First published in The Age on March 28, 1983

Fraser quits Wannon

Stripped of his power, he just wants out

It is almost impossible to imagine Malcolm Fraser stripped of power. He was determined that we should not see him so.

Malcolm Fraser concedes defeat in the 1983 election.Credit:Paul Wright

It was a sad decision, Mr Fraser observed yesterday, to leave Wannon, but to stay in Parliament would make it difficult for the party and the new leadership. No doubt that was partly his motive: equally it was a matter of pride. The former leader could not be, and had no interest in becoming, another man’s follower: that would pile humiliation upon humiliation.

In the weeks since the election, Mr Fraser has seemed bemused and confused by the situation in which he finds himself. He wanted just to get out of it all.

John Malcolm Fraser entered Parliament for the seat of Wannon in 1955, when he was 25. He leaves it at the comparatively young age of 52, in that dreadful position than confronts leaders tossed out well before normal retirement age: where to from here?

Of course he has plenty of money, the farm, the opportunity to take up business directorships. But politics and political power have been his existence for more than a quarter of a century. He is a man who has used politics as the medium through which to relate to other people, and, at another level, to reassure himself. In just two months, he has lost all.

Fraser on the election trail in 1980.Credit:Adrian Greer

The fall of Malcolm Fraser came with amazing speed. In late January he seemed — however deceptive that perception was (and we can’t know how he would have gone against Bill Hayden) — to have the next election at least within his grasp.

But really that fall started soon after he inflicted on Gough Whitlam, for the second time, the sort of devastating humiliation he suffered on 5 March. The last five years of his Prime Ministership were a continuing struggle to hold on to the railings as his Government went inexorably down the slide.

In the last days of his Government, his party looked to him as some sort of miracle worker: he had received the scars of so many battles, and survived, that he seemed indestructible.

But when he lost, the Liberals wanted to turn away as quickly as possible from Fraserism, or at least from the harsh style of it. If he had remained within Parliament they would have been embarrassed. He was respected because he was strong and successful. He was never loved.

Malcolm Fraser speaks at a Liberal rally in 1975.Credit:Kevin John Berry

What of his achievements?

It is much too early to judge how history will regard Malcolm Fraser and the Fraser years. The honeymoon days of the new Government hardly provide an objective vantage point for judgment.

Just now, people are recalling from the Fraser period, especially from its divisiveness. Mr Fraser won power by an act of political violence and that coloured his whole reign.

He took Prime Ministerial government to its ultimate, dominating and often exhausting his Cabinet. He was obsessive and frenetic in the manner he ran his administration. He based many decisions on what would patch up particular situations here and now, and ultimately the electorate doubted that he stood for a consistent or coherent programme.

Mr Fraser came into power in 1975 promising to bring down inflation and unemployment and restore economic growth. It would, he said, take a full three years.

He was relentless about the Whitlam Government’s failures. Ultimately he fell victim to many of the same problems that brought down Mr Whitlam: mounting unemployment, a weak economy, the ramifications of economic troubles abroad, ministerial scandals.

He left the economy as bad as he found it.

But to leave it at that is to ignore an important point: that Australia’s problems in the decade have been only partly within the abilities of government to solve.

Mr Fraser broke promises and failed to stick to his rhetoric.

He was judged the more harshly for that because of the standards he himself had claimed a Government had to meet. In power, he muddled through, and that turned out not to be good enough.

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