The Chips have fallen

Back in the late 1970’s we saw him as a real hope, a renegade Liberal who set out with a vision for a new political movement, the Australian Democrats.

I say movement because Don Chipp had clicked into the prevailing feeling that the traditional party system was letting the country down.

Chippie died yesterday aged 81, following a long battle with Parkinson's Disease. It’s not the first long hard battle he fought and I’m lost this last one. The fact is, with all his faults he still stands as a paragon to me.

I first met Chipp when he was Minister for Customs and I was president of a regional Young Liberal’s branch. I was to introduce him to a fund raising lunch, but I screwed it up. My first big outing and I just froze.

It didn’t matter much; Chippie was the star, the one with a face like an unmade bed and a ton of charisma.

The next time I met him he was back in that regional city to launch his new movement there. We’d both left the Liberal’s in disgust and were both ready to fight on in some other way. Again he was riveting; in a hall full of people I still swear he was talking directly to me.

I became the founding president of the new Democrats branch and eventually stood for Federal parliament under the banner.

The thing about Chippie is that he was down to earth, told it like it was. He knew the Democrats would never win government, knew in fact they would be lucky to ever win a lower house seat.

He concentrated on the Senate, and justified that position with the phrase – “We’ll keep the bastards honest!”

Despite attempts to create something above the normal party nonsense, the Democrats were soon swamped by opportunists who couldn’t get a run with the main parties.

I still can’t get over how destructive those opportunists can be for the sake of a tiny bit of power, but they were.

I took the honesty thing to heart. Back then there was a spending limit of $1000 on a campaign, ridiculous but no one seemed to follow the rules anyway.

When I added up my paltry spending it came to a bit over the limit, so I declared it as it stood. The Liberal candidate who won declared that he spent not one cent and the Labor candidate had some ridiculous low figure in her return.

So my little gesture got a great run I the post election press, with obvious comparisons to everyone else. The memory is dull, but I must have made a statement questioning my own colleagues for failing to lodge a return; after all, we were keeping the bastards honest!

The news was picked up by the wires and Chippie was confronted at Melbourne Airport and asked why he hadn’t lodged a return. The reason for the question son became clear and I received a telegram soon after telling me I was no longer a member of the Democrats.

That’s life, or politics. But I never let it reflect badly on Chip. Like I said, for all his faults he was a paragon.