PShift interview with former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser about the modern Liberal Party [the back story to the Redgum song 'Brown Rice & Kerosene']
PShift: What did you mean when you said ‘Life wasn’t meant to be easy’?
Fraser: I was making a conscious effort to try and say some things about what the Liberal Party stood for - it's hard to remember dates exactly - I made one speech to the Alfred Deakin Lecture Trust in 1971 and Menzies came out of retirement to chair the meeting for me and that sort of thing. With those words I was trying to say that life was hard but some wonderful things could be achieved if you remain disciplined and set your goals.
PShift: Was life meant to be Tony Abbott? Do we deserve him?
Fraser: Well, frankly, no. Tony Abbott is not a big L liberal like Menzies and me, he is a radical from the right imposed on us by the dries like John Howard.
PShift: The Deakin speech where you said the words Life wasn’t meant to be easy was the first time that I'm aware of, that you articulated some of the thoughts about the Liberal Party and what it stood for?
Fraser: It was the first since Menzies speech "The Forgotten People" in 1942 – a speech that articulated a philosophical view for the Liberal Party.
PShift: Is Tony Abbott doing the same thing now?
Fraser: No, no one is … It's missing now,
PShift: So why did you say Life wasn’t meant to be easy?
Fraser: Consider former communist country, Hungary. The children there would have been under a fairly rigid discipline. They would have had a reasonable life, but they would have been taught that life's difficult, it's not meant to be easy, you can't have all the sweets all the day, your parents can't have everything they want to have all at once.
PShift: But that is Hungary, what about ordinary people in Australia?
Fraser: Well, in Australia, we had had a prudent government or governments mostly that husbanded Australia's resources. We paid our own way, we weren't in debt to the world, we had offered Australia a longer period of full employment, with unemployment mostly under 2%, with a rate of growth far better than the OECD average, with inflation much less than the OECD average, rate of investment in new development that far exceeds anything that happens today, and you still say to them, 'You must be restrained, you can't have everything. You can't have everything all at once'.
PShift: So what about Gough Whitlam?
Fraser: Well suddenly along comes Gough as Father Christmas coming along and saying, 'We're a great wealthy nation, you can have everything you want all at once'.
PShift: But didn’t you send 19 year-olds off to war in Vietnam to be killed and Gough came along and stopped all that?
Fraser: A lot more would have been killed as a result of what Gough did.
PShift: How’s that?
Fraser: Communist Vietnam is a ruthless regime.
PShift: But aren’t more and more Australians going to Vietnam as tourists?
Fraser: Tammy and I refuse to go to Vietnam.
PShift: I think we should leave it there and listen to the Redgum ‘Brown Rice and Kerosine’
Julie did three years' trade school
I served my apprenticeship time
We made a modest living, but we were upstaged
Because computers don't strike or need holidays
Our parents ate bread and dripping
Stole wood from the park to keep warm
We're eating by the heater in threadbare jeans
Brown rice and kerosene
Life wasn't meant to be impossible
Spare us the indignity
Two cheers for progress, reason denied
Whitewash and platitudes are all I can find
Our parents ate bread and dripping
Stole wood from the park to keep warm
The cupboard's bare, all we can share's
Brown rice and kerosene
Sometimes I think about cocktails
Update Molotov's recipe
Forget the gravel ballast and stink of benzene
Use rice and kerosene
A major change of scene
Like 1917
With people before machines.
[thnx eliza]
