By Tony Wright
A fledgling reporter once had a taste of the compassion that prompted Malcolm Fraser to walk away from a party he felt had lost its humanity.
THERE are a few things that lodge limpet-like on the memory of everyone who has spent a while in the craft of journalism, and the first interview is one of them.
Your correspondent was moved to recall his first interview when it became known this week that a well-known fellow had ditched his membership of the political party that long ago elevated him to the prime ministership.
In 1970 I proudly walked into the office of a venerable tri-weekly newspaper named the Portland Observer in far south-west Victoria and installed myself at a desk bearing an ancient typewriter, awaiting the editor's orders. Maybe he'd get somebody to teach me how to use the typewriter.
No such luck. Instead, the editor announced that the local member of Parliament was meeting constituents at a nearby hotel and I should go and interview him.
''The local member?'' I quaked.
''Fraser, of course. Malcolm Fraser. Member for Wannon.''
It was a terrifying prospect. Fraser was the aloof defence minister, the Vietnam War was raging and it would not be long before his mighty office would require me to register for a ballot that could have me conscripted into the army.
And I was going to interview him on my first day as a first-year cadet journalist?
''What'll I ask him about?'' I inquired of the editor.
''The wool floor price plan,'' he said, handing me a pencil and notebook.
I knew nothing about the wool floor price plan, but at least it didn't seem to involve high politics, of which I knew even less. And so your infant correspondent found himself seated across a table from the great Easter Island visage of Malcolm Fraser.
Was it possible he could recall the dread that afflicts the rookie on his first day? He, after all, had entered Parliament in 1955 at the tender age of 25 - the youngest member at the time. He seemed, anyway, to perceive that I was close to a nervous breakdown.
''A cup of coffee, you know, might be nice before we begin,'' he said. It may have been his intention to summon a waiter, but I shot out of my seat, hurtled to the bar and bought (whether the Portland Observer ran to an expense account never entered the mind) two cups of scalding black coffee.
Shakily, I bore the steaming cups to the table and placed one of them on the white tablecloth directly in front of the minister for defence. It was a mistake. The cloth concealed an unfortunate secret - the table beneath wasn't one solid platform, but a couple of round tables shoved together.
Beneath the tablecloth in front of Malcolm Fraser was nothing but the great man's lengthy grey suit-clad legs.
''Shit!'' he yelped, rising at least two feet into the air. The entire cup of boiling coffee had landed in his lap. I tore a handkerchief from my pocket and sought to render assistance before he waved me off.
It took a while for things to settle down, but Fraser proved to be made of stern stuff. Mercifully, he kept his pants on.
''Now,'' he said. ''What should we talk about?''
Feigning confidence, I flipped open the notebook, poised the pencil and uttered the only words that were in my mind.
''The wool floor price plan?'' I said.
''Ah,'' said the defence minister. And he was off. A grazier himself, it was one of his favoured subjects.
Your correspondent recalls not a word of the next 10 or 15 minutes. Frantically, I tried to follow the monologue and to scribble, longhand, a facsimile of what he was saying. But it was useless. I couldn't keep up.
The zone of despair. A career ruined on its very first day. My pencil flew carelessly across the pages, scrawling meaningless squiggles in a desperate attempt to fake the behaviour of an expert shorthand taker. I simply wanted it over.
Eventually, Fraser stopped talking. I snapped my notebook shut, stuck the pencil in a top pocket and readied to flee, probably to a life working on the roads.
''You know,'' said the member for Wannon. ''The pricing mechanism is a bit complicated. Could you read back that section, just to be sure?'' Here was the final indignity. I flicked through pages of senseless scribble and tried to bluster through, devolving into a muck sweat.
''Hmm,'' said the future prime minister. ''Not sure you've got it quite covered there. Tell you what, I'll just give you a brief version. You can take it down. Longhand.''
He'd rumbled my feeble attempt at deception.
The whole dreadful affair had been witnessed by the president of the local branch of the Liberal Party.
I slunk back to my office, pecked out a few paragraphs on the old typewriter - almost every word a direct quote taken down in trembling longhand - and submitted what I was pretty sure would be my first and last story as a reporter.
The editor stuck it on the front page. Oh, Lord. Evidence of fraud in bold print. Everyone in the local branch of the Liberal Party, surely, would know the real story by now. Days and weeks dragged by, my ear cocked for the call that must come from the Liberal president or Fraser himself informing the editor that he had employed an imbecile. It never came.
This week, 40 years later, as news spread that Malcolm Fraser had finally punched his ticket with the Liberal Party, the memory of that fiasco crowded back.
Fraser may have played his politics brutally, stabbing upwards and kicking down as he destroyed John Gorton's prime ministership and clawed his way past Billy Snedden for the party's leadership. He may have gained government in 1975 by involving himself in a deceit with a governor-general and the constitution.
And he may have been too cautious as prime minister to use the power he had craved and gained to undertake the sort of economic reforms the nation needed, and for which it had to wait until Hawke and Keating came along.
But he drew on other qualities to battle apartheid, to lead CARE on international aid missions, to rail against injustice and finally, to walk away from a party he felt had lost its humanity. There is a kindness there and a wish to play fair, too. It was always there. How else to explain this complicated man's generosity in saving a young reporter from a debacle on his first day?
Tony Wright is national affairs editor.