KEY POINTS:
Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser believes he escaped being killed in the 1978 Sydney Hilton bombing through a stroke of luck involving his New Zealand counterpart, Sir Robert Muldoon.
Mr Fraser, Prime Minister from 1975 to 1983, was greeting overseas leaders on their arrival at the Hilton for a Commonwealth Heads of Government regional meeting in February 1978 - one of the biggest international events Australia had hosted, the Australian newspaper reported yesterday.
"For Muldoon, there was a bunch of girls from New Zealand campaigning about his abortion policy and saying what an awful person he was," Mr Fraser said.
"The Hilton Hotel had two entrances and I said, 'We don't want photographs of New Zealand getting a hostile welcome in Australia, so let's switch entrances to the other side'.
"So they rolled out the red carpet on the other side.
"[Indian Prime Minister] Morarji Desai was coming in 10 or 20 minutes and I said, 'We'll stay where we are'."
It was near the other hotel entrance where, in the middle of the night following the leaders' arrival, a bomb exploded in a rubbish bin, killing two council workers and a policeman.
"I really believe to this day that, in a weird way, Morarji Desai and I probably owe our lives to Robert Muldoon," Mr Fraser said.
He said he assumed there was a detonating device that could have been triggered when Mr Desai alighted from his car, which would have been close to the bin containing the bomb if the arrangements had not been changed.
"All the evidence we had later suggested it was [socio-spiritual organisation] Ananda Marga because their head was in an Indian jail and this was part of a campaign targeted at the Indian Prime Minister," Mr Fraser said.
Government leaders decided to proceed with the conference.
Sir Robert Muldoon died in 1992.
- NZPA
