Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I first came across Don Chipp the man, as opposed to Don Chipp the public figure, when I invited him to join the Victorian council of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy. It was 1993 and I confess that I was more than a little anxious that the apparent tide of public opinion might have weakened Don’s longstanding commitment to the Crown. But I need not have worried. It turned out that his only concern was about joining an organisation which also included, at that time, Malcolm Fraser. This concern subsequently evaporated when Malcolm, without any warning whatsoever, defected to the republican side.

Don was a passionate man, as many people have remarked. He was impatient with stuffiness and formality, but he was also, in his own way, a conservative man. He was passionate about those things which he thought were enduring values, and he had a strong sense of the need for continuity as well as change. I well recall his speech to the Constitutional Convention held in 1998 in Old Parliament House. In the opening of that speech, Don said:

It has been an awesome week for me. The place is littered with ghosts of the past. … Ghosts like Billy McMahon keep appearing. I remember once he was about there and he was clowning around and saying, ‘I am my own worst enemy,’ to which the unmistakable interjection of Sir James Killen came: ‘Not while I’m alive you’re not.’ … Those are the sorts of memories that this place evokes: a wonderful place and you could not possibly find a better location for a convention of this kind.

The last time I saw Don was to discuss Parkinson’s disease, from which he was then suffering. Up to 100,000 Australians have Parkinson’s disease and up to 1,000 Australians a year die from the complications of Parkinson’s disease. There is no cure, but there is some treatment.

Through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, the government spends about $36 million a year on Parkinson’s disease drugs. Over the past six years the National Health and Medical Research Council has spent $14 million on Parkinson’s disease research. As a result of that meeting with Don, the government gave $100,000 to the Mental Health Council to encourage better coordination of those bodies dealing with diseases of the brain.

There certainly are few politicians whose legacy is felt 20 years after they formally leave this place. Don was famously dropped from Malcolm Fraser’s cabinet, but as things turned out he was a much bigger man than most of those who remained. He will be missed and he certainly will not be forgotten, and he deserves to be commemorated by this House.

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