8 September 2019
The passing of Tim Fischer makes me feel old. I was in my early twenties when he became Deputy Prime Minister more than twenty years ago – and somehow his rise to that role doesn’t seem that long ago. Maybe I feel old because I can recall it as if it’d happened yesterday.
Actually it was around this time that I started taking an interest in politics and general elections, so that might be why I remember Fischer’s rise.
Fischer had spent many years as a State MP in New South Wales before he made a switch to Federal politics in December 1984. This happened during what was less than the best of times for his side of politics.
The previous year, Bob Hawke had led the Labor Party to victory in a Federal election, commencing thirteen years of Labor governance, around nine of them with him as Prime Minister. His victory finished off seven years of governance by the Liberal-National Coalition.
In the wake of this triumph, the Liberal Party began years of internal warfare over various issues, including leadership. It was Andrew Peacock who became leader at first, and then the leadership went to John Howard two years later, before it went back to Peacock four years after that. Howard would later regain the leadership and become Prime Minister.
While the Liberals had their problems, the Nationals had some troubles of their own, though leadership wasn’t really one of them. Doug Anthony had led the Nationals at the time of the Coalition’s loss of power in 1983. He quit as leader and left Parliament within a year of that loss. The Nationals ended up electing Ian Sinclair as leader in early 1984, albeit not without a leadership contest.
One person running for the leadership after Anthony’s departure was Stephen Lusher, who held the seat of Hume, in southern NSW. He wasn’t exactly known for achieving much on the political scene.
But at the end of the same year of running for the leadership of the Nationals, Lusher was gone altogether. An election was held at the end of the year, and Lusher ended up losing his seat – talk about going from rooster to feather duster!
However, Lusher didn’t lose his seat to Labor. Indeed Labor hasn’t held Hume since losing it to Lusher in 1974. Instead, Lusher lost to another Coalition figure, Wal Fife, who’d held the nearby seat of Farrer since 1975. He decided to contest Hume in that 1984 election, going up against Lusher, and he won.
Ironically, Fife’s old seat of Farrer fell to the Nationals – namely to Fischer.
Despite being a rural seat, Farrer had always been in Liberal hands since being created ahead of an election in 1949. Fischer was the first National to win that seat, and to date he’s the only National to do so, as the Liberals regained it when he retired in 2001. Sussan Ley won it then, and she still holds it now.
Not much more than five years after entering Federal Parliament, Fischer was leading the Nationals. He became leader after the serving leader, Charles Blunt, lost his seat at an election in 1990. Blunt had only become leader the previous year, rolling Sinclair in a surprise coup, around the same time that the Liberals dumped Howard in favour of Peacock.
In hindsight, Fischer was arguably a catch – if you’ll pardon the pun – for leading the Nationals and becoming Deputy PM. Given that their leader had been beaten in his own seat, he became leader during the darkest hour, which might appear typical when political parties see their leaders beaten in their own seats.
History shows that, of those to lead the Nationals after Anthony departed, only Sinclair and Blunt wouldn’t serve as Deputy PM.
Fischer became Deputy PM when Howard led the Coalition to victory in 1996, and he’d be in the job until stepping down in 1999. His successors have enjoyed time as Deputy PM while leading the Nationals, from John Anderson to Michael McCormack. Times and fortunes have varied for them.
The thing that Fischer will be remembered well for would be his support for Howard’s work in changing gun laws after a massacre in 1996. Howard argues that he couldn’t have done it without Fischer’s support, and this is what Howard earned much respect for.
Few leaders like Fischer have been in politics. He was widely respected across the political divide. Figures with that level of respect seem rare now.
electiontragic 