Fischer, Timothy Andrew

▪ 1994

      Tim Fischer was reelected leader of the right-of-centre National Party of Australia after the Nationals won two additional seats from the Australian Labor Party in the March 1993 general election. As chief of the progressive conservative party representing rural and regional Australia, he was seldom out of the headlines in 1993, jumping in where others feared to tread. In a speech in Western Australia, Fischer claimed that taxpayers spent about $A 1.3 billion a year on the small Aboriginal population but that this generosity was never acknowledged. He warned that people in rural areas would soon begin to resent such generosity. He particularly complained that "the poor struggling farmers couldn't get anywhere near a brand new four-wheel drive, air-conditioned vehicle, but local Aboriginal communities had plenty and replaced them every two years." Fischer also narrowly escaped a serious mauling by the press when he made statements to the effect that Australia's foreign policy was rather too anti-Arab and pro-Israel. In neither case, however, did he back away from his much-criticized convictions.

      Fischer, himself a Roman Catholic, was particularly critical of Prime Minister Paul Keating's attempt to link his own Irish-Catholic heritage with support for Australia's republican movement. Fischer warned that sectarianism was never very far from the surface in Australian political life and added that Keating had been irresponsible in fanning its embers by saying that an Irish-Catholic background had led to his commitment to abolishing links with the British monarchy. Fischer felt no such allegiance. On the contrary, he spoke out against the republican movement, launching a fierce campaign urging Australians not to change the constitution without considering "the huge ramifications of making the president commander in chief of the Australian armed forces."

      Fischer was born May 3, 1946, and educated at Xavier College, Melbourne. He saw military service in Vietnam as a platoon commander and transport officer in the First Royal Australian Regiment in 1967. Fischer entered the federal parliament in 1984, representing the interests of farmers and country people, after a career in New South Wales state politics, where he was National Party member in the House of Assembly. He rose through the ranks of the federal National Party and became the party's leader in 1990.

      (A.R.G. GRIFFITHS)

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