Malcolm Fraser

John Malcolm Fraser was born in Melbourne in 1930 into a grazing family and studied at Oxford. He won the Victorian seat of Wannon in 1955, aged 25, and served as minister for the army during the Vietnam War. He became Liberal leader in March 1975 and used the Senate to block the Whitlam government's budget. After Sir John Kerr dismissed Whitlam, Fraser became caretaker prime minister and won the December 1975 election in a landslide. He lost to Bob Hawke in 1983, left the Liberal Party in 2009 and died in 2015.

Admirers credit Fraser with restoring stability after the turmoil of 1975, opening Australia to Asian immigration and refugees, supporting Indigenous land rights and multiculturalism, and taking a leading part in the Commonwealth campaign against apartheid. His role in blocking supply and the dismissal of the Whitlam government remains the most controversial episode of his career, and critics charged him with manipulating the Governor-General. Economic liberals in his own party later called his years in office a decade of lost opportunities, pointing to high unemployment and inflation and his reluctance to deregulate. In retirement he became a critic of both major parties on asylum seekers, civil liberties and the Iraq War, and worked with Gough Whitlam for an Australian republic.