Malcolm Fraser
John Malcolm Fraser AC CH GCL PC (/ˈfreɪzər/; 21 May 1930 – 20 March 2015) was an Australian politician who served as the 22nd prime minister of Australia from 1975 to 1983. He held office as the leader of the Liberal Party of Australia.
For other people named Malcolm Fraser, see Malcolm Fraser (disambiguation).
Malcolm Fraser
Gough Whitlam
Phillip Lynch
Billy Snedden
Gough Whitlam
Gough Whitlam
John Gorton
John Gorton
John Gorton
- Harold Holt
- John McEwen
- John Gorton
Phillip Lynch
20 March 2015 (aged 84)
Melbourne, Australia
Liberal (1952–2009)
4
- Simon Fraser Sr. (grandfather)
- Simon Fraser Jr. (uncle)
Fraser was raised on his father's sheep stations, and after studying at Magdalen College, Oxford, returned to Australia to take over the family property in the Western District of Victoria. After an initial defeat in 1954, he was elected to the Australian House of Representatives at the 1955 federal election, as a member of parliament (MP) for the division of Wannon. He was 25 at the time, making him one of the youngest people ever elected to parliament. When Harold Holt became prime minister in 1966, Fraser was appointed Minister for the Army. After Holt's disappearance and replacement by John Gorton, Fraser became Minister for Education and Science (1968–1969) and then Minister for Defence (1969–1971). In 1971, Fraser resigned from cabinet and denounced Gorton as "unfit to hold the great office of prime minister"; this precipitated the replacement of Gorton with William McMahon. He subsequently returned to his old education and science portfolio.
After the Liberal-National Coalition was defeated at the 1972 election, Fraser unsuccessfully stood for the Liberal leadership, losing to Billy Snedden. When the party lost the 1974 election, he began to move against Snedden, eventually mounting a successful challenge in March 1975. As Leader of the Opposition, Fraser used the Coalition's control of the Australian Senate to block supply to the Whitlam government, precipitating the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis. This culminated with Gough Whitlam being dismissed as prime minister by the governor-general, Sir John Kerr, a unique occurrence in Australian history. The correctness of Fraser's actions in the crisis and the exact nature of his involvement in Kerr's decision have since been a topic of debate. Fraser remains the only Australian prime minister to ascend to the position upon the dismissal of his predecessor.
After Whitlam's dismissal, Fraser was sworn in as prime minister on an initial caretaker basis. The Coalition won a landslide victory at the 1975 election, and was re-elected in 1977 and 1980. Fraser took a keen interest in foreign affairs as prime minister, and was more active in the international sphere than many of his predecessors. He was a strong supporter of multiculturalism, and during his term in office Australia admitted significant numbers of non-white immigrants (including Vietnamese boat people) for the first time, effectively ending the White Australia policy. His government also established the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS). Particularly in his final years in office, Fraser came into conflict with the "dry" economic rationalist and fiscal conservative faction of his party. His government made few major changes to economic policy.
After losing the 1983 election, Fraser retired from politics. In his post-political career, he held advisory positions with the United Nations (UN) and the Commonwealth of Nations, and was president of the aid agency CARE from 1990 to 1995. He resigned his membership of the Liberal Party in 2009 after the election of Tony Abbott as leader, Fraser having been a critic of the Liberals’ policy direction for a number of years. Evaluations of Fraser's prime ministership have been mixed. He is generally credited with restoring stability to the country after a series of short-term leaders and has been praised for his commitment to multiculturalism and opposition to apartheid in South Africa, but the circumstances of his entry to office remains controversial and many have viewed his government as a lost opportunity for economic reform. His seven and a half-year tenure as prime minister is the fourth longest in Australian history, only surpassed by Bob Hawke, John Howard and Robert Menzies.
Early life[edit]
Birth and family background[edit]
John Malcolm Fraser was born in Toorak, Melbourne, Victoria, on 21 May 1930. He was the second of two children born to Una Arnold (née Woolf) and John Neville Fraser; his older sister Lorraine had been born in 1928. Both he and his father were known exclusively by their middle names. His paternal grandfather, Sir Simon Fraser, was born in Nova Scotia, Canada, and arrived in Australia in 1853. He made his fortune as a railway contractor, and later acquired significant pastoral holdings, becoming a member of the "squattocracy". Fraser's maternal grandfather, Louis Woolf, was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, and arrived in Australia as a child. He was of Jewish origin, a fact which his grandson did not learn until he was an adult. A chartered accountant by trade, he married Amy Booth, who was related to the wealthy Hordern family of Sydney and was a first cousin of Sir Samuel Hordern.[1]
Fraser had a political background on both sides of his family. His father served on the Wakool Shire Council, including as president for two years, and was an admirer of Billy Hughes and a friend of Richard Casey. Simon Fraser served in both houses of the colonial Parliament of Victoria, and represented Victoria at several of the constitutional conventions of the 1890s. He eventually become one of the inaugural members of the new federal Senate, serving from 1901 to 1913 as a member of the early conservative parties. Louis Woolf also ran for the Senate in 1901, standing as a Free Trader in Western Australia. He polled only 400 votes across the whole state, and was never again a candidate for public office.[1]
Childhood[edit]
Fraser spent most of his early life at Balpool-Nyang, a sheep station of 15,000 hectares (37,000 acres) on the Edward River near Moulamein, New South Wales. His father had a law degree from Magdalen College, Oxford, but never practised law and preferred the life of a grazier. Fraser contracted a severe case of pneumonia when he was eight years old, which nearly proved fatal. He was home-schooled until the age of ten, when he was sent to board at Tudor House School in the Southern Highlands. He attended Tudor House from 1940 to 1943, and then completed his secondary education at Melbourne Grammar School from 1944 to 1948 where he was a member of Rusden House. While at Melbourne Grammar, he lived in a flat that his parents owned on Collins Street. In 1943, Fraser's father sold Balpool-Nyang – which had been prone to drought – and bought Nareen, in the Western District of Victoria. He was devastated by the sale of his childhood home, and regarded the day he found out about it as the worst of his life.[1]
University[edit]
In 1949, Fraser moved to England to study at Magdalen College, Oxford, which his father had also attended. He read Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE), graduating in 1952 with third-class honours. Although Fraser did not excel academically, he regarded his time at Oxford as his intellectual awakening, where he learned "how to think". His college tutor was Harry Weldon, who was a strong influence. His circle of friends at Oxford included Raymond Bonham Carter, Nicolas Browne-Wilkinson, and John Turner. In his second year, he had a relationship with Anne Reid, who as Anne Fairbairn later became a prominent poet. After graduating, Fraser considered taking a law degree or joining the British Army, but eventually decided to return to Australia and take over the running of the family property.[1]
Early political career[edit]
Fraser returned to Australia in mid-1952. He began attending meetings of the Young Liberals in Hamilton, and became acquainted with many of the local party officials. In November 1953, aged 23, Fraser unexpectedly won Liberal preselection for the Division of Wannon, which covered most of Victoria's Western District. The previous Liberal member, Dan Mackinnon, had been defeated in 1951 and moved to a different electorate. He was expected to be succeeded by Magnus Cormack, who had recently lost his place in the Senate. Fraser had put his name forward as a way of building a profile for future candidacies, but mounted a strong campaign and in the end won a narrow victory.[2] In January 1954, he made the first of a series of weekly radio broadcasts on 3HA Hamilton and 3YB Warrnambool, titled One Australia. His program – consisting of a pre-recorded 15-minute monologue – covered a wide range of topics, and was often reprinted in newspapers. It continued more or less uninterrupted until his retirement from politics in 1983, and helped him build a substantial personal following in his electorate.[3]
At the 1954 election, Fraser lost to the sitting Labor member Don McLeod by just 17 votes (out of over 37,000 cast).[4] However, he reprised his candidacy at the early 1955 election after a redistribution made Wannon notionally Liberal. McLeod concluded the reconfigured Wannon was unwinnable and retired. These factors, combined with the 1955 Labor Party split, allowed Fraser to win a landslide victory.[5]
