Word: frasers
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...been up most of the night supervising the sea evacuation of Americans from Beirut. His eyes were puffed and squinty. But there was genuine warmth last week when he strode onto a red-carpeted podium on the South Lawn of the White House and welcomed Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser to the U.S. As the last strains of Waltzing Matilda faded away, Ford stressed how "particularly close" Australia is to the hearts of Americans...
Although the Prime Minister has been in office only seven months, the Ford Administration already considers Fraser, 46, a rangy millionaire farmer, one of the U.S.'s best and most reliable friends in the Pacific. The U.S.-Australian relationship, while always close, has had its ups and downs in recent years, especially after Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam pulled Australian troops out of Viet Nam. After Eraser's Liberal-National Country party coalition trounced the Laborites last December, the new P.M. immediately moved to bring Canberra more into line with American foreign policy...
Although he hasn't made any drastic cutbacks, Fraser has stated his opposition to many of the Whitlam administration's programs. He has modified the health insurance plan to make it more attractive for the wealthy to subscribe to private insurance. He has attempted to cut back on the number of welfare recipients. He pushed for unions to accept wage increases below the cost of living. Cuts in educational spending and urban development are expected...
Perhaps the greatest difference between the two administrations is their view of Australia in world context. There is ample evidence that Fraser may be a throw back to old times, when Australian prime ministers were willing to be dominated first by Britain and then by the United States. A great believer in America's original goals in Vietnam, Fraser will be a close friend of any rigid Republican administration. (He is so pro-American that anti-mainstream columnist Alexander Cockburn claimed last year that Fraser arrived in power through a CIA-sponsored coup...
...Australians feel about all this? American reports are sketchy, but they indicate Fraser has won strong support for his anti-inflationary measures and attempts to bring the budget more into balance. The Labour Party has the potential to be strong, but only under new leadership. On the whole Australians don't seem to be unhappy that it was Fraser, not Whitlam, that Cambridge saw last Friday as prime minister