Outspoken Chipp aimed to 'keep the bastards honest'

Don Chipp, the rebel who reshaped Australian politics and helped keep control of the Senate out of the hands of the major parties for two decades, has died in Melbourne, aged 81.

His declining health from Parkinson's disease mirrored the decline and - many believe - the inevitable end of the Australian Democrats, the party Chipp help found after deserting the Liberals and working to make good his promise to "keep the bastards honest".

Chipp was a flamboyant and outspoken man who once confessed to sexual fantasies involving the Queen and to wanting to punch former Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke and his Liberal predecessor, Malcolm Fraser.

But his legacy was the rise of minor parties in the Senate able to thwart the government of the day, even if the Democrats have now been usurped by the Greens and all of them overwhelmed by Prime Minister John Howard's 2004 electoral bulldozer that gave him control of both Houses of Parliament.

Howard, who was a junior minister in the Fraser Government when Chipp quit, said the Democrats founder had been a colourful figure who had made a huge impact on Australian public life over a very long career.

"To me, the most endearing thing about Don Chipp was, to the very end, he was passionate and committed to the causes in which he believed," he said.

Democrats leader Senator Lyn Allison described Chipp as one of Australia's political greats, a man of great courage and integrity.

"He propelled the Democrats into the federal political arena, inspiring hundreds of thousands of people to join him in developing a third force in Australian politics," she said.

"He understood the need for an alternative to the two major parties.

"He was a liberal thinker, a strong advocate of social justice and a man who voted according to his conscience."

Australian Greens leader Bob Brown praised Chipp's key role in thwarting plans to dam the Franklin River in the Tasmanian wilderness, one of the most important environmental battles to be fought in Australia in the past 30 years.

Chipp was born in 1925 in the Melbourne suburb of Northcote, graduating from Melbourne University and playing football for Fitzroy in the then-VFL before serving in the Air Force during World War II.

He was elected to the Federal Parliament in 1960, becoming Tourism Minister and Minister for the Navy in 1967, when he initially supported the Vietnam War.

Later, he told ABC host Andrew Denton in one of his final interviews, he regarded the war as wrong and immoral, and wondered how he had been "conned" into supporting it.

In 1969 Chipp became Minister of Customs and Excise responsible, among other duties, for censorship.

It was a controversial appointment. Chipp angered many of his Liberal colleagues by lowering the gates for publications such as Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, and ridiculed the decision to ban a Noddy book which said Enid Blyton's children's character walked down a country lane "and felt a little queer".

Chipp also told Denton he allowed other MPs and reporters to take banned books "of literary merit" from his office.

MPs, most of them Liberal critics of his views, also came to look at banned pornography not allowed out of the office.

The election of the Fraser Government in 1975 was the beginning of the end of Chipp's Liberal days.

Excluded from the ministry, and disliking Fraser and his policies intently, Chipp quit. He became involved with two formative parties, and in 1977 founded and became leader of the Democrats.

The party siphoned members from the Liberal centre, attracted many others looking for a new base for social justice and environmental issues, and finally emerged as a left-of-centre magnet for disaffected voters from both Liberals and Labor.

Chipp retired in 1986 as the party headed towards control of the balance of power in the Senate and established itself as a genuine third force in Australian politics.

But its decline has since been dramatic and complete, scarred by bitter internecine warfare, shifts in the broader political climate, and the desertion of then-leader Cheryl Kernot to Labor.

A further, more serious, exodus followed two disastrous deals with Howard allowing the passage of industrial legislation seriously eroding union power (and establishing the base for the latest round of hard-right industrial reform) and the introduction of GST.

The party's vote plummeted to 1.2 per cent in the last federal election, costing them all the Senate seats up for re-election and setting the stage for the possibility of complete elimination from Federal Parliament next year.

Chipp - who in 2004 disclosed that he was suffering from Parkinson's disease to help raise awareness of the disease, its victims and the need for more research funds - mourned the decline of his former party and its values.

But he retained passionate views on social justice and his outspoken larrikinism.

That latter trait saw him confessing to Denton that he fancied the Queen: "I used to have sexual fantasies about her."

And he said of his own eventual death: "If there's a heaven, I've got a reasonable chance of getting there or knocking on the door.

"I've got no chance of going to the other place if there is one, I don't think."