.

Malcolm Fraser’s most famous quote is considered by some to be: “Life is not meant to be easy.” One might say that this encapsulates his belief in self-discipline and individual sacrifice, and that it sums up nicely the event that will for ever dominate his legacy as a master of detail. In 1975 the Liberal majority in the Australian Senate refused to pass Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s money bill. This paralysed Australia’s Government. The tipping point came when Whitlam refused to resign or to call a general election, which saw the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, exercise his rarely used reserve powers to dismiss Whitlam’s Labor Government. Malcom Fraser became caretaker Prime Minister that day, 11 November 1975, which is of course Armistice Day. A general election was called for 13 December of that year, and despite the controversy of Whitlam’s dismissal, Fraser led the Liberal - Country Party coalition to the largest victory in Australian history, taking 30 seats off Labor to secure a 55-seat majority.

While Fraser repudiated some of Whitlam’s initiatives; he extended others—confounding his opponents and their perception of him as an aloof, landed grazier. As we have already heard, from 1975 until his 1993 defeat by Labor’s Bob Hawke, he established the Australian Family Court and the Federal Court of Australia. He also gave the Northern Territory self-government and passed Aboriginal land rights. He followed our much earlier lead in New Zealand by creating federal ombudsmen. He also ended the mining of mineral sands from Fraser Island and declared 36,000 square kilometres of the Great Barrier Reef off Cairns as a marine park. Yet he was also not scared to use mineral extraction where it made sense, and these resources boomed under his leadership, helping to propel the Australian economy.

Malcolm Fraser was touched by the plight of Vietnamese refugees and made great efforts to expand that refugee programme—something he continued with after leaving office. Socially, he introduced family allowances paid to mothers and oversaw the decision to build a new Parliament House in Canberra. Internationally, he supported anti-apartheid boycotts against South Africa, and given the state of global farming in the 1970s, he also called for a global common fund to stabilise commodity prices. Fraser was an economic traditionalist, yet together with that other giant of politics, Sir Robert Muldoon, they negotiated and agreed closer economic relations between our two countries. This remains our most important trade agreement, proving that sensible trade agreements based on common sense do work.

Malcolm Fraser was born in 1930 in Melbourne and grew up on the family farm. He graduated from Oxford University in 1952, working as a grazier before becoming in 1955, at the age of 25, the youngest federal member of Parliament. He would serve for 28 years. An imposingly tall figure at 6 feet, 4 inches, in 1956 he married Tamara Beggs, who survives him, and together they had four children—Mark, Angela, Hugh, and Phoebe. Our sympathies go to them, their families, and the Australian people.

I want to associate myself with the remarks that have been made by others paying tribute to John Malcolm Fraser, Australia’s late Prime Minister, who died at the end of last week. I am not going to quote extensively from Wikipedia in doing so, but I do want to observe that Malcolm Fraser was a man of extraordinary contrasts—the conservative Prime Minister, whose record is one of social reform; the patrician country squire from Wannon in Victoria, who was a career politician from the age of 25, but who abruptly resigned from Parliament upon losing the election in 1983, to return to his roots.

He was the man who in recent years established a strong following in social media with his comments on all ranges of issues as recently as the last couple of weeks on the international situation, the environment, Australian politics, and always from the perspective of some common sense, some good judgment, and a real heart and compassion for those who were adversely or marginally affected by decisions of Governments. The interesting thing to me about Malcom Fraser was given the circumstances of his arrival in office, where he was labelled for many years as Kerr’s cur by Gough Whitlam, the two went on to become very firm friends in their post-political careers, who apparently often met to lament the state of their respective political parties subsequent to their departures.

New Zealand has lost a good friend. CER was an initiative of the Fraser Government. The “Nareen agreement”, entered into on his country property, is another enduring mark of cooperation between our two countries. It is appropriate for this Parliament to pay tribute to a great Australian leader. It is appropriate that we share our sympathy with his family, his former colleagues, his friends, and mark the greatness of his contribution to his nation.

Far be it from me to give another exhaustive account of this great man’s life. However, what I would like to do is pay tribute to one particular aspect of his prime ministership and career: he changed the culture and the face of Australia by welcoming over 200,000 immigrants to Australia during his time as Prime Minister. That is a statement about how countries like our own and Australia should regard the world not as something we are afraid of but as something in which we stand tall and welcome immigrants to our shores. And on that note, I would like today to share my condolences with our Australian cousins on the loss of a great and tall eucalyptus. Thank you.

Motion agreed to.

Hon Lee Kuan Yew GCMG, CH