Haunted by the manner of his rise to power, Malcolm Fraser spent his post-political life downplaying his role in the dismissal and seeking the forgiveness of his critics.
The difference between the two Malcolms—Fraser and Turnbull—is that at least Malcolm Fraser had the decency to resign his membership of the Liberal Party. Malcolm Turnbull, whose complaints about the party that made him prime minister get more bizarre as the years pass, has presumably calculated that he’ll get more attention if he is eventually expelled from the Liberals than if he leaves voluntarily.
Malcolm Fraser presented himself as a conservative when, at just 23, he won Liberal Party preselection for the 1954 federal election. (He lost by seventeen votes.) He vigorously and articulately defended Australia’s participation in the Vietnam War, he argued for smaller government, and in 1971, as a backbencher, he declared in his Alfred Deakin Lecture at the University of Melbourne:
We need a rugged society, but our new generations have seen only affluence. If a man has not known adversity, if in his lifetime his country has not been subject to attack, it is harder for him to understand that there are some things for which we must always struggle. Thus people or leaders can be trapped to take an easy path. This is the high road to national disaster.
Those remarks, now more than half a century old, describe Australia in 2026. Fraser also famously said:
Arnold Toynbee once wrote twelve volumes to demonstrate and analyse the cause of the rise and fall of nations. His thesis can be condensed to a sentence, and is simply stated: That through history nations are confronted by a series of challenges and whether they survive or whether they fall to the wayside, depends on the manner of character of their response …
There is within me some part of the metaphysic, and thus I would add that life is not meant to be easy.
The comedian, Barry Humphries, who like Fraser attended Melbourne Grammar School, commented that ‘life is not meant to be easy’ was Fraser’s only remembered utterance.
In government, Fraser was far from the ‘rugged individualist’.
At the age of 45, Fraser became prime minister. In government, he was far from the ‘rugged individualist’. Under Fraser, the role of the federal government got bigger, not smaller. It is not accurate to claim he was ‘more Whitlam than Whitlam’, but there were indeed many more similarities than differences between their two governments. Fraser was not the first, and certainly not the last Liberal leader to ‘talk right-wing and govern left-wing’. He followed Whitlam’s lead in extending the commonwealth’s powers in areas once assumed to be the domain of state governments, expanding the authority of government agencies to regulate citizens’ behaviour (for example, in 1981 Fraser established the Human Rights Commission), and, of course, promoting ‘multiculturalism’. In 1983, when Fraser left office after seven years and four months in power, government spending as a share of the economy was larger than in 1975.
In Malcolm Fraser: A Personal Reflection, Gerard Henderson brilliantly and forensically explores the contradictions of both Fraser’s government and of Fraser himself. The book’s subtitle is significant; Henderson explains, it “is not a cradle-to-grave account of Malcolm Fraser’s life and times” but, rather, a series of stand-alone chapters which primarily deal with Malcolm Fraser’s political career. By writing ‘A Personal Reflection’ rather than ‘a biography’, or ‘a history’, Henderson has the benefit of discussing Fraser from multiple perspectives—as a historian, as a journalist, and as someone who knew Fraser personally and who worked as a staffer for four years to a minister in the Fraser government. In 1975 Fraser interviewed Henderson for a position on his staff. Although Henderson didn’t get the job, he writes “I enjoyed the discussion with Fraser”.
The range of Henderson’s perspectives ensures his book is interesting, original, and thought-provoking, three adjectives rarely applied to writing about politics in Australia. Malcolm Fraser: A Personal Reflection sits with works like Don Watson’s Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: A Portrait of Paul Keating PM, and Paul Hasluck’s The Chance of Politics. What’s been said of Hasluck’s book, that it is “vivid, honest and wise”, applies to Henderson’s. What Henderson, Watson, and Hasluck have in common is that they are opinionated but fair. While readers know where the authors stand on the subject, they are given the background and context to reach their own conclusions.
His ever-changing versions of events indicate that Fraser often believed (or said he believed) whatever was advantageous or convenient to believe at the time. To describe Fraser as a ‘chancer’ or a ‘trimmer’ wouldn’t be accurate; he wasn’t mendacious. Rather, he had “strong opinions, weakly held”.
Henderson is far too sophisticated a historian to give a definitive answer as to what sort of person Malcolm Fraser was. Henderson lets the evidence speak for itself, and he lets Fraser speak for himself. There is no shortage of material to work with. There are Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs that Fraser wrote in collaboration with the left-wing academic Margaret Simons (Simons’ other works include biographies of Tanya Plibersek and Penny Wong), Philip Ayres’ Malcolm Fraser: A Biography, Patrick Weller’s Malcolm Fraser PM, and Fraser in Office by Denis White.
Fraser’s Memoirs is peculiar in that Fraser talks of himself in the third person and Simons describes herself as ‘the narrator’ of what is “part memoir and part authorised biography”. As Henderson points out, it is a work full of mistakes, one over-reliant on memory and influenced by Fraser’s antipathy to the Liberal Party. Henderson quotes Simons’ postscript to the ‘Updated Commemorative Edition’ of The Political Memoirs:
A few weeks after the last chapter was finished in November 2009, Fraser, the publisher Louise Adler and I met for lunch to mark the end of our work together. On the agenda was a final decision on the title, which had not yet been decided.
I suggested that it be called either ‘Liberal’ or ‘Enduring Liberal’, with a subtitle saying it was Fraser’s story. Until this day, I had thought Fraser was happy with something along those lines, but at this lunch, he was strangely and suddenly contrary. He said he would prefer that the word ‘liberal’ not appear on the cover. When I tried to argue,
he got quite angry and insisted. He even talked about stopping the book altogether if we could not agree. Shocked and puzzled, I stopped arguing, and we agreed on the title that appears on the cover. It was very much a compromise.
It was a few weeks later, in the new year and after the book was off to the printing press and no changes could be made, that Fraser contacted me and confided his reasons for wanting no reference to liberalism in the title. He … had resigned from the Liberal Party.
As Henderson explains:
This is an important, albeit belated, acknowledgement that when his political memoirs were written, Fraser was alienated from the Liberal Party, which he had led for around eight years. It is reasonable to assume that Fraser’s disillusionment with the Liberal Party influenced his political memoirs. Consequently, it is reasonable to query the accuracy of Fraser’s recall of events.
In the years after his Alfred Deakin Lecture, when his supposed hard-heartedness was criticised, Fraser attempted to soften his ‘life is not meant to be easy’ claim. In The Political Memoirs, Fraser suggested “the original quotation comes from George Bernard Shaw. It reads: ‘Life wasn’t meant to be easy, my child. But take courage. It can be delightful’.” As Henderson writes, Fraser made no mention of Shaw in his lecture, nor did he say life could be delightful. It seems that in 1971, Fraser was happy to say, without qualification, life is not meant to be easy. Forty years later he wasn’t happy to say it.
In The Political Memoirs, Fraser claims that Robert Menzies, then the Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, introduced him at that 1971 lecture. At the time Fraser was on the backbench, having previously served as a minister, and Menzies is claimed to have said, “… your day will come, Malcolm. Your day will come”.
This is what Henderson says about it.
Menzies’ comments are in direct quotation marks. But there is no citation in the book’s endnotes. The speech [Fraser’s] was reported in The Age on 21 July 1971. But there is no reference to Menzies as having introduced Fraser. It is difficult to imagine that a pro-Fraser comment made by Sir Robert Menzies—the Liberal Party founder and current Chancellor of the University of Melbourne—would not have been reported by mainstream media, especially since the speech was delivered not long after Fraser had brought Gorton down …
I emailed Margaret Simons on 7 July 2025 asking if she could “advise as to what is the evidence that Sir Robert Menzies was present at the 1971 Alfred Deakin Lecture and for the quotes attributed to him in The Political Memoirs.” There was no response.
Fraser’s attempt to soften something he said and his suggestion that he had been publicly endorsed by Robert Menzies, when in all likelihood Menzies’ quote was invented, are not matters of monumental importance. But they do go to Fraser’s truthfulness. Indeed, one of Henderson’s great skills as a historian is to identify comments and reactions about seemingly small things that point to a larger theme. In his discussion of 1975 and the sacking of the Whitlam government, Henderson examines a recollection Fraser claims to have had of what Kerr said to him prior to Whitlam’s dismissal as prime minister. More than a decade after 1975, Fraser maintained that on the morning of Tuesday, 11 November 1975, Kerr had told him that he was going to sack Whitlam. As Henderson explains, Fraser’s accusation “was very damaging to Kerr in that Fraser was saying that Kerr had effectively tipped Fraser off about his intention to dismiss Whitlam before the [Coalition] Joint Party Meeting took place. When the story broke [in Philip Ayres’ Malcolm Fraser: A Biography published in 1989], this played into the hands of Kerr’s many political enemies and diverted the focus from Fraser’s own actions.” Henderson recognises the key point; by portraying what Kerr did as somehow improper, Fraser reduces his own role in events. Instead of being the instigator of Whitlam’s removal, Fraser becomes merely the lucky beneficiary of Kerr’s alleged deviousness. The blame for what happened falls on the Governor-General. As Henderson establishes, there is, in fact, no evidence to support Fraser’s accusation against Kerr.
Fraser becomes merely the lucky beneficiary of Kerr’s alleged deviousness.
Henderson’s discussion of 1975 is enthralling. Despite his decisive election victories in 1975 and 1977, Fraser could never escape the taint of illegitimacy. As dramatic as what Fraser did was, Henderson argues there was nothing extraordinary about the Coalition’s decision to block supply. If it could have, Labor would have done exactly the same thing to a Coalition Government.
… between 1967 and 1972 Labor Party leaders argued that an Opposition could block supply and if it did then a government should resign and call an election.
This argument was run during the governments of prime ministers John Gorton and William McMahon. Those advocating Labor’s cause at the time were Opposition leader Whitlam and Lionel Murphy, Labor’s leader in the Senate. No one argued then that such a move, if implemented, would have amounted to a constitutional crisis leading to a threat to democracy.
The extent to which 1975 doomed the Fraser government’s future is much debated. Henderson quotes Bob Ellicott, who was one of Fraser’s key advisers in 1975 and who became Attorney-General after the election that year.
A short time after the election of 1975, Mr Fraser attempted to distance himself, as did a number of his ministers, from the events of November 11, 1975. He did this, not because of any high sense of principle based on any undertaking to Sir John Kerr, but because of a perception he had that it was in his own political interests to do so. This, of course, was a vain attempt. The birthright of the Fraser Government always remained in the events of November 11.
In his Menzies’ Child: The Liberal Party of Australia, published in 1994 and which remains the best history of the Liberal Party, Henderson recounted an exchange with John Howard. Howard supported the blocking of supply, but “he now regards it as a mistake. Howard believes that if the Liberals had waited until the next scheduled election (which would probably have been held in late 1976 or early 1977), then Fraser would ‘not have got so tentative’ when he came to office.” Howard also said “in a way it probably would have been better if the Liberal Party had stayed out of office slightly longer in the mid-1970s”. Many of Fraser’s key ministers were first appointed to the ministry in the 1960s and therefore in Henderson’s words, “the Fraser government tended to think that government was more of the same after November 1975 and that, consequently, some ministers did not understand the implications of the changes which had taken place in the 1970s.” It is certainly the case that the Coalition’s majorities in both houses were never used to bring about the sort of change Fraser promised in the lead-up to 1975.
Henderson concludes with a story.
In his final two decades, Fraser was most loved by Howard-haters. I recall a function at Old Parliament House (now called the Museum of Australian Democracy) in 2004. It was a dinner for a retiring Australian National University professor. Most in attendance were academics or public servants of left-wing disposition. It was the last time I spoke to Fraser, who I had once admired. I noticed a large number of guests approaching Fraser and stating how they admired his morality, courage and so on. He seemed to enjoy the praise—which was mostly of the fawning kind.
Perhaps one of the most telling references in The Political Memoirs is at page 735 where the following comment appears about Fraser in his final decade: ‘At literary festivals, Fraser was applauded by the same kinds of people who had once reviled his role in the dismissal of Whitlam.’ Enough said.
Malcolm Fraser: A Personal Reflection is an insightful and thoughtful book about one of the two most significant Australian politicians of the 1970s. It is writing about politics and political history of the highest order.
This article from the Winter 2026 edition of the IPA Review is written by IPA Honorary Life Member John Roskam.
