100 Facts About Joh Bjelke-Petersen

Sir Johannes Bjelke-Petersen was an Australian politician and farmer who served as premier of Queensland between 1968 and 1987, for almost 20 years, as state leader of the National Party.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen's family moved back to Australia when he was a child and settled on farming property near Kingaroy, Queensland.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen left school at the age of 14 and went into farming.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen was elected to the Kingaroy Shire Council in 1946 and to the Queensland Legislative Assembly at the 1947 state election.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen would serve in state parliament for over 40 years, holding the seats of Nanango and Barambah.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen was appointed as a government minister in 1963 and succeeded as premier and Country Party leader in 1968 following the death of Jack Pizzey.

In 1985 Joh Bjelke-Petersen launched a campaign to move into federal politics to become prime minister, though the campaign was eventually aborted.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen earned himself a reputation as a "law and order" politician with his repeated use of police force against street demonstrators and strongarm tactics with trade unions, leading to descriptions of Queensland under his leadership as a police state.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen was unable to recover from the series of damaging findings and after initially resisting a party vote that replaced him as leader, retired from politics on 1 December 1987.

Two of his state ministers, as well as the police commissioner Bjelke-Petersen had appointed and later knighted, were jailed for corruption offences and in 1991 Bjelke-Petersen, too, was tried for perjury over his evidence to the royal commission; the jury failed to reach a verdict as the jury foreman was a member of the Young Nationals and a member of the "Friends of Joh" group, and Bjelke-Petersen was deemed too old to face a second trial.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen was one of the most well-known and controversial figures of 20th-century Australian politics because of his uncompromising conservatism, political longevity, and the institutional corruption of his government.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen was born on 13 January 1911 in Dannevirke, a town in the North Island of New Zealand.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen was the second of three children born to Maren and Carl George Bjelke-Petersen.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen's parents were both Danish emigrants to Australia; his mother had arrived in Queensland as a child while his father moved to Australia as a young man.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen's parents had moved from Queensland to New Zealand in 1903, where his father, a Lutheran minister, was posted to the originally Scandinavian settlement of Dannevirke.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen was raised in a conservative religious household, with the Sabbath strictly observed and daily Bible readings; his mother ran a Sunday school from the family home.

The young Joh Bjelke-Petersen suffered from polio, leaving him with a lifelong limp.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen left formal schooling at age 14 to work with his mother on the farm, though he later enrolled in correspondence school and undertook a University of Queensland extension course on the "Art of Writing".

Joh Bjelke-Petersen taught Sunday school, delivered sermons regularly in nearby towns and joined the Kingaroy debating society.

In 1933, Joh Bjelke-Petersen began work land-clearing and peanut farming on the family's newly acquired second property.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen developed a technique for quickly clearing scrub by connecting a heavy anchor chain between two bulldozers.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen would hold this seat, renamed Barambah in 1950, for the next 40 years.

The Labor Party had held power in Queensland since 1932 and Joh Bjelke-Petersen spent eleven years as an opposition member.

On 31 May 1952, Joh Bjelke-Petersen married typist Florence Gilmour, who would later become a significant political figure in her own right.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen would serve in cabinet without interruption until his retirement in 1987.

Nicklin retired in January 1968 and was succeeded as Premier and Country Party leader by Jack Pizzey; Joh Bjelke-Petersen was elected unopposed as deputy Country Party leader.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen said he had done nothing wrong, but resigned his directorship of Artesian in favour of his wife.

In June 1970 it was revealed that a number of Queensland government ministers and senior public servants, as well as Florence Joh Bjelke-Petersen, had bought shares in the public float of Comalco, a mining company that had direct dealings with the government and senior ministers.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen again rejected claims of a conflict of interest, but the Country Party state branch changed its policy to forbid the acceptance of preferential share offers by ministers or members of parliament.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen spent the night and the next morning calling MPs to bolster support, surviving a party room vote by a margin of one, after producing a proxy vote of an MP who was overseas and uncontactable.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen seized on the controversial visit of the Springboks, the South African rugby union team, in 1971 to consolidate his position as leader with a display of force.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen praised police for their "restraint" during the demonstrations and rewarded the police union for its support with an extra week's leave for every officer in the state.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen described the tension over the Springboks' tour as "great fun, a game of chess in the political arena".

From 1971, under the guidance of newly hired press secretary Allen Callaghan, a former Australian Broadcasting Corporation political journalist, Joh Bjelke-Petersen developed a high level of sophistication in dealing with news media.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen held daily media conferences where he joked that he "fed the chooks", established direct telex links to newsrooms where he could feed professionally written media releases and became adept at distributing press releases on deadline so journalists had very little chance to research news items.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen vehemently opposed the Whitlam government's proposal for Medicare, a publicly funded universal health care system.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen, a licensed pilot, used it often to visit far-flung parts of the state to campaign and boost his public profile.

The intention was to have Gair's seat declared a casual vacancy, allowing Joh Bjelke-Petersen to fill the vacancy until the next election.

In October 1974 Joh Bjelke-Petersen called an early election, setting the 1974 Queensland election for 7 December, declaring it would be fought on "the alien and stagnating, centralist, socialist, communist-inspired policies of the federal Labor government".

In 1975, Joh Bjelke-Petersen played what turned out to be a key role in the political crisis that brought down the Whitlam government.

When Queensland Labor Senator Bertie Milliner died suddenly in June 1975, Joh Bjelke-Petersen requested from the Labor Party a short list of three nominees, from which he would pick one to replace Milliner.

When Police Commissioner Ray Whitrod announced he would hold an inquiry, a move supported by Police Minister Max Hodges, Joh Bjelke-Petersen declared there would be no inquiry.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen told reporters he was tired of radical groups believing they could take over the streets.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen rejected calls for an inquiry into the raid, declaring the government would believe the police and claiming the public clamour was "all part of an orchestrated campaign to legalise marijuana and denigrate the police".

Joh Bjelke-Petersen chose the same day to announce that he was quitting his post.

One Liberal MP, Colin Lamont, told a meeting at the University of Queensland that the premier was engineering confrontation for electoral purposes and was confronted two hours later by an angry Joh Bjelke-Petersen who said he was aware of the comments.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen's attack sparked a joint political statement by four other major religious denominations, which was shrugged off by the premier.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen condemned the use of Australian foreign aid to prop up communist regimes, urged Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser to stop criticising the governments of South Africa and Rhodesia and from 1977 proposed Queensland secede from Australia and establish its own currency.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen used the party's strength to move key Cabinet posts that had long held by the Liberals into the hands of National Party ministers.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen began making appointments, including judges and the chairmanship of the Totalisator Agency Board, that had traditionally been the domain of Liberal ministers, and accusations arose of political interference and conflicts of interest as mining contracts, casino licences and the rights to build shopping complexes were awarded to business figures with National Party links.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen was angered by a Liberal Party bid to establish a public accounts committee to examine government expenditure.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen openly urged Liberals to cross the floor to the Nationals in hopes of getting an outright majority.

In 1984 Joh Bjelke-Petersen was created a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George for "services to parliamentary democracy".

In 1985 Joh Bjelke-Petersen unveiled plans for another electoral redistribution to create seven new seats in four zones: four in the state's populous south-east and three in country areas.

The announcement came too late for the non-Labor forces, as Joh Bjelke-Petersen had pressured the federal Nationals to pull out of the Coalition.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen's position deteriorated rapidly; ministers were openly opposing him in Cabinet meetings, which had been almost unthinkable for most of his tenure.

On 7 October, Joh Bjelke-Petersen announced he would retire from politics on 8 August 1988, the 20th anniversary of his swearing-in.

Six weeks later, on 23 November 1987, Joh Bjelke-Petersen visited Campbell and advised him to sack the entire Cabinet and appoint a new one with redistributed portfolios.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen then demanded the resignation of five of his ministers, including Gunn and Health Minister Mike Ahern.

Gunn, believing Joh Bjelke-Petersen intended to take over the police portfolio and terminate the Fitzgerald Inquiry, announced he would challenge for the leadership.

The next day, Joh Bjelke-Petersen formally advised Campbell to sack Ahern, Austin and McKechnie and call an early election.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen thus concluded that the crisis was a political one in which he should not be involved.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen believed that Bjelke-Petersen was no longer acting rationally.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen boycotted the meeting, and thus did not nominate for the ensuing leadership vote, which saw Ahern elected as the new leader and Gunn reelected as deputy.

However, Joh Bjelke-Petersen insisted he was still premier, and even sought the support of his old Liberal and Labor foes in order to stay in office.

However, even with the combined support of the Liberals and Labor, Joh Bjelke-Petersen would have needed at least four other Nationals to cross the floor if he hoped to keep his post.

Three months later, Joh Bjelke-Petersen called on voters at the federal by-election in Groom to support the Liberal candidate instead of the National contestant.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen said the Nationals had lost their way and turned their backs on traditional conservative policies.

Bond had made the payment soon after buying the network and a major Queensland brewery and claimed in a later television interview that Joh Bjelke-Petersen told him he would need to make the payment if he wished to continue business in Queensland.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen was called to the Fitzgerald corruption inquiry on 1 December 1988, where he said that, despite allegations raised in the media and parliament, he had held no suspicion in the previous decade of corruption in Queensland.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen was later stripped of his knighthood and other honours.

In 1991 Joh Bjelke-Petersen faced criminal trial for perjury arising out of the evidence he had given to the Fitzgerald inquiry.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen was told to take them to a Brisbane city law firm and then watch as the money was deposited in a company bank account.

Bjelke-Petersen's memoirs, Don't You Worry About That: The Joh Bjelke-Petersen Memoirs, were published the same year.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen retired to Bethany where his son John and wife Karyn set up bed and breakfast cottages on the property.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen developed progressive supranuclear palsy, a condition similar to Parkinson's disease.

The government rejected the claim; in his advice to the government, tabled in parliament, Crown Solicitor Conrad Lohe recommended dismissing the claim and said Joh Bjelke-Petersen was "fortunate" not to have faced a second trial.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen died in St Aubyn's Hospital in Kingaroy on 23 April 2005, aged 94, with his wife and family members by his side.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen received a State Funeral, held in Kingaroy Town Hall, at which Prime Minister, John Howard, and Queensland Premier, Peter Beattie were speakers.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen was buried "beside his trees that he planted and he nurtured and they grew" at the Kingaroy family property, called "Bethany".

Joh Bjelke-Petersen's government was kept in power in part due to an electoral malapportionment where rural electoral districts had significantly fewer enrolled voters than those in metropolitan areas.

In 1972, Joh Bjelke-Petersen strengthened the system to favour his own party.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen had a lifelong habit of hard work and long days and while premier often slept for just four hours a night.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen valued "the School of Life, the hard knocks of life" more than formal education and showed little respect for academics and universities, although he accepted an honorary doctorate of Laws from the University of Queensland in May 1985, prompting criticism from both students and staff.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen made himself available to reporters and held daily press conferences where he "fed the chooks".

Joh Bjelke-Petersen banned a Courier-Mail reporter who was critical of his excessive use of the government aircraft and Wear claims other journalists who wrote critical articles became the subject of rumour-mongering, were harassed by traffic police, or found that "leaks" from the government dried up.

Journalists, editors and producers were deterred from critical stories by Joh Bjelke-Petersen's increasing use of defamation actions in order to try to "stop talk about a corrupt government".

Callaghan's advice to Joh Bjelke-Petersen included the recommendation that he maintain his rambling style of communication with mangled syntax, recognising it added to his homespun appeal to ordinary people and allowed him to avoid giving answers.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen responded by closing licensed clubs and hotels and publishing the names and addresses of the 260 involved workers, with the aim of inspiring members of the public to harass them.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen ordered the shutdown of several of the states generators.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen believed that he and his government knew what was best for Aboriginal Australians.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen excused racially discriminatory legislation as a protective measure and generally supported Aboriginal self-determination at least partly as striking a blow against the monolithic centralism of Canberra under Labor.

The courts found that Joh Bjelke-Petersen's policy had discriminated against Aboriginal people.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen claimed there were over-riding issues of defence and security because of fears of a communist plot to create a separate black nation in Australia.

In 1982, Bjelke-Petersen denied John Koowarta, an Aboriginal Wik man, the sale of the Archer River cattle station that covered large amounts of the Wik ancestral homeland, due to Aboriginal people 'not being allowed to buy large areas of land'.

The High Court overruled Joh Bjelke-Petersen's decision, allowing the Wik nation's traditional land to be bought by Koowarta.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen was a leading proponent of Wivenhoe and Burdekin Dams, encouraging the modernising and electrifying of the Queensland railway system, and the construction of the Gateway Bridge.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen was one of the instigators of World Expo 88 and the 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth Games.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen's government worked closely with property developers on the Gold Coast, who constructed resorts, hotels, a casino and a system of residential developments.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen was an associate of Milan Brych, who had previously been removed from the New Zealand Medical Register for promoting unproven cancer cures.