re: sir joh/charger
Thu, Apr 21, 2005 The Border Mail
Jury out on Joh
GOOD bloke or bible basher. 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, opinion is deeply divided on Sir Johs 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 Johs government as the most corrupt in the States history.
Four government ministers went to jail as a result of the two-year long inquiry, while former 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 ended in a hung jury and more controversy when it was revealed National Party member Mr Luke Shaw was the foreman.
Sir Joh claimed the trial crippled him financially, culminating in the ailing former 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 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 let the|Coalition 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 Howards first bid for the prime ministers job.
Joh for PM was also the beginning of the end of Joh as premier.
While his political reign ended in shame, Sir Joh supporters hailed the rapid development of Queensland during his 19 years in the States top job.
Others would argue he set the State back decades and made it a laughing stock in the rest of Australia.
