Qld: Jury always out on Joh

AAP General News (Australia)
04-24-2005
Qld: Jury always out on Joh

By Steve Connolly

BRISBANE, April 24 AAP - Good bloke or bible-bashing bastard? Crackpot or canny political
visionary? The jury will always be out on Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen.

As Queensland prepares to farewell its longest serving premier, dead at age 94, opinion
is deeply divided on his contribution to state and national politics.

People loved him or absolutely despised him.

Most Bjelke-Petersen detractors will point to the Fitzgerald Inquiry in the late 1980s
which exposed Sir Joh's government as the most corrupt in the state's history.

Four government ministers went to jail as a result of the two-year long inquiry, while
Police Commissioner Terry Lewis was stripped of his knighthood and also later jailed for
corruption.

The allegations of wrongdoing by his administration led to Sir Joh resigning in 1987
- just shy of serving 20 years as premier.

Four years later Sir Joh faced perjury charges, but his trial ending in a hung jury
and more controversy when it was revealed National Party member Luke Shaw was the foreman.

Sir Joh claimed the trial crippled him financially, culminating in the ailing ex-premier
lodging an audacious $338 million compensation claim in 2003.

The compensation bid was later scaled back to a $1.5 million claim to cover legal costs.

Sir Joh was a dominant figure on the national stage throughout his premiership and
was loathed by Labor and the trade union movement.

He played a key role in the 1975 constitutional crisis which brought down the Whitlam
government by appointing an independent senator to fill a Queensland Labor Senate vacancy.

This altered the balance in the Senate and made it possible for the coalition to block
supply.

He was also influential in the 1987 federal election.

The renowned Canberra basher set his sights on federal politics in the audacious Joh
for PM campaign which only served to split the conservative vote and derail John Howard's
first bid for the prime minister's job. Joh for PM was also the beginning of the end of
Joh as premier.

While his political reign ended in shame, Joh supporters hailed the rapid development
of Queensland during his 19 years in the state's top job.

Others would argue he set the state back decades and made it a laughing stock in the
rest of Australia.

He may have been lampooned by many as an ultra conservative wowser with the catch-cry
"don't you worry about that", but Sir Joh's life story is still a remarkable one.

The son of a Danish Lutheran pastor, Sir Joh was born in New Zealand but grew up on
the family property he cherished, Bethany outside Kingaroy - about 300km north-west of
Brisbane.

Due to his father's poor health, Joh was the mainstay of the family and worked himself
to a standstill.

The humble peanut farmer had his first taste of politics aged 35 in 1946 when he was
elected to the Kingaroy Shire Council having made himself known in the district doing
contracting work.

Three years later he entered state parliament in the seat of Barambah and in 1952 aged
41 he left his bachelor years behind when he married Florence Gilmour.

The woman later known as Lady Flo would become part of a formidable team, and she herself
entered politics as a National Party senator in the 1980s.

Her husband became a state government minister in 1963 and five years later he rose
from obscurity to become premier following the sudden death of Jack Pizzey.

Actions such as declaring a state of emergency during the 1971 South African rugby
tour due to anti-apartheid protests, the ban on street marches and sex education in schools
kept Bjelke-Petersen in the headlines.

In his later years, the public mellowed towards the ageing Sir Joh as his health deteriorated
and his family resorted to allowing tours of Bethany for extra income.

Even though he was from the other side of politics, Queensland Labor Premier Peter
Beattie has treated Sir Joh with great reverence.

Sir Joh saw his time in politics as just trying to do his best for the state.

"We didn't smell the flowers along the way," he told the ABC's Australian Story in 2001.

"We just worked and put a lot into Queensland, and Queensland responded."

AAP sc/hu/de

KEYWORD: JOH VIEW (AAP BACKGROUNDER) (REPEATING)

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