Malcolm Fraser and the Australia-US Alliance

A few days after obituaries ran for former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser the news popped up, reported by website Crikey, that Fraser had been trying to form his own political party. According to a draft manifesto, the party would have been “a voice for renewal.. and to bring forth innovative, enlightened and compassionate policies to establish a national unity of purpose.” One interesting feature is the idea that the U.S. alliance is a liability not security for Australia.

The Third Way is a term that Australia’s Labor Party has used to describe its centrist faction, those who are fiscally more conservative but socially liberal. Paul Keating represented these ideas and so did short-time Opposition leader Mark Latham.

But what might a Liberal’s idea of a Third Way look like? Malcolm Fraser’s Renew Australia party might be it. In later years Fraser became something of a hero of the left, a once-staunch Liberal who criticized the party and believed, often quite loudly, in social justice. He finally quit his own party in 2009 when Tony Abbott became leader and eventually endorsed Green politician Sarah Hansen-Young. The two share concerns over refugee rights and treatment. Both are against offshore processing centers.

According to reports, Fraser was in the process of founding a new political party at the time of his death in March. Fraser’s idea was interesting, not simply because it seemingly codified some ideals he’d held since he was in power, but because it fundamentally seems to reimagine certain key tenets of Australia’s foreign policy, notably the U.S. alliance. Greater actual engagement in Southeast Asia is also important.  

The latter has been a plan for decades now, with mixed results. But the former would change not just Australia, but the region, and have serious repercussions for the United States also, both in terms of its China policy and its general work in the region. What might happen to those U.S. bases, for one?

Fraser had explored similar ideas in his most recent book Dangerous Allies, published by Random House last year. He criticized the idea of “strategic dependence” and saw, essentially, that the half-century alliance held as a given by both sides of politics, as something as changeless and immutable as gravity, in fact compromised Australia’s sovereignty. Unlike some of his social policies this is an idea that emerged after Fraser was out of office, given his support for Australia’s involvement in Vietnam and his condemnation of New Zealand’s actions that effectively ended that country’s active membership of ANZUS.

According to Fairfax, the party’s name Renew Australia was a working title and Fraser would have not headed the party, but had been developing its platform. A quick check of the Australian Electoral Commission website reveals that the party is still not registered, but there are apparently plans for it to go ahead without its founder.

A Federally-oriented party, rather than one with state-based chapters, the first nine pages of its draft manifesto deal with its beliefs in a better Australia (what party doesn’t want that and have the answer to make it so?). Environmental policy, greater business transparency without government meddling and a Republic are some of the key domestic policy points. Foreign policy ideas are not extensive, but this is noteworthy: “Our foreign policy and diplomacy must convey that independence. Above all, we should not cede to any foreign country the capacity to decide whether Australia is at peace or goes to war; nor will we participate in war just because our traditional allies go to war.” And, apart from the importance of the UN, global engagement matters, as does regional engagement. “Asia and South Asia will be the global economic powerhouses for the present and the future. We must more fully embrace the idea that this is where our future lie.”

Whilst the importance of the region is a stalwart bit of ever-to-hand rhetoric, the idea that the U.S. alliance could be ended, or at least strongly examined, is actually quite an extraordinary claim for a man who could see the value of both sides of the political spectrum (and irritated both sides deeply at times also). Especially at a time when most nations in the region are bolstering ties with Washington over worries of Chinese aggression. Imagine a world where Vietnam had a military alliance with the United States, but Australia did not.