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Don Chipp

Donald Leslie Chipp (21 August 1925 – 28 August 2006) was an Australian politician, and the inaugural leader of the Australian Democrats.

Donald Leslie Chipp was born in Melbourne and educated at Northcote High School and Melbourne University, where he graduated in commerce. After playing Australian Rules Football for Heidelberg in the Victorian Football Association, he played briefly in the (higher-grade) Victorian Football League with the Fitzroy Football Club (playing three games in 1947, for one goal). He was also a finalist in the important Stawell Gift annual foot race.

After serving in the Royal Australian Air Force in World War II, Chipp worked as registrar of the Commonwealth Institute of Accountants from 1950 to 1955. In 1955 he was appointed chief executive officer of the Olympic Civic Committee, which was involved in organising the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne. After the Games he worked as manager of the Victorian Promotion Committee, and also ran his own management consultancy. From 1958 to 1961 he was a member of the Kew City Council.

Chipp entered federal politics in 1960 as the Liberal member for Higinbotham in Melbourne's southern bayside suburbs. After a redistribution in 1968 he transferred to the less safe seat of Hotham. He was given the Navy and Tourism portfolios by Prime Minister Harold Holt in 1967. After Holt’s sudden death in December 1967, Chipp retained those portfolios in the brief interim government of Country Party leader John McEwen, but he was dropped from the ministry by the new Liberal Prime Minister, John Gorton. This was partly because Chipp had supported another candidate, Billy Snedden, in the Liberal leadership ballot, and partly because Gorton disapproved of Chipp's decision to hold a second Royal Commission into the 1964 Voyager disaster - a decision which Gorton felt reflected badly on the Royal Australian Navy.^[1]

After the 1969 election, Gorton appointed Chipp as Minister for Customs and Excise. In this portfolio he gained national attention by largely abolishing the censorship of printed material, unbanning many novels, including Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, as well as allowing the sale of Playboy magazine. These actions made him popular but also placed him at odds with many of his fellow party members, who considered such decisions too liberal. During this period, Chipp became identified as part of a "small-l liberal" faction of the Liberal Party, along with Snedden and Andrew Peacock.

Following the Liberal Party's defeat at the 1972 federal election by the Labor Party's Gough Whitlam, Chipp served as Shadow Minister for Social Security. He was a strong supporter of Snedden, who had become party leader following the 1972 defeat but lost the 1974 election against Whitlam. When Malcolm Fraser displaced Snedden as leader in March 1975, Chipp retained his position but it was no secret that the two men did not get on. When Fraser was appointed Prime Minister following the dismissal of Gough Whitlam on 11 November 1975, he gave Chipp three portfolios in his caretaker ministry--Social Security, Health, and Repatriation. However, when Fraser won the December 1975 election, Chipp was not included in the ministry.

After a year as an increasingly discontented backbencher, Chipp resigned from the Liberal Party in 1977, citing the need for a new moderate political party. Later in the year, he accepted an invitation to lead the Australian Democrats and, at the December 1977 election he was elected to the Australian Senate, with one colleague (Colin Mason of New South Wales). As Democrats leader, Chipp was involved in various high profile environmental and social justice causes, including playing an important role in stopping the Franklin Dam Project.

At the 1980 election, the Democrats gained a potential balance of power in the Senate, which they retained until 1 July 2005, losing it as a result of the 2004 election. This gave Chipp and his party (dependent on rarely forthcoming support from other non-government senators) a theoretical share in power to reject or amend government legislation.

Chipp retired as the leader of the Democrats in 1986, to be succeeded by Janine Haines. He ran unsuccessfully for election as the Lord Mayor of Melbourne in 2001. In his later years, he suffered from Parkinson's Disease, although he still made a number of public appearances, most notably on the ABC chat show Enough Rope with Andrew Denton. He also gave an opening address to the Democrats' national conference in Melbourne in May 2006.

Chipp died of pneumonia in August 2006 at Epworth Hospital in Richmond. A state funeral service was held on 2 September 2006 for him. Australian flags were flown at half-mast all day in Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory to mourn and honour him.

1. ^ Alan Reid, The Gorton Experiment, 36-37

• Interview with Andrew Denton on the ABC's Enough Rope

• Interview with Peter Thompson on the ABC's Talking Heads