User:Beneaththelandslide/drafts/History of the Australian Democrats

Unreferenced, unfinished, unreadable, mostly gibberish. Feel free to improve it, I won't mind.

Beginnings

The Australian Democrats emerged from three different groups, all of which had split from the Liberal Party at different times: the Liberal Movement, which had split from its parent over electoral reform; the Australia Party, which had rebelled against Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War; and Don Chipp, who was dissatisfied with the underrepresentation of Liberal moderates.

Liberal Movement and the New LM

In 1970, South Australian Liberal and Country League leader Steele Hall formed a faction within the greater party, the Liberal Movement, which aimed to reform both the party and electoral legislation in order to lessen the influence of rural conservatives within it. After gaining ten representatives--with seven in the House of Assembly, two in the Legislative Assembly, and one in the Australian House of Representatives--the LCL's leadership took action against it and three representatives split from the parent party in 1975 to stand alone.

It gained almost a fifth of the vote (18.2%) in the 1975 state election, but only increased its representation by one. Following the LCL's decision to reform and to rename itself the Liberal Party, the LM narrowly voted to return to its parent. A portion of the party, led by Robin Millhouse, rebelled against this decision and formed the New LM.

Liberal Reform and the Australia Party

The Liberal Party had enthusiastically embraced involvement in the Vietnam War, with leader Harold Holt touring with the United States President Lyndon Baines Johnson in the federal election of 1966. Gorton Barton, a successful Sydney businessman, published an open letter to Johnson in the Sydney Morning Herald, expressing his dismay with the war. He received no response from Johnson himself, but he received over a thousand letters of support. He then formed the Liberal Reform Group, which hoped to change the party's position on the war. Liberal Reform stood candidates against Liberal Party members, and initial results were impressive. The party changed its name to the 'Australian Reform Movement' in 1967, aiming to disassociate itself from the Liberal Party, but this saw its support plunge in the year's Senate elections.

The party emerged hurt, but through the help of a newsletter, Reform, its membership numbers increased and there was lively debate within it. The party's support increased in the 1970 and 1974 elections, but it still failed to win seats. In the 1975 double dissolution election that followed the Whitlam dismissal, minor parties of all creeds were swept away amongst the Coalition landslide. There was minor talk about a merger with the New LM in 1976.

Don Chipp

Don Chipp entered the Australian House of Representatives in 1960, representing the Division of Higinbotham (later Hotham). After Harold Holt's election victory in 1966 Chipp briefly entered the federal cabinet, but was soon dropped, and only reappeared in 1969, serving as the Minister for Customs and Excise. Chipp, a left-leaning 'small-l liberal', took the oppourtunity to remove censorship restrictions, allowing more sexually open content to enter the country (pornography and other such works were still illegal in some states at this time). He made both friends and enemies for his decisions, with many conservative organisations opposing his moves, while other groups, particularly the media, supported him. He received a degree of publicity in 1972, and following the Liberal-Country Coalition's loss to the Gough Whitlam-led Labor Party, he became shadow minister for social security.

After the dismissal of the Whitlam government and the return of the coalition in 1975, Chipp was passed over for the cabinet by Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser.