Hundreds turn out to mourn former Australian PM Malcolm Fraser
Scores of mourners gathered yesterday at a state funeral for former conservative prime minister Malcolm Fraser, who came to power in 1975 through Australia's greatest constitutional crisis and died last week aged 84.
Scores of mourners gathered yesterday at a state funeral for former conservative prime minister Malcolm Fraser, who came to power in 1975 through Australia's greatest constitutional crisis and died last week aged 84.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott attended the ceremony at Melbourne's Scots' Church along with former PMs Julia Gillard, John Howard and Paul Keating.
Fraser's close friend and a minister in his government, Peter Nixon, said the nation had lost a "unique and great Australian".
"From the start, it was apparent to me that Malcolm was sure to succeed," Nixon, who started working with Fraser in 1961, told the approximately 700 people at the church.
Fraser died last Friday after a short illness, just five months after the death of Gough Whitlam, the man he dramatically replaced after the Labor leader became Australia's only prime minister to be sacked.
He began his term as the country's 22nd prime minister after the representative of Britain's Queen Elizabeth, Sir John Kerr, dismissed Whitlam's government in November 1975.
