Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise to speak on this condolence motion for our 22nd Prime Minister, the Hon. Malcolm Fraser. Malcolm Fraser was first elected to parliament back in 1955. After 11 years, he served in cabinet in 1966. He became our 22nd Prime Minister in 1975, going on to win elections in 1977 and 1980. He finally lost office in 1983. He died earlier this week, on 20 March, aged 84.

I would like to add my words to the many wonderful condolence speeches that have been said in this chamber. I would like to highlight a few great achievements of Malcolm Fraser and how history has proven that the decisions that he made at the time showed that he was on the right side of history.

I would first like to speak about the work that Fraser did in removing the Whitlam government. I know it is often a bane to the Left side of politics, but history records the absolute ruinous record of the Whitlam government. We saw that in 1974-75, in one year, government spending actually increased an incredible 40 per cent. At the same time, taxes were whacked up by 30 per cent. That caused massive dislocations to the economy. Inflation hit above 20 per cent and we saw a massive increase in unemployment, rising to the highest level since the Great Depression. We also saw the chaos of the Khemlani affair—the Khemlani loans affair—an economic disaster that ruined Australia's reputation.

But if you look at perhaps what was the worst part, and the reason it was so essential that Malcolm Fraser won that 1975 election, it was the way that the then government—the Labor Party—went about funding themselves. This is an unbelievable part of our Australian history—the Labor government actually sought $2 million in secret election funding from the Iraqi Baathist Socialist Party. The then previous PM actually sent an envoy to meet with Saddam Hussein, the then Vice-President of Iraq. As Greg Sheridan says of this sordid period in our history:

… on any measure for an Australian political leader to seek secret—

Debate interrupted.

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