Do we like them?

Do we like Malcolm Fraser?

Our score: 7 out of 10. The record we could verify is decent and on the right side, but the research was cut short, so we've kept the score modest.

He's best known for how he got the top job. In 1975 he used the Senate to defer the budget supply bills, and he became Prime Minister after the Governor-General dismissed the Whitlam government. AP described him as catapulted to power by a crisis that left the nation bitterly divided. Where you land on that depends on whether you read it as hardball within the rules or a constitutional grab.

On the harm check, nothing nasty from him turned up in the pages we managed to read. We found no campaigning against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet in those sources. We couldn't open enough coverage to test his record on LGBTQ+ issues specifically, so treat that as a gap, not a clean bill.

What we can say is that his government worked to pass land rights legislation for Indigenous Australians and created the multicultural broadcaster SBS. Those are the sort of acts that sit on the right side of this page's ledger.

The most telling chapter comes late. In 2010 he quit the Liberal Party, criticising it for fostering fear and reaction, particularly on immigration. Walking away from the party he once led, at a cost to himself, is the kind of stand we look for on the good-person test.

Nothing new on him lately. He died more than a decade ago, and the only 2026 mention our search found was a letter in Quadrant responding to a piece on his public life, which we couldn't read.

So, would we support him? On the evidence we could open, yes, with the 1975 dismissal as the contested mark and a research gap we're upfront about. He ended up a critic of his own side's treatment of immigration, which counts for plenty.