crikey: sir johannes bjelke-petersen: bastard From...

crikey: sir johannes bjelke-petersen: bastard From Crikey.com

Dead dictators and living Treasurers


By Stephen Mayne

Anyone who read The Australian yesterday was left in no doubt that the national broadsheet regards Joh Bjelke-Petersen as one of the worst premiers Australia ever had. All the best-informed Joh critics such as Evan Whitton, Phil Dickie, Ross Fitzgerald and Tony Koch were wheeled out in an impressive and comprehensive demolition of the hillbilly dictator.

If you'd like to sample it, we highly recommend the following:

Editorial: The man whose career changed politics forever
Obituary: the man who sold Queensland
The proxy vote dodgy Joh never had
Phil Dickie: Iron hand, heavy rule
Counting the cost of a mean-spirited opportunist
A corrupt and vicious regime
Wild card crippled Coalition
John Stone: inside the campaign for Canberra


And today The Oz followed with this column by Phillip Adams, in which he recalls the era of "brown paper bag time" when Adams was chairman of the Australian Film Commission and Joh ran Queensland.

Treasurer Peter Costello would no doubt have learnt a thing or two about Joh’s misdeeds over his 18 years in power after reading all of this, and it's a fair bet he might regret calling him "the outstanding premier of the 20th century" on Insiders, as you can see from the transcript here.

You would think one of Costello's Liberal colleagues such as Sir Henry Bolte, Charles Court, or even Jeff Kennett or Nick Greiner would rate more highly than a crooked Nat like Joh, especially if The Australian's demolition is to be believed.

Cossie presides over the highest taxing Federal government in history which still can't manage to make any sort of impression on unfunded Commonwealth superannuation liabilities, yet what is it that Costello told Insiders he most liked about Joh?

I would say the abolition of death duties changed Australia. When Queensland abolished death duties, every state was forced to follow and, as you know, a great deal of southern money came into Queensland and fuelled the tourist growth and the property boom.

The other thing that I pay great tribute to him for was they funded their superannuation. Queensland is the state with the strongest finances and that is a direct legacy of Sir Joh. So he will be seen, I think, as the outstanding premier of the 20th Century, somebody who put in place some decisions which set Queensland up for opportunities over the decades.

Costello has allowed unfunded Commonwealth super to blow out by $15 billion to $90 billion since 1996 and for this reason alone several of his claimed surpluses have actually been deficits. If Costello genuinely thinks funding super made Joh the greatest premier of the last 100 years, why on earth hasn't he moved to fund federal super?

Costello's fawning praise for a dictatorial crook is perplexing. Then again, maybe he admires the old peanut farmer's glass jaw and the way he intimidated the media and critics with an avalanche of defamation writs that saw him in the medals for all-time Australian defamation profits, sharing the podium with two other great libel exploiters, Bob Hawke and Kerry Packer.