As the Romans liked to say, De mortuis nil nisi bene -- speak no ill of the dead. On the steps of our twenty-second prime minister's mausoleum, now being washed with the gushing left's telegenic tears, some will find such restraint presents a very great challenge indeed He was at the end a sad and silly old man — well-meaning, to bestow doubt’s benefit, but howling on the heath of his final years’ irrelevance all the same. Malcolm Fraser, that contradiction in terms, dead at 84.
Blubbered Petro Georgiou, once the Member for Multiculturalism and not much else, to the ABC’s Jon Faine within minutes of the announcement, Malcolm Fraser “carved his own path.” Him and Ludwig Leichardt, so take that and all the other graveside platitudes we’ll hear over the days to come for the precious little they are worth. De mortuis nil nisi bene, as the Romans liked to say, speak no ill of the dead. In the case of this headstone it will be a greater challenge than most.
Below, a random selection of Fraser’s presence in the pages of Quadrant and elsewhere. As mush runs a gusher, it might be handy to bookmark this page in order to be reminded that the haloes turned and fitted by stage-managers of partisan public spectacles are often made of cheapest, tarnished tin. ___________________ Malcolm Fraser’s Dangerous Dotage
Should his unhinged insights on trade and the US alliance be heeded, Australia would go down in history as a tragic and unforgettable sequel to that other ornament to Malcolm’s brilliant career, Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe ___________________ Shame, Fraser, Shame!
Is it relevance-deprivation syndrome that inspires those frequent pronouncements on a world which has moved quite clearly beyond Malcolm Fraser’s ken? Geriatric perversity, a compulsion to betray … who really knows? One thing, however, is certain: his opposition to Anzus is a new and contemptible low
Much more here
