A Step to Canberra?
I was 26 when I left my work as a country parson to take up the prestigious position as the Minister of Cheltenham Church of Christ Victoria. This Church had the reputation of being a very large and alive Church. But that was a mirage. The reality was quite different as this young country parson was soon to discover. The life of a suburban Minister has some real surprises.
We were very fortunate in Cheltenham to have as our Local Member one of the rising stars of the Canberra political scene, Donald Leslie Chipp. Don Chipp was the consummate politician in his early days. He came from a very fine background of community service and was a man committed to serve his country. He had been Chief Executive of the Melbourne Olympic Civic Committee which was responsible for the preparation and organisation of the 1956 Olympic Games. Don was a natural sportsman with great prowess in cricket, tennis, football and after the Olympic Games could have chosen almost any position he wanted in public life such was the success of the organisation he led. He had also seen war service, serving with an RAAF air crew.
He had grown up in the Northcote Church of Christ, had been a fine Christian young man and was a Sunday School teacher. In other words, he had many of the personal and moral qualities that people desired to see in Canberra so it wasn’t a surprise when the people of Beaumaris, Moorabbin and Cheltenham approached him to stand as their Federal Member. He had a wonderful record of success in the polls over the years, being elected in 1960, 1961, 1963, 1966, 1968, 1969, 1972, 1974, 1975, 1977 and 1983. Incidentally, didn’t we have a lot of Federal elections in those days! Don Chipp served his country and our area from 1960 through to 1986.
When I first went to Cheltenham in 1966 I was very thrilled to find him attending the Cheltenham Church of Christ. He took a real interest in myself and the events of the church. In 1966 he was Minister for the Navy, and then over the following years became the Minister for Tourism, Customs and Excise, the Minister for Social Security, the Minister for Health, and then the Minister for Repatriation.
After Gough Whitlam’s successful foray Don was in opposition from 1972 to 1975. During that time he was Shadow Minister for a number of portfolios. It was shortly after he retired from the Liberal Party and the House of Representatives, and in the 1977 election was elected to the Senate which he served until 1986 as the Parliamentary Leader of the new party he founded called the Australian Democrats.
Such was the outward record of Donald Leslie Chipp – author, radio personality, news commentator, politician.
However, not all went well in Don Chipp’s life. During my time of ministry of the sixties and seventies he went through the tragedy of a marriage break-up, scandalised locals including those who were on his own re-election committee with his affair with an airline hostess whom he subsequently married in 1979 and to whom he has remained a faithful husband ever since. But it was another thing in the 1970s in Cheltenham and the surrounding areas for the Member of Parliament to have a personal scandal. Many of those who supported him and who were on his election committees were the salt-of-the- earth old-type wealthy community people who were likewise very conservative, not just in politics but in personal morals and matters of personal behaviour. In the 1970s I was approached by quite a number of people asking me, as the closest person being Don Chipp’s minister, to speak with him. Don’s own personal life changed quite dramatically and his attendance became irregular, erratic and then finally dropped off. He was seeking a broader stage upon which to exercise his talent.
The summer of 1974-75 was a torrid affair in Australian politics.
1974 had been a year of rapidly increasing inflation. Alarmist stories filled the front pages of the newspapers. We’d had both droughts and floods and people in the rural areas of Australia were suffering greatly. There was a very vigorous parliamentary opposition at work. Gough Whitlam, who had risen to power with his “It’s Time” victory in 1972 was being betrayed by various ministers who showed a remarkable ineptitude for office and others who were busy shooting themselves in the foot.
There was crisis in Canberra. In April 1974 Prime Minister Gough Whitlam asked for a double dissolution of both houses of parliament and took Australia once more to the polls. On the May 18th election the Australian Labour Party won a majority in the House of Representatives but the opposition had power in the Senate.
Then began a period of political crisis and turmoil. The Senate was hostile against Whitlam and a whole range of political manoeuvres were undertaken to win power. One of the DLP Senators who always voted with the opposition was conveniently removed from parliament when Whitlam, against the desires of most people in the Australian Labour Party, promoted the dreaded Democratic Labour Party Senator Vince Gair of Queensland to become the Australian Ambassador to Ireland. It was a very swift move to try to upset the balance of power. Joe Bjelke-Petersen in Queensland stepped in with his own form of political manoeuvre to rob Whitlam of the opportunity to gain power. Consequently there was more tension. The Democratic Labour Party disappeared from the Senate altogether and the Australian Labour Party and the Liberal-Country Party had equal numbers of Senators, meaning that all government business depended upon support from the two independents including Brian Harradine from Tasmania who favoured the opposition.
During that year Whitlam managed to govern through the first joint meetings of both houses of parliament ever in our history, which gave him a slight edge in the numbers.
But the crisis politically was being echoed around the country in other ways.
The economic climate was in a down-turn. Inflation was growing rapidly. Our balance of payments hit the dreaded one billion dollars deficit for the first time in our nation’s history. Australian reserves were down 15% on the previous year. As the year drew to a close the Prime Minister devalued the Australian dollar by 12%. However, it was too late to do much good. Already there was a flood of cheap imports into Australia, threatening many Australian industries, especially our large shoe and fashion industries. The building trades were stagnant and there was a decline in beef and wool production because of the droughts and floods.
Prime Minister Gough Whitlam brought in a September 1974 budget which did little to lower inflation. In fact, it increased government spending, there were tax increases upon wealth and the capital gains tax which infuriated large portions of the community, credit was tight, high interest rates discouraged borrowing and there was growing unemployment. Added to that, the housewife noticed a rise of 15% in the cost of everyday living items and inflation would reach 20% it was feared.
1974 could not have been worse. Cyclone Tracey hit Darwin on Christmas Day leaving forty eight dead and twenty thousand people homeless. The nation reeled from the shock and then came together to try to rebuild that major northern city. In the midst of all of that, Gough Whitlam appointed, in a surprise to many Labour supporters, Sir John Kerr as our new Governor General. Within a little over a year Sir John Kerr would make a move against Gough Whitlam, dismissing him as Prime Minister and installing Malcolm Fraser as caretaker Prime Minister until elections could be held in December 1975. Malcolm Fraser swept into power with a crushing victory.
That was the background scene for an event that occurred in my life that is recorded in my journals. The turbulence of 1974, the crisis of Cyclone Tracey, and the general discontent in the population at the many radical changes instituted by the two years of Gough Whitlam’s government were bringing people in our community and in our church to a point of great agitation. Many of our people approved some of Gough Whitlam’s social changes, but with a powerful politician like Donald Leslie Chipp as our local member we had a constant flow of information through the local papers about the need for massive change within the government.
Probably the decision to jettison “God Save the Queen” in favour of “Advance Australia Fair” as our national anthem created more emotional heat than any other issue.
The scene in that hot summer of 1974-75 was explosive.
It was at that time that I was invited to address six hundred persons at a Dinner at Moorabbin Town Hall to mark Australia Day. I chose the topic “Advance Australia Where?”
That night I gave an address that was probably more relevant to the times than almost anything else I have ever given in my life. I was amazed at what happened to those people at the dinner. Six hundred people gathering together to celebrate Australia Day in an environment of political crisis and national turmoil should have meant that the speaker would tiptoe through issues like walking over broken glass.
I didn’t. I was a young minister who had served in the community for eight years, with a high profile through the local papers and an ability to speak at a large function. I thought it was time that we did an inventory of where Australia was heading and what should be done to change the time of crisis.
All the local dignitaries were at the Dinner – the Mayor and city counsellors, our members of parliament both state and federal including Donald Leslie Chipp. It was a patriotic moment as the council ordered that both God Save the Queen and Advance Australia Fair should be sung. It was obvious that the community, from the way they sang God Save the Queen, were expressing their own point of view about the change in Australia’s heritage. During the Dinner the discussions at every table focussed on the direction of Australia and in our community on almost every table the attitude was that the country was in crisis and going down the drain. Something had to be done. Even the table over in the back corner containing the representatives of the poor, struggling Australian Labour Party’s local branch was in deep discussion. On a number of tables on that hot Melbourne summer’s night on the Australia Day weekend, jugs of beer were flowing freely. The local citizenry were well tanked up. In that environment I stood up to speak – brash, sober, clear-eyed and well prepared.
As I look at the manuscript of my address that night it seems to be a very clear and careful assessment of our nation’s situation and an outline of four major steps to get our country back on the road again. However, that’s looking at the manuscript thirty years later when there is none of the white-hot heat and emotion of the moment. Remember, this was just before the dismissal of Gough Whitlam and the emotions of the community were at fever pitch.
I started the address with an account of what had happened outside our home on the corner of the Nepean Highway and Chesterville Road, just outside the white church with the high white tower, a couple of weeks previously. A Brambles security van carrying a large payroll skidded at the lights when the driver braked too severely, and swerving at the same time crashed on it’s side. I heard the crash from my study and ran to see if I could help. The men inside the van were not injured, but because of the vast amount of money they were carrying for Christmas shopping for the banks and major stores and factories they were not allowed to open the doors or get out. The men inside the treasury section of the van were locked in – in spite of the accident. The driver got out of the front cabin and then went off, presumably to ring for help from the security company. In the meantime, the van stayed on it’s side in the centre of the road, blocking traffic and with the badly shaken and possibly injured security men trapped. There was no way we could break into the van because of it’s armour plate. Here was a van with tremendous resources – wealth, money, equipment, manpower, energy supplies – and it was going nowhere. It needed to be righted to get on the road again and to get on it’s way. It needed leadership and co-ordination at that moment.
You could easily see how I used this symbol as a symbol of what had happened to Australia, particularly noting that when the driver left the van the situation was leaderless. At that time – the exact date is hazy in my memory – Gough Whitlam had left on a five and a half weeks overseas tour. I extended the analogy and made the point that not only was the leader not in the driver’s seat of Australia, but his two closest helpers spent most of their time discussing how everyone would lose their jobs as a result of the crash. In the back section, which I likened to the Federal Opposition, I noted that two of them were arguing about who would make the better alternate driver. This was the time when Don Chipp was strongly promoting Malcolm Fraser as leader. I commented that the third man with his blond hair and bluish eyes was sitting on the money box knitting a woollen jumper – a passing reference to the Country Party leader Doug Anthony. Meanwhile, the rest of us ordinary people were standing around the crashed van wondering how to get it up on the road again and get it going. Progress was being held up. Many people’s lives were deeply affected because they were not receiving the pay that was due to them and many had been put off work because of Asian imports. Others feared for their future because of declining productivity and increasing inflation. The van, symbol of Australia, with all it’s wealth and resources, was going nowhere. It needed to get on the road again.
That was only the introduction. I’d already had about five standing ovations and people were cheering and thumping the tables. I’m quite sure that the free flowing beer in the early part of the dinner was helping. I then settled down to what I believed was a serious contribution to the debate on the theme “Advance Australia Where?”. I asked the question “How can the ordinary citizen get Australia on the road again?”
There was intense interest. Don Chipp was smiling broadly as he leant back in his chair smoking an after-dinner cigar. The Mayor looked anxious simply because what was meant to be a celebration of Australia Day seemed to be turning into a very wild political rally. His worst fears were soon realised. Some of the ALP branch members sitting at the table at the back where they had been relegated in this very heavily pro-Liberal community, started to yell out interjections. I was unwise enough to grab some of those interjections in the way Bob Menzies used to do and turn them back upon the people throwing the interjections which caused more laughter and greater rounds of applause. There was no doubt that probably five hundred and fifty people in the gathering were totally committed to what I was saying.
When I started on the main thrust of the address I started with a word of appreciation for Mr. Whitlam. I had four points that we needed to undertake to get our country back on the road. The first one was that we needed to spread confidence. “You’ll never get the van back on the road again while you indulge in pessimistic post mortems. It’s no use saying “if only we had an alternative driver in the front seat this would never have happened.” Mr. Whitlam had recently been on nationwide TV saying “Our greatest danger is loss of nerve by the leaders or the people”. I was calling for Australians to have confidence in themselves, their resources, their leadership, their future. And people were agreeing with that thought, but all the time thinking “only if we get a new leader”. Donald Leslie Chipp was leaning back further in his chair with his smile getting broader and his cigar seeming most enjoyable.
The second point I made in that address was that we ought to tackle our problems – the issues of aborigines, of immigration which had been severely reduced in order to calm the fears of many Australians, the uranium issue was a big point, the emissions of smoke from our factories which were putting 500,000 different chemicals into the air and water supplies. These were problems that needed to be tackled. What of Australia’s piles of un-destroyable rubbish – of three and a half million old car tyres being dumped a year, and mountains of waste. I said Will our children soon recite:
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of open drains,
With suburban sprawl extended,
For cost accounting gains.
A nature loving country,
Beneath whose golden wattles
The creek is fringed with newspapers,
And lined with broken bottles!
Where galvanised power pylons
March o’er scenic hills
With neon lights promoting
Petrol, paint and pills!
A democratic country,
Where free from earth’s attacks
All people are treated equal
Except pommies, dagoes and blacks!
The place erupted in another standing ovation.
I went on to talk about how we needed to serve the poor, the needy, the under-clothed and under-housed, the unemployed and how in all of this we needed to build character and morality among out people. I spoke of how I was in the United States of America when President Nixon resigned, caught in his lies and cover-ups, and finally ended up with a call to commitment to our nation of Australia and to it’s future.
There was pandemonium!
There is a time in a community’s psyche when someone touches the HOT button and it releases enormous emotional energy. Without fully realising it I had touched that button that night. Even the poor dissident ALP branch members who started shouting out their interjections had added to the total feeling of the night.
It was a couple of hours later when I was home that I began to wonder about the wisdom of it all. Much of what had happened was out of my control but I had prepared a very rousing address which did touch people at a point of absolute frustration. What we had done there in the beginning of the year was going to be seen nationally some months later when the Governor General dismissed the Prime Minister and we went through that terrible national agony of a constitutional crisis.
I always held that the minister had a role as a prophet of God speaking out bluntly about the country, it’s leadership and it’s direction. Over the years I have done that with the leaders of the country regardless of their political stance. I had attacked over the years the leadership on some issues of Henry Bolte and the Liberal Country Party which was well entrenched in Victoria, which made me quite unpopular with some people. But now the spotlight was on our Federal government.
I felt it was the role of a minister to raise the issues confronting our people, particularly those who are poor and unable to speak for themselves.
The local press gave wide coverage to the events, and this in turn led to letters to the editor and scores of brushfires raising the same issues and discussions in thousands of homes. I was inundated with requests to speak at other such gatherings – and then an unexpected visit.
A group of men and two women came one night to my study. It was late. I knew them all. But I hadn’t realised until that moment that these citizens from our community were in fact the Executive of the Pre Selection Committee for the Seat of Hotham, the seat of Donald Leslie Chipp. They had just come from a meeting of dissatisfaction.
There had been conflict with the sitting member and they were talking about not endorsing him for the next election. His own personal life was a cause of some scandal to those good but very conservative people in our community. I didn’t know the background, and still don’t, of the dissent that was there. The fact was, there were people from the Liberal Party in our local community who wanted to dump our sitting member.
Don Chipp would survive. He would go on to serve us as our local member at the next election which was suddenly called because of the constitutional crisis and the dismissal. But then he retired from parliament and established the Democratic Labour Party. Did Don jump or was he pushed?
All I know is that on that night a group of solid citizens came to me and said “Would you consider being the endorsed candidate for the seat of Hotham? We are willing to promote your cause as a new, fresh, competent young man who is the kind of young man we believe Canberra needs.”
In the course of my life several people had said to me “You ought to be a politician”. They were trying to flatter me but in fact the comment hurt me deeply. I believe that a minister has a role to speak out on national, economic and political issues. I believe he should do that fairly but firmly and that he should not become involved in the local party practices.
Consequently when invited I used to attend (and still do) meetings of the Trades Hall Council and Union meetings. I have opened Union annual conferences with addresses and prayers, and have a continuing relationship with members of the Australian Labour Party in formal and informal ways. In the same way I have addressed meetings of the Liberal Party, of all senators and members of the House of Representatives, and have been invited to speak at important conferences. I walk through the different camps of political thought always speaking what I believe to be a true and fair Christian comment about our nation and it’s direction, basing my remarks on the Christian principles found in the Scriptures. To move to any one party would be a betrayal of my own Christian principles and calling as a minister. I believe now, as I did then, that the minister has a role to speak on the great issues of the day but not to advocate one party over the other unless there are areas in that party’s platform or performance which are in opposition to Christian faith or morality.
I looked at the group of eager local political party members as they sat in my study that night. The President of the local branch again asked “Would you be willing to let your name go forward? Will you take this first step towards Canberra?”
I looked at each of them in turn and then said quietly and firmly “When you are a minister of the gospel of Christ, to take a step towards Canberra is to take a step down. Thank you for your confidence in me, but I have a higher calling as a minister of the gospel.”
The firmness of my reply stopped them in their tracks. There was no attempt to even change my mind. They understood that I believe the calling of a minister of the gospel was the highest calling a man can have.
That night in my study I spent some time writing up my journal and looking out of the window at the never ending stream of cars stopping at the traffic lights at the corner of Nepean Highway and Chesterville Road, that wide intersection that was dominated by the lovely white Church with the high white tower noting down the events of another day as a suburban minister.