Renewing Australia

Malcolm Fraser's Common Sense Manifesto

It's bewildering to see just exactly where Malcolm Fraser's political vision ended up. We guessed that he stayed essentially where he was in his mind while the polity collectively drifted to the right, and yet we also get the feeling he moved substantially to the left in the wake of his own experience as Prime Minister, following on from Gough Whitlam's time as Prime Minister.

Just reading the titles of sections is quite fascinating. He wants to talk about a 'modern progressive democracy'; social justice; renewal and independence; democratic reform; ethical politics; status of women (Presumably towards gender equality); sustainable economy; and probably most un-Howardian and un-Abbottian of them all, a secular Australian Republic.There's more and it goes into some detail, but perhaps the most notable thing might be that this document is being described as a 'manifesto'.

Manifestos of course belong to a long tradition on the left side of politics, the most famous one being the communist manifesto; but of course there was a Surrealist manifesto penned by Andres Breton in the early part of the 20th century and there was the Situationalist International Manifesto going around Paris in the 1968 student movement. When you think back, Malcolm Fraser would have been on the side of politics where they would have viewed any kind of political tract labeled as a 'manifesto' with a great deal of suspicion. It is deeply moving to find that Malcolm Fraser found himself working on this project in the latter part of his life, and without self-reflexiveness, was sending it out to canvas support.

Of course, Malcolm Fraser didn't table the document as a manifesto, but as "a Statement of Values and Purposes", but everybody with half a brain knows what this is, even the Sydney Morning Herald, - a manifesto.

"We do not take this step lightly or impulsively," the statement reads. "Our party has been created in the belief that the major political parties ... have repeatedly failed Australians on the big issues". 

"When over long duration the foundations of political parties become eroded and their purposes fall out of touch with the nation's basic values and beliefs, and when government and opposition join in advocating policies ever more corrosive of our national spirit of fairness and justice, there arises the need for new political groupings to better express the voice of the people," says the statement, which is dated January 20. 

The document says the party accepts "the overwhelming scientific evidence of climate change" and recognises that "nothing short of a profoundly different way of structuring the global economy will avert the catastrophic effects of a warming planet." 

"Despite the un-extracted riches in Australia's coal reserves, the imperative of moving to a post-carbon economy is clear, and the urgency of government intervention to achieve it is compelling," it reads. 

Rejecting arguments that Australia was already fully populated, it argues the nation needed to be prepared to increase its population, arguing a larger population would contribute to the nation's "long term vitality and security" as well as its influence on global affairs.

That sure sounds like a manifesto. Manifestos always start with rejecting the status quo and arguing for a radical progression with prescriptions. Conservatives don't write manifestos because their thinking progresses from the lukewarm enthusiasm that the status quo with all its injustices and failings is pretty jolly good.

A quarter of a century ago in what can only be described as another intellectual epoch, I was with a writers' group and proposed we write a manifesto. The notion was laughed out of the Harold Park Hotel. I look back on it now and I think the Sydney University writing set was a lot more bourgeois, complacent, un-radical and largely un-aspirational than I was. I wanted a manifesto because without one, you can't rally a call to change. To proceed with a method or madness or method in one's madness. The truth is, those people didn't want any kind of change - and that sort of drifts off into consumerism and naive materialism and blind acceptance of stupid political rhetoric which is at the heart of conservatism in this country. In that sense, I find it greatly edifying to know that up until the moment died Malcolm Fraser cared about this country enough to be working on a manifesto.

The most important takeaway might be that the tract represents a comprehensive critique of what is wrong with the two major parties in Australia, and that policy-wise, Malcolm Fraser essentially ended up as a kind of Australian Democrat in the sense of the party made by Don Chip (and made defunct by the lamentable Natasha Stott-Despoja and miserable Meg Lees), long after the said party became defunct. I don't know if there is a future in this project, but it is certainly interesting to see where Malcolm Fraser ended up on the political spectrum and it speaks volumes to the distance traveled to the idiotic right by Australian politics in the 21st Century.