John Lester Chipper (1910 – 28 April 1980) was an English-born

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...

n businessman and politician. He served in the Legislative Council 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 600 kilometres to the east of the island of New Guinea. Rabaul was the provincial capital and most important settlement in ...

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 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 administrative union by the nam ...

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 Maprik District is a district of East Sepik Province in Papua New Guinea. It is one of the six administrative districts that make up the province. It is about two and half hours drive from the provincial capital of Wewak. It's considered as the ec ...

and Wau.J.L. Chipper
''Pacific Islands Monthly'', June 1980, p97 During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

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 reconnaissance and sabotage unit that in ...

, 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 East Timor–Indonesia border, divided between the sovereign states of East Timor on the eastern part and Indonesia on the western p ...

. 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

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chipper, John 1910 births British emigrants to Australia Territory of New Guinea people Australian Army personnel of World War II 20th-century Papua New Guinean businesspeople Members of the Legislative Council of Papua and New Guinea 1980 deaths Z Special Unit personnel