A number of people on this thread lack compassion and decency.
I agree with you here on this thread, Foxy.

RIP Malcolm Fraser.

"Big Mal changed and so did my opinion of him."

Malcolm Fraser didn't change - the Liberal Party lurched to the right, and that's where we are now.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/20/malcolm-fraser-a-leader-who-believed-there-is-a-moral-compass-in-our-nations-life?CMP=share_btn_tw

Fred Chaney

"It has often been said in more recent years that Malcolm changed after he left the prime ministership, that he moved to the left. It would be surprising if in the 40 years after he left parliament, none of his views had changed. He himself has recorded his shift in the area of foreign policy. But in that 40 years, as the whole political system shifted to the right, it would have been surprising if he had been in sympathy with many of the new policies of both sides of politics. My wife Angela, who I enrolled in the University Liberal Club on her first day at the University of Western Australia, has observed that the party I joined no longer exists. And of course you could say the same thing about the Labor party of that era and the Labor party today. But on the issues which led me to become a firm supporter of Malcolm he was extraordinarily consistent."

For the likes of Hasbeen to denigrate him in the way he has is not surprising - after all Fraser was a man of great stature and moral depth - and Hasbeen.....

Paul 1405,
Fraser lacked Goebbels ready wit,practiced oratory and intelligence, other than that they were both decent, moral family men who were admired by their supporters and colleagues.
To ignorant people who know nothing about Goebbels and have never read any of his work (Tony Abbott and Mark Dreyfus for example) the comparison is a trivial, throw away line intended merely to rile the opposition, critical examination of the character of Fraser and Goebbels tends to favour the latter as the superior politician and the better man.

Just mention that Malcolm Fraser was very much still part of the wider political commentary. He was extraordinarily active on twitter and in his connections with mainstream media and Australian politics.

He was part of the conversation right up till his death.

He will be missed.

Poirot, you (and Fred Chaney) may well be correct, but I can well remember Fraser during those rather tumultuous years and there wasn't a lot of the compassionate, well-rounded man of later years on display. What Fred Chaney knew of the man out of the public spotlight may be quite different to what I thought I knew of him in its full glare.

There's a lot to be said of being willing to change and to accept that what one may have once sincerely held to be true is not necessarily to be regarded as indisputable.

I'd go so far as to say that being willing to admit that one's views are subject to being changed is a fundamental marker of adulthood. Unfortunately, our body politic is relentlessly juvenile in that regard.

Yes, Craig...it's interesting to hear of the musings of the likes of Chaney's - from someone who knew the man personally.

Fraser did not possess the charisma of a Hawke or Whitlam, so it's not surprising that his public persona was more opaque.

Everything that I've read tells of a man of moral consistency down trough the years.

He was extremely outspoken on human rights of late, using social media effectively - critical of both the LNP and Labor, and passionately engaged in that subject on an international scale also.