In its campaign advertising in 1996 the Keating government portrayed Nationals leader Tim Fischer as a half-deranged yokel; a national embarrassment.

When he announced he was retiring from the parliament little over three years later, it was as a national treasure.

As a very different Labor leader, Kim Beazley, declared, Fischer was “one of the genuinely loved people in this place,” adding, “you are going to be missed very much by us.