Whatever you thought of his politics and his seminal role in the vice regal dismissal of the Whitlam Labor government almost 40 years ago, John Malcolm Fraser was, above all else, a genuine liberal in the best sense of the word. Thus he goes to his grave appalled, surely, by the oafs, boofheads and lesser ninnies that not only control the Liberal Party and conservative politics in this country these days, but take their disgrace to the summit of running Australia too.

How could it have come to this, J.M. Fraser must have wondered, constantly, in more recent years, as political behaviour, state and federal, from top to bottom, in our parliaments and out, and right across the three major parties in our democracy, became uglier, greedier, less inclusive, less civil, less caring, more irresponsible, more ill-mannered, more shrill, more ratbag, and wholly more venal, indeed blighted in any and every way you care to look at what is happening to national political life in this country?

This is not to pretend Fraser was a saint. He never got over losing his trousers in Memphis all those years ago after losing government to the Hawke Labor onslaught in 1983. And political opponents like Labor's Peter Walsh, another flawed man of the land (wheat) like Fraser (beef cattle), pursued the then prime minister's supposed gaucheries quite mercilessly through Senate questions on notice in the late 1970s and early '80s that, for whatever reason, never seemed to get answered. And while some in Labor will never forgive the often socially awkward if hard-nosed Fraser of the 1960s and '70s for what happened on November 11, 1975, Gough Whitlam certainly did in later life. Whitlam and the opponent he flayed on the front steps of old ParLiament House as "Kerr's cur" that white hot November day, not only reconciled in the 1990s but became friends who shared a deep mutual respect on many issues, not least their detestation of John Howard.

Even Paul Keating, another flawed pillar of the recent political past and one who forever "hates Tories", could not have been more plain speakingly generous in his unqualified tributes when he learned of Fraser's death on Friday. Keating's statement of eulogy is all class.

Which is a aeons distant from what can be said of John Howard and the federal Liberal Party and its national organisational cronies under Howard's leadership in the 1990s and 2000s. He, it and they shunned Fraser utterly, right up and beyond the day voters rid us of Howard's government in November, 2007 as well as disposing of the Toad himself. And let me remind you that the only time Malcolm and Tamie Fraser were ever asked back to the Lodge after Fraser lost office in 1983 was when the Keating-appointed Sir William Deane ended his five-year appointment as Governor-General and asked John and Janette Howard to include the Frasers in the afternoon tea the Howards hosted for the Deanes the June day in 2001 that Bill Deane's appointment ended.

Deane recognised Fraser's deep contribution to Australian life, most particularly the ethos of multiculturalism, and ensured the Frasers understood he did so.