Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Obviously agreed to by the Leader of the House. It was that larrikin spirit that gave him the courage to stand by his convictions and encouraged many Australians to vote for him. He was certainly an uncompromising and ambitious character. When he left the Fraser government he described it as ‘too right wing’. But he did not become an Independent or retire from politics; he founded a new political party. That was an extraordinary response from a man who was dropped from the ministry and was frustrated with the state of party politics in the parliament, which he saw as becoming ‘increasingly farcical as a place of real debate’. He gave voice to his frustration and seemingly predicted the birth of the Democrats in his 1977 resignation speech to parliament, in which he said:

The parties seem to polarise on almost every issue, sometimes seemingly just for the sake of it, and I wonder whether the ordinary voter is not becoming sick and tired of the vested interests which unduly influence the present political parties and yearns for the emergence of a third political force.

Whilst I do not agree with what he said, the electorate success that followed for the Australian Democrats was certainly a major achievement for which Don Chipp will be remembered. Geoffrey Barker summed it up well in the Australian Financial Review, writing after Don Chipp’s death:

It takes a rare combination of ego, energy and outrage to impose a new centrist third party on a mature two-party political system.

Although Don Chipp said, ‘I do not feel alarmed now at the power of my personal ego,’ a lot of his motivation was to change things for the good of others. He was particularly passionate about the environment, and cited a 25 per cent cut in overseas aid as one of the reasons he was leaving the Liberal Party. As customs and excise minister he changed Australian censorship laws, refusing to ban the Little Red Schoolbook and lifting bans on other works, not necessarily because he agreed with what they said but because he disagreed with censorship.

Don Chipp’s stance identified him as a small ‘l’ Liberal and certainly made him some enemies among conservatives. He was even accused of ‘radically subverting Australia’. Don Chipp did not confine his efforts of ‘keeping the bastards honest’ only to those of the Liberal or Labor persuasion. His commitment to honesty extended to the media. Michelle Grattan wrote a terrific story in the Age about Don Chipp’s ruse to forestall press criticism when, despite his reforming approach, he felt he had to cut a sex scene out of the Swedish movie Like Night and Day. He wrote a press release explicitly describing the offending scene, and then he called a press conference and challenged the press gallery—in his words, ‘Now let’s see if you bastards have got the guts to print it.’ Even the bravest so-called bastard published only a toned down version and did not criticise Chipp’s censorship of the film.

He certainly was not afraid of attacking either the Liberal or Labor parties, or in recent times even the Australian Democrats. He regretted his own strong support of Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War in the 1960s and he later became equally strong in his opposition to it. Don Chipp not only wanted to hold others accountable; he applied those high standards to himself.

He certainly had a lot of friends in politics despite being described by Paul Kelly as ‘a constantly infuriated paradox who radicalised with age’. In Don Chipp’s typical larrikin fashion, he criticised Australians for political apathy, a theme which he revisited many times during his career. There is no question that he cared much for his family and the Australians he called the underdogs. He said upon leaving the parliament in 1986:

All I want to be remembered for by my wife and loved ones is that he was a good, old honest bastard and he gave it his best shot.

When asked by the Australian in 2004 about his most treasured possession, Don Chipp referred the question back to his family and came back with the answer: ‘The capacity to love, the capacity to be loved. Is that too corny?’ No, it is not corny and I am sure his family knew that he loved them. We send our condolences to them for their loss and for Australia’s loss.

See this speech in context