The news broke on Thursday that former prime minister Malcolm Fraser spent the last four years of his life creating a new political party, which he’d named Renew Australia. The party had not made it as far as registration with the Australian Electoral Commission before Fraser’s death last week, but Renew Australia’s draft manifesto was published by Crikey.

It’s an extraordinary document, and not merely as the startup party project of a former Liberal leader. Political party leaders coming from or switching to another team is not uncommon in Australian politics: former prime minister Billy Hughes infamously threw his lot in with six parties, Don Chipp was in the Liberal party before leading the Democrats and Cheryl Kernot joined the Labor party while leading the Democrats after Chipp. In the modern era, Clive Palmer was a Liberal before leading the Palmer United Party, and both Malcolm Turnbull and current prime minister Tony Abbott once flirted with joining the Labor party – Abbott’s even admitted voting for Labor’s NSW premier Barrie Unsworth back in 1988. Unlike some others who switched parties, Fraser leaving the Liberals in 2009 could hardly be considered an ambitious move; he’d vacated the leadership 26 years earlier. His stated reason for resigning from the party he led to the biggest electoral victory in federal history in 1975 was that it had turned into “a conservative party”.

It’s powerful criticism. Fraser’s falling out may have been with the Liberal party, but what scorches the eyes reading the Renew Australia document is the drift from idealistic national vision in both major parties. It says much about Australia’s current political climate that when Renew Australia claims that “the country is looking once more for intelligent and enlightened leadership, inspired by a belief in justice, integrity and a sense of a fair go”, it’s speaking to values that were once shared by both the Liberal and Labor parties.

In the contemporary era where Joe Hockey appoints himself judge of the economy’s “lifters and leaners” to punish the “leaners” with ever-retracting welfare support, it’s surprising to recall that the party joined by Fraser was the one founded by Robert Menzies with a principle that “rather than begrudge assistance to the needy” Liberals would, in pursuit of that “fair go”, extend the safety net, “relying on economic development to create the right conditions for a long-lasting sense of security.” Writing about the origins of the Liberal party, historian Ian Hancock reminds of a party that believed in “liberalism both individualistic and caring”, embraced Keynesianism, rejected laissez-fair and that “would not allow monopolies to do what they liked”.

If these positions sound like traditional Labor values, well, they are. With a platform that commits “to ensure that the benefits of economic growth are redistributed through the economy to those on low wages, not in work or reliant on welfare”, it’s painful to be reminded of Labor’s own retraction of “fair go” opportunities to single parents when last in office, as well as that party’s own commitment to “free trade” and weak policing of concentrated capital interests. Similarly, when Renew Australia declares, “We put a high value on the right to privacy”, it’s saddening to be reminded that both Liberal and Labor have voted together to place all Australians under the implicit surveillance of metadata collection. Renew’s pledge to create a nation “where discriminatory and exploitative practice or malicious expression based on race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, colour, or sexuality is outlawed” also reminds us of Liberal attempts to dissolve the Racial Discrimination Act, and both Liberal and Labor failure to extend equal rights of legal marriage for every Australian adult. Renew’s pleas for humanity towards asylum seekers, read in this context, are articulate, powerful and persuasive.

It’s perhaps because of an explicit support for refugees that the Renew document declares “we are not a populist party”. Yet there are few statements that run against current mainstream electoral values. It states:

We intend to advocate for a cohesive, diverse, secular, multicultural, fair and free Australia to initiate reform of the key institutions of our democracy where deficiencies exist, to foster innovation in our economy, to nurture and support creativity and the arts and sciences, and advance intelligent and achievable nation building.

Based on current polling, this is not a controversial view – certainly not in a country with support for higher spending on public services such as public healthcare, pensions, science research and education: institutions the Renew document explicitly supports. Even if I’d personally prefer a diversity of worker cooperatives and community industries rather than “private enterprise” dominating the economy, Renew’s call for “more balanced contributions from corporates and individual taxpayers to government revenue raising”, and “visionary and sustainable infrastructure projects that go beyond the short-term interests of mining company equity holders” are economic policies I could endure. Renew recognises the importance of trade unionism, and demands gender equality. The document acknowledges the reality of climate change, too, proposing the event as an opportunity to foster innovation and stimulate the economy.

What the document lacks is policy detail – but as a critique of the present crisis in Australian politics, it doesn’t require it. Whether plans to form a Renew Australia party even materialise is less important than the impact of forcing a reconsideration of what Australians may actually want in a political party, and who is capable of delivering it.

There used to be a time when both the Liberal and Labor parties shared the ethos of Australian egalitarianism and opportunity, and choice for the electorate was which party had the better ideas for its implementation. Fraser’s document exposes, instead, a bleak two-party consensus that the world is, and will remain, unfair. Perhaps there is an iron law of oligarchy – as the document states:

When high national purpose gives way to cynical political opportunism; when ethical ways of behaving are diminished by expedient or corrupt party practices; when the major parties become out-dated, behave undemocratically and serve the vested interests of the few rather than the broad national interests of the many; and when decency and compassion are subordinated to the base calculations of party machine-men, the trust of the people is lost and those of conscience and good will must assert a new way of governing the country.

It’s not so much a vision for a new Australia, so much as a lament for the Australia we should have had.