John Lester Chipper (1910 – 28 April 1980) was an English-born
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...
n businessman and politician. He served in the
Legislative Council
A legislative council is the legislature, or one of the legislative chambers, of a nation, colony, or subnational division such as a province or state. It was commonly used to label unicameral or upper house legislative bodies in the Brit ...
in two spells between 1959 and 1964 and headed the local council of
Rabaul
Rabaul () is a township in the East New Britain province of Papua New Guinea, on the island of New Britain. It lies about to the east of the island of New Guinea. Rabaul was the provincial capital and most important settlement in the province ...
for several years.
Biography
Born in England in 1910, Chipper emigrated to Australia as a young man. In 1932 he moved to the
Territory of New Guinea
The Territory of New Guinea was an Australian-administered League of Nations and then United Nations trust territory on the island of New Guinea from 1914 until 1975. In 1949, the Territory and the Territory of Papua were established in an adm ...
to join the gold rush, working in
Bulolo
Bulolo is a town in Wau-Bulolo Urban LLG, Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea. It was once an important gold dredging centre in the former Territory of New Guinea,Maprik and
Wau
Wau may refer to:
Places and jurisdictions
Papua New Guinea
* Wau, Papua New Guinea
* Wau Airport (Papua New Guinea)
* Wau Rural LLG, (local level government)
South Sudan
* Wau State, South Sudan
* Wau, South Sudan, city
* Wau railway s ...
.J.L. Chipper ''Pacific Islands Monthly'', June 1980, p97 During
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
he joined the
Z Special Unit
Z Special Unit () was a joint Allied special forces unit formed during the Second World War to operate behind Japanese lines in South East Asia. Predominantly Australian, Z Special Unit was a specialist clandestine operation, direct action, lo ...
, serving in the southwest Pacific and
Timor
Timor (, , ) is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, in the north of the Timor Sea. The island is Indonesia–Timor-Leste border, divided between the sovereign states of Timor-Leste in the eastern part and Indonesia in the ...
. Following the war he went into business in Rabaul, initially salvaging materials left over from the war. He expanded into building, engineering, finance, haulage, logging, milling, planting, property development and vehicle sales, and became president of the Planters and Traders’ Association of New Guinea.
He entered politics after being appointed to the Town Advisory Board of Rabaul in 1951. In 1959 all three elected members of the Legislative Council resigned in protest over the introduction of income tax. In the subsequent by-elections on 12 September, Chipper ran for the New Guinea Islands seat as a Taxpayers' Association candidate, pledging to also resign in protest if he was elected. He was duly elected with 87% of the vote and then resigned on 29 September.
Following the expansion of the Legislative Council, he contested the New Britain seat in the 1961 elections, defeating the incumbent Don Barrett. He did not stand for re-election in the 1964 elections.300 Candidates for P-NG's First All-In Election ''Pacific Islands Monthly'', February 1964, pp9–10 However, he continued in local politics, spending 29 years on the Town Advisory Council and its successor bodies, Rabaul Town Council and Rabaul Community Government. When Papua New Guinea became independent in 1975, he took citizenship of the new state, and served as president of the Town Council for eight years until it was converted into a Community Government in March 1980. He was then elected president of the new council.
On 28 April 1980 he suffered a heart attack while making a dawn patrol of Rabaul and died in Nonga hospital later the same day.Town 'father figure' dies in Rabaul ''Papua New Guinea Post-Courier'', 29 April 1980