Qld: Sir Joh was loathed and loved

AAP General News (Australia)
04-24-2005
Qld: Sir Joh was loathed and loved

By Chris Herde and Gil Breitkreutz

BRISBANE, April 24 AAP - Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, who has died at age 94, occupies
a unique place in Australian political history.

No other premier inspired such deep affection and equally great loathing among his
own constituency and the nation.

His death yesterday ends a stormy and at times quite surreal period in Australia's
political history.

There were always two sides to Sir Joh.

The southern press loved to lampoon him as a bible-thumping, anti-union, right-wing
peanut farmer, ready to lend his name to a wide variety of mad schemes.

In 1974, Sir Joh backed the world's first mass produced hydrogen-powered motorcar and
in 1980 he tried to lure cancer quack Milan Brych to Brisbane.

Never one to take any notice of the doctrines of ministerial responsibility or separation
of powers, Sir Joh managed to disarm journalists and critics alike with his homespun mantra
of "don't you worry about that".

But beneath the local yokel facade was a machiavellian politician which his rivals
on both sides of politics would underestimate at their own peril.

Supporters of Sir Joh point to the rapid development of Queensland during his record
19-plus years as premier.

Many a time he would point to the number of cranes on the Brisbane skyline as evidence
of progress and he endeared himself to Queenslanders by bringing the 1988 Expo to Brisbane.

But his premiership also ushered in a culture of corruption of which critics believe
only paralleled that of the NSW Rum Corp almost 200 years ago.

And he ruled thanks to a gerrymander which gave his National Party a great electoral advantage.

Regardless of his imperfections, Sir Joh will be remembered as one of the great forces
in public life in Queensland and Australia.

A Brisbane Sunday Mail newspaper poll published in 2001 named Sir Joh was the greatest
Queenslander of all time, with twice as many votes as The King of rugby league Wally Lewis
and ten times as many as former swim star Kieren Perkins.

Johannes Bjelke-Petersen was born in Dannevirke, New Zealand, on January 13, 1911,
the son of a Danish Lutheran pastor.

The young Joh grew up on the family property, Bethany, in Queensland's South Burnett
district, and, after failing the Queensland state school scholarship examination, seemed
destined to remain a farmer.

But in 1946 he was elected to the Kingaroy Shire Council and three years later entered
state parliament.

In 1952, at the age of 41 when he married Florence Gilmour, the Main Roads Commissioner's
private secretary.

Over the next five decades, as wife, mother and political partner, including a period
as Queensland Senator, Lady Flo was one half of a formidable team.

In 1963 Sir Joh moved into state cabinet as Works and Housing Minister, a post he held
until he came from obscurity to became premier in 1968 after the sudden death of Premier
Jack Pizzey.

The peanut farmer was hardly known outside of Queensland but within a few years he
made his presence felt.

In 1971 when he declared a State of Emergency to allow the South African Springbok
rugby union team to play in Brisbane, even if it was behind barbed wire and police barricades
at the Exhibition Ground.

Then with a second state election win under his belt, he was ready to face a decade
of protests, led by militant unionists and left wing university students.

Some of the biggest demonstrations involved people marching for the right to march.

Thousands took to the streets of Brisbane and hundreds of police tried to stop them.

At one of the largest protests, in October 1977, a total of 662 people were arrested,
mostly for traffic violations and failing to obey a lawful direction.

There were also protests over the destruction of the famous Brisbane landmark, Cloudland
Ballroom, to make way for housing, and the midnight wrecking of the Belle Vue Hotel opposite
parliament house.

Queensland's reputation as the deep north was enhanced when sex education was banned
in state schools.

Police arrested comedian Rodney Rude for foul language and in dawn raids removed condom-vending
machines from university toilets.

Yet it was on the Australian political stage he made his greatest mark.

Sir Joh's took part in regular "Canberra bashing", especially against Labor PM Gough
Whitlam who labelled him a "bible-thumping bastard".

Sir Joh proved to be a unforgiving antagonist and in 1975 he helped topple the Whitlam
government.

He did this by breaking convention to nominate the Whitlam-hating Albert Patrick Field
to fill a casual Labor vacancy in the Senate.

This gave the Opposition the numbers to block supply and led to the eventual election
of Malcolm Fraser.

Sir Joh swept through the 1977 Queensland election, then thwarted Liberal attempts
to gain an extra Senate seat from the Nationals in 1980 by putting his wife Flo at the
head of the Senate ticket.

In 1979, Sir Joh was returned with a record 69 seats in the then 82 seat parliament,
reducing Tom Burns' Labor Party to a cricket team of 11 members.

In 1983, the Nationals won government in their own right, with the help of Liberal
defectors Brian Austin and Don Lane.

In that same year he was knighted.

Sir Joh took on the electricity unions in the mid-1980s and won wide support from a
public sick of blackouts and cold showers in winter.

But dark clouds started to gather with the jailing of his press secretary Allen Callaghan,
and his wife Judith, on charges of misusing government funds.

Sir Joh won a $400,000 out-of-court settlement from Allan Bond, who then owned Channel
Nine, after the station suggested Joh had travelled to Japan, not on state business, but
for his son John.

Bond said later he paid the settlement to ensure he could do business successfully in Queensland.

But the ambitious politician by this time was setting his sights on Canberra and his
Joh for PM campaign.

The campaign managed to derailed the John Howard-Ian Sinclair opposition and from then
the Sir Joh edifice started crumbling.

At home, unrest was growing among his own troops.

While on an overseas trip in 1987, deputy premier Bill Gunn was pressured into announcing
a "six-week" Royal Commission to deal with escalating claims of official corruption and
wrongdoing.

The Fitzgerald Inquiry into corruption ended two years later and the conservatives
were on the nose.

Four Bjelke-Petersen ministers went to jail following the inquiry.

His police commissioner Terry Lewis was stripped of his knighthood and thrown in jail
for corruption.

In a 1989 interview with an Fitzgerald Commission investigator published in 2003, Sir
Joh admitted he may have been too loyal.

"I treat people the way they treat me. That's been my philosophy all my life. I stick
with people and then those people stick with me," Sir Joh said.'

Sir Joh resigned as premier at the end of 1987 just short of his long-cherished goal
of 20 years at the helm of the state.

But that was not the end.

In 1991 Sir Joh narrowly missed a guilty verdict for perjury, later claiming the cost
of defending the court action had sent him broke.

Bitter over his treatment he was still active, bobbing up in Tasmania and the face
of a number of business and political initiatives.

Back at home he greeted tourists who arrived at his beloved Bethany property for the
pumpkin scones or to stay in the property's bed-and-breakfast cottages.

He was also not prepared to remain quiet in his retirement, and in 1998 he gave Pauline
Hanson a ringing endorsement, saying she had struck a chord with voters the major parties
could not match.

He slammed his former National Party colleagues as "stupid" and "without a hope in the world".

In his final years suffering from progressive supranuclear palsy, a condition similar
to Parkinson's disease, Sir Joh professed his admiration for Labor Premier Peter Beattie,
who in typical fashion played up to the link.

At the age of 92, still angry over his treatment, Sir Joh launched legal action over
money he said he was owed from the Fitzgerald Inquiry and his subsequent perjury case.

He lodged with the Queensland government a $338 million compensation claim, based on
the assertion the inquiry was not lawfully commissioned by state cabinet and had acted
outside its powers.

But the claim was rejected by the crown solicitor who found Sir Joh had been "fortunate"

not to be tried a second time for perjury.

Perhaps a clue to his character comes from University of Queensland political scientist
Rae Wear who concluded Sir Joh believed he had God on his side.

"It gave him a sense of rightness," she said.

"Sir Joh was part of an authoritarian government that demanded loyalty and he was kept
in power by a political culture of dominating leaders."

Sir Joh is survived by his wife of 52 years, 84-year-old Lady Flo, their son John,
daughters Helen, Meg and Ruth, 13 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

AAP ch/sc/hu/de

KEYWORD: JOH OBIT (REPEATING)

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