Don Chipp - Political Career

Political Career

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 support for a second Royal Commission into the 1964 Voyager disaster – a decision which Gorton felt reflected badly on the Royal Australian Navy.

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. He also oversaw the introduction of the R certificate for films in 1970, which allowed previously banned films to be rerated and shown to adults. 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 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 and Compensation. However, when Fraser won the December 1975 election, Chipp was not included in the ministry.