Posted on 04/23/2005 11:27:12 PM PDT by NZerFromHK
Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen will be remembered as one of Queensland's most influential political figures, Prime Minister John Howard says.
In a statement issued by his Canberra office, Mr Howard - who has left China en route for Anzac commemorations in Turkey - said Sir Joh was a powerful conservative with strong convictions.
"While his views may often have differed from his political opponents, no one could deny his love of Queensland," Mr Howard said.
Sir Joh died on Saturday aged 94 in hospital in his home town of Kingaroy in south-east Queensland.
Referring to the Sir Joh's tough upbringing, Mr Howard said the premier had suffered from polio and his family had struggled during the Depression.
"Rising above these challenges, Joh demonstrated industrious abilities from an early age, Mr Howard said.
"He designed and constructed a successful peanut thresher, pioneered the use of scrub chain clearing and began an aerial spraying business."
In 1947, Joh entered the Queensland Legislative Assembly by winning the State seat of Nanango for the Country Party. From 1950 until 1987 he held the seat of Barambah.
(Excerpt) Read more at theage.com.au ...
Joh is an interesting politician. On one hand, he is uncompromisingly firm in face of political correctness, socialism, and social liberalism. On the other hand, he had been involved in numerous scandals and eventually was pulled out of power in a corruption inquiry. Hard to characterize whether it is a saint or villain - perhaps a mixture of both.
Another report:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,15069792-1248,00.html
Legendary premier bows out
From AAP and The Sunday Mail (Qld)
April 24, 2005
From: The Sunday Mail (Qld)
A CANDLE was lit in memory of former Queensland premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen as his family attended a service at St John's Lutheran Church in Kingaroy today.
In what was described as an upbeat service, Pastor Lou Pfeiffer told about 60 churchgoers, including Sir Joh's widow Lady Flo, that the man who governed Queensland for a record 19 years was like a "living stone".
"Whatever he did all through his political life, his faith never weakened. He allowed God to work through him to do good things," Pastor Pfeiffer said.
The service also included prayers for Sir Joh, who died yesterday in hospital, aged 94.
Queensland Premier Peter Beattie said today it was up to Lady Flo to set the date for Sir Joh's state funeral, which will be held in his home town, Kingaroy, in line with his family's wishes.
Meanwhile, tributes continued to flow for the controversial politician, whose death closed one of the most tumultuous chapters in Queensland history.
Sir Joh, 94, died at Kingaroy's South Burnett Community Private Hospital, where he was rushed on Monday morning suffering from advanced supranuclear palsy.
His wife, Flo, and family members were present when Sir Joh died at 6pm.
It had been one of Sir Joh's final wishes to die at the family property Bethany, but as his condition deteriorated rapidly during the week it became clear he would not make the final journey home.
Sir Joh ruled Queensland politics for 19 years from 1968 and continued to cast a shadow long after he was forced to step down amid the corruption scandal that saw police commissioner Terry Lewis and several cabinet ministers jailed.
Revered by his admirers and reviled by his critics in equal measures, Sir Joh is credited with turning the state into an economic powerhouse – and blamed for riding roughshod over civil rights.
Prime Minister John Howard last night phoned Lady Bjelke-Petersen from a business summit meeting in China to offer his condolences after hearing of the death of Sir Joh.
"He was certainly a strong political figure and I extend my condolences to his wife and his family," Mr Howard said.
The prime minister said he bore Sir Joh no ill-will over the ill-fated Joh for PM campaign in 1987 which scuppered Mr Howard's attempt to win government.
"I don't bear any grudges . . . I bear Joh no great ills and I sympathise with his family," he said.
Premier Peter Beattie paid tribute to Sir Joh for his lasting contributions to Queensland, describing him as an easy person to deal with, despite his reputation.
"Personally, I always got on with him very well. In a personal sense, he was warm and charming and was hard not to like," he said.
Mr Beattie said he would leave one lasting legacy in Queensland political history. "Sir Joh's record of serving 19 years as Queensland premier will almost certainly never be surpassed."
Mr Beattie passed his condolences to Lady Bjelke-Petersen, 84, and to the rest of the family.
"Sir Joh will be remembered with mixed emotions by the people who lived in Queensland between 1968 and 1987 when he was premier," he said.
"I believe it is important to give him credit for his vision of opening up the export of Bowen Basin coal to Japan. It was not a politically correct policy in those days when many of his supporters had still not forgiven Japan for going to war with the Allies and for its treatment of Australian prisoners of war.
"It was Sir Joh who had the courage to initiate the talks with Japanese companies and to open the export market to Japan, which has been responsible for so much of Queensland's wealth."
Mr Beattie said achievements that Sir Joh was most proud of included the building of the Wivenhoe and Burdekin Dams, the Gateway Bridge, the electrification and modernisation of the Queensland rail network, an expansion of the tourist industry and the staging of the 1982 Commonwealth Games and World Expo 88.
But the achievement Sir Joh placed above all these was his personal decision to abolish death duties. "He forced other state governments and the federal government to follow his lead."
Mr Beattie said the greatest disappointment of Sir Joh's career was the way it ended, with his National Party colleagues voting him out of office.
"Sir Joh told me more than once that he was very proud of the fact that he was never defeated by the Labor Party and he was never voted out of office by the people of Queensland."
Sir Joh's long-serving former deputy premier, Liberal Sir Llew Edwards, said: "I felt that he's been a proud Queenslander who contributed a great to development and progress and fought hard for the rights of the state. While I had a few differences with him I never doubted his commitment to Queensland and the people of the state."
Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg described Sir Joh as "the architect of modern Queensland" .
"It doesn't matter which side of politics you stand on, Sir Johannes Bjelke-Petersen's contribution to this state and to this nation was an undeniably positive one – a contribution that no other state leader has ever matched or probably ever will match," he said.
Mr Springborg said Sir Joh championed the modernisation of politics, appointing the first woman, Yvonne Chapman, to Cabinet.
Queensland Nationals Senator Ron Boswell, who made a pilgrimage to Sir Joh's bedside this week, said: "Queensland has lost a true champion; a humble man who started work living in a cowshed and finished in the highest office in Queensland. I have lost a mentor and friend."
Mike Ahern, who deposed Sir Joh as Nationals leader and succeeded him as premier, said: "He was a person who had an enormous influence on Queensland.
"He started off his life in very poor circumstances and built himself up to be chief executive of the state over a long period of time and he's to be congratulated on that.
"It was a period of unprecedented growth and investment."
Sir Joh was born in Dannevirke, New Zealand, to Danish parents in 1911.
Raised in the Lutheran tradition by his father Carl, a pastor, he was religiously, socially and politically conservative.
Rock-solid in his convictions, he would steamroll opponents, barely consulted outside a small group of trusted supporters and dismissed questions from the media with his trademark: "Don't you worry about that."
His hatred of unions and use of tough, often violent, policing methods to quell protests won strong support and made bitter enemies.
Often lampooned as inarticulate and bumbling, Sir Joh was actually a shrewd and often ruthless politician.
It took 21 years from when he was elected as the Country Party member for Nanango in 1947 until he became a surprise choice as premier.
But once there he proved unassailable, returning to power a record seven times.
His reign finally ended in 1987 with the Fitzgerald corruption inquiry dominating Queensland politics.
Sir Joh was charged with perjury over evidence he gave to the inquiry but walked free when the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict.
It was later revealed the jury foreman was a Young National and Joh supporter.
Transport Workers Union secretary Hughie Williams, one of the unionists who fought many bitter battles with Sir Joh, said he should not be allowed a state funeral.
"Queensland was a joke around Australia during Joh's time. It was considered to be the hick state of Australia," he said.
Academic Rae Wear, author of the 2002 biography Johannes Bjelke-Petersen: The Lord's Premier, said Sir Joh's image had been remade in recent years, helped by Mr Beattie's warmth towards the former leader.
"People have probably forgotten he was an authoritarian figure and a trampler of civil liberties," she said.
A biography of Sir Joh:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/Death-of-a-populist/2005/04/24/1114152369155.html
Death of a populist
By Phil Dickie
April 24, 2005
Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen's stock response of 'Don't you worry about that' belied a reign that left many feeling decidedly anxious.
Former premiers usually pass without much notice beyond the boundaries of their home state. Not so Sir Johannes Bjelke-Petersen, Queensland premier from 1968 to 1987, who died yesterday, aged 93. Indeed, in the biography stakes, Sir Joh was the most written about politician of the last century, with four biographies and one alleged autobiography — easily surpassing not only his contemporaries Sir Henry Bolte and Sir Robert Askin, but also Sir Robert Menzies, Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke and Malcolm Fraser.
Longevity in office — he missed a 20-year term as premier by just nine months — was only a minor factor in Sir Joh's notoriety. Much more credit has to go to his meddling on the national political stage, which played significant roles in bringing the government of Gough Whitlam and John Howard's first tilt at the prime ministership undone.
In November 1986, Sir Joh led Queensland's Nationals to their first absolute victory over both the ALP and the Liberal Party and immediately set his eyes on becoming prime minister.
But the Joh for PM campaign foundered when then prime minister Bob Hawke called an early election and Joh's premiership soon looked like going the same way, as revelations of corruption tumbled out of the Fitzgerald inquiry. Sir Joh forestalled the first party move against him by announcing he would retire on his 20th anniversary in office, but a second gambit — sacking almost all his senior cabinet — backfired when the party sacked him.
For a bizarre few days, Sir Joh refused to stand down, even canvassing the possibility of ruling with ALP support with Labor Party secretary Peter Beattie. Sir Joh finally left office and Parliament with notably poor grace on December 1, 1987, and thereafter tended to lend his public support to conservative opponents of his former party, including One Nation.
He was later put on trial on charges of perjury relating to his evidence to the Fitzgerald inquiry about $100,000 in cash brought to his office in a brown envelope by an Asian developer. A second jury, empanelled after the court was alerted that two former police associated with the defence team may have had improper contact with members of the previous jury, failed to reach a verdict. Jury foreman Luke Short, one of just two holdout votes, was later revealed to have been at least a sympathiser, if not an actual member, of an organisation known as Friends of Joh.
Sir Joh's trademark response to media queries — "Don't you worry about that" — is possibly rivalled in the Australian political lexicon only by Malcolm Fraser's reputed utterance: "Life wasn't meant to be easy." His expression for dealing with journalists — feeding the chooks — also remains useful and in use. Johannes Bjelke-Petersen was born in Dannevirke, New Zealand, on January 13, 1911, and had polio as a child. He became a notable rural entrepreneur from his base in the South Burnett area around Kingaroy, pioneering, among other things, the Queensland way of mass land clearing by stringing anchor cable between bulldozers.
He entered Parliament in 1947 but his time as a backbencher is now mainly remembered for a speech condemning Labor's gerrymander as an affront to democracy.
Then he put his time as works minister to good use building up favours with construction projects in the electorates of colleagues. They made him deputy Country Party leader in January 1968. Seven months later, premier Jack Pizzey suffered a heart attack and Bjelke-Petersen was premier. He very nearly became one of the state's shortestserving premiers in October 1970, surviving a party room vote only by suddenly producing a proxy vote from a member who was overseas (and unable to be contacted by anybody).
From this early setback, Sir Joh went from strength to strength and became known for his determination to develop the state at all costs. Undoubtedly, this is how he would most like to be remembered. Brisbane flowered as a city as it hosted first the Commonwealth Games in 1982 and then Expo '88. Cranes on the skyline was one of Sir Joh's favourite measures of prosperity. Other much heralded initiatives included the abolition of death duties, which sparked a wave of interstate migration that still continues, and the development of Queensland's huge coal basins.
Sir Joh also kept Queensland in the soundest of financial positions and made much of the fact that he headed the lowest-taxing state.
But a darker side existed to Joh's Queensland. Much of the economic magic was a consequence of Queensland spending less on social infrastructure than any other state.
Government cronies, the so-called white shoe brigade, did well out of Sir Joh's desire for development, and even foreign construction conglomerates learned that the way to preferment lay through generous donations to slush funds that were sometimes only tangentially connected to the National Party. Heritage buildings in the way of either public or private development had a way of disappearing in midnight demolitions.
Sir Joh debauched any instrument of democracy that got in his way and became known for ever more outrageous refinements to Labor's gerrymander. In election years, Parliament would hardly sit and Sir Joh could pur sue critics, even parliamentary critics, to vindictive extremes with defamation writs.
Police were given extensive powers to spy on dissenters and to break up street marches, with the government turning a blind eye to police excesses that came to include the virtual franchising of illegal brothels. In the move that was ultimately to bring Sir Joh undone, South Australian police reformer Ray Whitrod was driven from office as police commissioner and replaced with the reputedly corrupt and very junior inspector Terry Lewis. The cabinet minutes covering the appointment have never been found.
Sir Joh was the last premier to dispense knighthoods, in one case giving one to an out-of-state businessman who donated $100,000 to a Kingaroy orphanage. More notably he arranged for one to be awarded to himself in January 1984 and got his police commissioner up on a second attempt in 1986.
Sir Joh married public servant Florence Gilmore in 1952 and helped orchestrate her becoming a National Party senator for Queensland in 1980. At the time, this was widely seen as yet more outrageous cronyism but Senator Flo Bjelke-Petersen went on to win wide respect in the role.
Although Sir Joh declined to join the parliamentary superannuation scheme, questions arose from early in his ministerial career about possible improper public inputs into his considerable private business affairs.
He bulldozed his way through scandals that included accepting shares from a big company lining up for government permits, profiteering on mining licences and engineering to open the Great Barrier Reef to oil exploration while neglecting to mention that companies associated with him held some of the more promising prospects.
In 1986, the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal came dangerously close to a finding that a $400,000 defamation settlement for Sir Joh from new Channel Nine owner Alan Bond had elements of either extortion or bribery.
When Sir Joh bought a property near sleepy Duaringa, government departments rushed to install a school and upgrade roads, bridges and a racetrack.
Mining and construction magnate Sir Leslie Thiess installed hangars and other facilities on the property and later sued Channel Nine over inferences that these facilities constituted a bribe to Sir Joh. Thiess lost, and the defamation court in effect ruled that Sir Joh had been corrupt — the finding that was implicit in the Fitzgerald inquiry but never quite reached by the criminal courts.
Sir Joh interpreted his discharge from the hung jury trial as an acquittal and supporters have waged fitful campaigns for justice for him ever since.
After a brief stab at a career as figurehead for a minor merchant bank, he returned to the family property Bethany, which evolved into a minor attraction on tourist coach routes. In recent years he suffered the degenerative effects of Parkinson's disease and complications of his childhood polio.
He is survived by his wife and their four children. Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, who recently turned down Sir Joh's claim for $353 million in compensation for pain, hurt and suffering occasioned by the Fitzgerald inquiry, has said the former premier will receive a state funeral.
RISE AND FALL OF A POLITICAL PHENOMENON
1911
Born at Dannevirke, New Zealand, January 13, son of Danish pastor C.J. Bjelke-Petersen.
1913
Family moves to Kingaroy.
1924
Leaves school aged 13 to work on parents' farm. Becomes successful beef and peanut farmer at Kingaroy.
1947
Enters Queensland Parliament as Country Party member for Nanango. As opposition member, strongly opposes socialism in a Labor-dominated Parliament.
1952
Marries Florence (nee Gilmour).
1957
Country Party-Liberal coalition gains power. Only instance in Australia of a conservative coalition with National Party as dominant partner.
1963-68
Appointed minister for works and housing.
1968
Given additional portfolios of Aboriginal affairs and police; is elected deputy leader of Country Party. After premier Jack Pizzey dies, is elected unopposed as leader. Becomes premier despite strong support for Liberal deputy premier Gordon Chalk.
1971
Declares state of emergency to curb demonstrators during Springboks' rugby tour.
1975
Defies convention by selecting his own candidate, Albert Field, to fill a casual Senate vacancy. This becomes a factor in the dismissal of the Whitlam government.
1977
Removes state death duties. Holds redistribution before election - two Liberal seats disappear, angering the Liberals.
1979
The historic Belle Vue Hotel is demolished in the middle of the night, prompting Anglican Dean of Brisbane, Ian George, to ask: "What kind of government acts like a thief in the night?" Sir Joh commented: "I congratulate the demolishers on a job well done."
1981
Allegations of political interference in the granting of rights to build shopping complexes to a company whose managing director is "rather coincidentally a regional chairman of the Bjelke-Petersen Foundation".
1983
National Party gains numbers to govern alone.
1984
Bjelke-Petersen is knighted.
1986
Joh for Canberra campaign unsettles the federal coalition. Campaign falters in 1987.
1987
Unrest in Queensland National Party - and claims of corruption during his administration - lead Sir Joh to undertake to retire on August 8, 1988. Party unrest continues. In November, after Sir Joh dismisses several ministers, the parliamentary party elects Mike Ahern. The crisis is resolved on December 1, 1987, when Sir Joh resigns.
1989
Fitzgerald inquiry report tabled in Queensland Parliament.
1991
Sir Joh is tried for perjury but the case ends with a hung jury. It later emerges the jury foreman is a member of the Young National Party.
1998
Guests pay $1000 each to attend a dinner to raise $1 million to cover Sir Joh's legal costs.
2003
He seeks compensation of $353 million from the Queensland Government for lost income.
SOURCE: WHO'S WHO IN AUSTRALIA, AUSTRALIAN ENCYCLOPAEDIA, JOHANNES BJELKE-PETERSEN: A POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY
You are not wrong in saying that Joe was an interesting figure. He was his own man and he did not stand for any nonsense from the left wing types that caused so much disruption in Queensland.
I grew up with the turmoil associated with Joe Bjelke Petersen being Premier of Queensland. However, I was only a witness to the events in Queensland. In my own state we had Henry Bolte, another stalwart.
Joe Bjelke Petersen is the last of a unique breed. When he was a young man he was responsible for an exercise program that was held throughout Australia (that was before my time at school). His time in politics was controversial and the riots caused by his policies were almost a daily occurrence. Nothing has changed since those days because the paid stirrers continue to exist in our midst.
What you might not realise is that another colourful politician, the former Labour Member for the Riverina, Al Grasby passed away on the same day as Joe. I will mourn Joe, and forget about the other politician.
I'll mourn Joh also, but the 'father of multiculturalism' Grasby I can live without, don't you worry about that.
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