Precede:
The passing of former prime minister Malcolm Fraser has brought tributes from around the world. Member for McMillan Russell Broadbent recalls the man and the politician. Vale – The Right Honourable John Malcolm Fraser AC CH.
IT’S 1972 Malcolm Fraser is seated just three metres in front of me as my band The Trutones was preparing to warm up the crowd before the campaign launch for the then Liberal Prime Minister Billy McMahon.
A more difficult audience I have never faced!
Mr Fraser along with his ministry colleagues all had their arms crossed with not a smile to be seen. Malcolm Fraser stood out because he was “just big”. There we were at the Liberals campaign launch when the juggernaut campaign “It’s Time” was in full swing for Gough Whitlam. I was the only Liberal voter in my band.
The next time I stood beside Malcolm Fraser was the Barry Simons campaign at the Pakenham Race Course. The band was playing on the back of a truck when the new Prime Minister strolled on to the truck and began his address. When he spoke he was no Martin Luther King Jnr or Robert Kennedy, he really was a Western District farmer with a strong but measured voice. We country people felt very comfortable with his leadership.
When I received a hand-written letter of congratulations on my pre-selection for the seat of Streeton signed Malcolm Fraser I could hardly believe such a man of his standing could be so kind as to encourage me at that time.
He embodied the Liberal Party that I had joined in 1980.
As my friendship with Petro Georgiou became ever closer the stories of Malcolm Fraser gleaned by Petro’s past working with the PM flowed. Attention to detail, highly intelligent, passionate and compassionate, he returned respectability to government, its Parliament, its institutions and stability to the nation rocked by the sacking of the Whitlam Government.
Rather than reject the positive changes that the Whitlam Government had begun he embraced multiculturalism (a word he had phrased years before), indigenous affairs, the environment and Vietnam refugees.
Fraser walked the world stage with ease as the emerging nation that we were; opposing apartheid in South Africa without the support of much of the Australian community.
Through all of this he never neglected his constituents of Wannon. Having contested and lost, he then went on to win the next time round, and build to one of the safest seats in the state.
As Prime Minister he was the original grassroots campaigner. Malcolm Fraser to me reflected the nation as it was then.
A farmer, scholar, wordsmith who really believed in a fair go for all people, red, yellow, black or white and put his vision for the nation of the great south land to the test on every platform and in every decision.
Criticised by many in life now revered in death I’m sad that he is no longer with us.
Bron and I were at dinner with him and Tammy at a private celebration last year.
I wonder what our conversation might have been if I knew it was our last.
Russell Broadbent MP,
Federal Member for McMillan.
