John Tingle remembered as prolific broadcaster, respected politician

John Tingle, the broadcaster-turned-politician, who left journalism to found the Shooters Party, has been remembered as a leading broadcaster and respected politician.

John Tingle earned a reputation as a leading radio personality, before founding the NSW Shooters Party in the early 1990s.

John Saxon Tingle, who left journalism in the 1990s to found the Shooters Party, has been remembered as a prolific broadcaster and respected politician, after he died last week aged 90.

Born in 1931, Tingle launched his journalism career at 18 after leaving Sydney for the Riverina district, where he worked as a broadcaster at 2QN Deniliquin.

Two years later he moved to the ABC and over 17 years rose to senior positions within the national broadcaster at its old headquarters in William St, including TV News director and later News Service chief of staff.

In 1966, he was part of a television crew that captured what would later become iconic footage of then prime minister Harold Holt diving at a Portsea beach, just months before he disappeared from the spot in 1967.

As a junior radio reporter, Tingle met and married fellow ABC journalist Pam Chivers, with whom he had three children, including ABC chief political correspondent Laura Tingle.

John Tingle.

The couple divorced in 1977, after 22 years of marriage.

At the end of the 1960s, Tingle departed the national broadcaster for commercial radio.

Over two decades, he earned a reputation as one of the country’s leading radio personalities, presenting for 2UE, 2GB, 2UW, Radio Australia and 3AW in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, as well as hosting TV programs for the Nine and Seven networks.

In 1992, Tingle surprised his colleagues when he departed journalism for politics after founding the Shooters Party.

He entered state parliament to oppose the tightening of NSW gun laws, vowing to represent responsible gun owners who posed no threat to the public.

John Tingle talks at a gun rally at Cessnock Showground, NSW.

But it was a career move, he later admitted, that sat uneasily with him; he insisted he was first and foremost a journalist.

In the upper house, Tingle accused the state government of failing to target perpetrators and criticised it for preventing citizens owning firearms for self-defence.

In the wake of the Port Arthur massacre, Tingle emerged as one of the country’s foremost critics of the Howard government’s proposed gun reforms. However, he supported the Howard government’s position on semiautomatic or pump-action shotguns, labelling them as “weapons of war” which did not belong in the houses of average Australians.

Reflecting on his political career years later, Tingle said the aftermath of Port Arthur was his most disturbing memory, after he and his wife were subjected to dozens of death threats and required bodyguard protection.

Paul Whelan, Bob Carr and John Tingle with weapons handed in during the 1996 gun amnesty.

Decades later Laura Tingle, defended her father’s position, saying “he was never of the crazy NRA gun advocate school ... In parliament he spent a lot of time fighting the crazies off and keeping them out of the party”.

Tingle was re-elected to a second eight-year term in 2003, after his election in 1995, but resigned in 2006 over health issues.

He is survived by his three children, Peter, Sally and Laura.