Peter A Clarke

Malcolm Fraser had a very very late mid life crisis.  He didn’t ditch the wife, tried to hang out at live bands and relive a lost youth or even toke on a joint or three (though his ramblings might suggest otherwise).  His mid life crisis was political.  He went all lefty and suddenly discovered human rights issues, womens issues and developed a Central European anti Americanism that made him the darling of the commentariat.  Now the likes of Phillip Adams can point to Malcolm as proof that not all conservatives are bad.  Malcolm can fill out an invitation list where a token conservative is the done thing.  Fred Chaney, Bruce Baird and Marise Payne have sage company.

I guess you can’t blame the mutt.  He was turfed out in his 50s tried his hand at business (sort of) and didn’t really make a mark.  He wasn’t rich enough to live the life of the rural squatocracy and he wasn’t connected (or liked) enough to get a few comfy directorships and spend his leisure hours at the Melbourne Club.  One option, the Liberal Party, had enough of him.  He showed not much loyalty and when he had the main job ignored party principles and left it to the ALP to put in place all the wide ranging reforms of the early eighties.  The party made its feeling felt when he tried for the presidency of the Party at the 50th anniversary conference in Al bury.  I was there and as Fraser approached the crowds parted.  There was a 10 meter exclusion zone around him.  He pulled out just before the election.  I felt a bit sorry for him being treated like typhoid Mary.  The Party should have looked after him better. 

But on Zimbabwe he should should be put on the stocks for a decade.  He shoe horned Mugabe into power.  Fraser says Mugabe should have quit after the first decade.    Yeah right.  He forgets The Gukurahundi  which involved a massacre of 10,000 – 30,000 Matabeleland and Midlands by a North Korean trained brigade.   Mugabe forced out Nkoma and just applied all the authoritarian tricks he acquired as a maoist in his pre Presidential days.  Mugabe is a progeny of Fraser’s mispent time as a failed world leader.  Mugabe was rotten when in opposition, he started out an authoritarian as President and just graduated to sociopath over time.  That Fraser can give himself an out for his complicity in the sickening mess that is Zimbabwe by saying that Mugabe was good for the first ten years shows him to be a second rate intellect with no moral compass.  He makes me sick!