Ideas@TheCentre
A pox on the liberal house
Jeremy Sammut |
28 May 2010
His decision will simply confirm the reputation he has already acquired on the side of politics that made him prime minister in the most controversial of circumstances.
The ‘Dismissal of the Whitlam Government’ is the prism through which Fraser, and much of the political history of the past 35 years, must be judged.
Whitlam was a disastrous prime minister who was headed for an electoral wipe-out at the next federal poll. But was his government so ‘reprehensible’ as to warrant the decision to block Supply in the Senate?
Fraser certainly believed so – and, as events unfolded, his boldness was rewarded and his ambition satisfied a few months earlier than otherwise would have occurred.
At the time, rank-and-file partisans generally swallowed their reservations (and maybe their scruples, except for John Gorton). They threw their support behind the leader’s crash-through strategy which, on any fair reading, involved some pretty sharp and brutal political practice.
Yet it is the foot-soldiers, not the general, who paid the social price for the perception that Whitlam didn’t ‘get a fair go.’ Fraser’s actions were widely interpreted as confirming every Tory born-to-rule stereotype, and the political brand was permanently sullied in a large and influential segment of Australian society.
Many baby boomers, justifiably sick of 23 years of unbroken Coalition rule, were alienated by what became a formative political experience. The lesson they took to heart was that if the Right were capable of engineering the defeat of a democratically elected government, what were they not capable of doing?
Fraser polarised and embittered Australian life like few other figures in our history. The consequences go beyond party politics and have shaped the intellectual climate in which all those who subscribe to liberal ideas and values have to operate today.
The outrage generated by the Dismissal became the well-spring of the dominant Left-of-Centre media, arts, and academic culture that is generally hostile to all things Right.
It is ironic, to say the least, that Fraser has spent his retirement chasing cheers from the ‘elites’ he alienated. He has the right to speak his mind. But given the cultural consequences of what he did back in 1975, the acclaim Fraser continues to receive from the Left is irritating, and justifiably so, if ever you have been treated as social lepers for holding Right-of-Centre views.
Dr Jeremy Sammut is a Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies.
