A mean-spirited opportunist - Bjelke-Petersen
25.04.2005

Sir Joh was a selfish and short-sighted premier who ran Queensland with a tyrannical zeal, writes Tony Koch

SUPPORTERS of the reign of Joh Bjelke-Petersen argue he was wonderful for Queensland because he abolished death duties, oversaw the development of extractive industries, trampled on the unions and built dams and powerhouses.
Such superficial analysis ignores the suffering he caused, the prostitution of electoral laws, the criminal abuse of the parliament and, most shamefully, his disgraceful treatment of the rights of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.
The parliament, to Bjelke-Petersen, was merely a clearing house that enabled him to change or introduce laws that benefited himself, his family or National Party friends.
Let's revisit a little history, beginning with the gerrymander of electoral boundaries that kept Bjelke-Petersen and the Nationals in power. In 1986, the last election won by Bjelke-Petersen, the Nationals won 49 seats, an absolute majority in the 89-seat unicameral parliament, although they achieved only 39 per cent of the vote. The Labor Opposition secured 41 per cent of the vote, 2 per cent more than the Nationals, and won just 30 seats.
In the 1970s, two Aboriginal men, Shorty O'Neill and Mick Miller, worked throughout Cape York indigenous communities with Professor Fred Hollows, who was treating Aboriginal people who had contracted the eye disease trachoma.
When Bjelke-Petersen was told that O'Neill and Miller were also enrolling those Aborigines who were not on the electoral roll, he accused them of being Labor stooges and stopped state funding for trachoma treatment.
On August 8, 1968, Bjelke-Petersen became Queensland premier and three weeks later Exoil and Transoil, companies in which he had shares, were given six-year leases to prospect for oil on one of the wonders of the world, the Great Barrier Reef, off Princess Charlotte Bay, north of Cooktown.
In January 1969, 40 groups of oil search companies had applied for permits to explore the Great Barrier Reef, but there was concern when a blow-out in a rig off the Californian coast dumped oil across 3000sqkm of ocean and beaches. Bjelke-Petersen announced he would ``honour existing contracts'' on the reef.
It was then revealed a company, Artesian Basin Oil, 49 per cent owned by Bjelke-Petersen, had one million shares in Exoil, an applicant for a lease on the reef. The premier resigned as a director of Artesian in favour of his wife, Florence.
In 1982, the now-famous Murray Island leader Eddie Mabo lodged a claim asserting the Merian people, and not the Queensland government, owned their islands in the Torres Strait. Mabo lodged an application with the High Court seeking to prevent the government making the islands a native reserve, with his lawyers arguing that the traditional owners would be deprived of proprietary rights to the islands and the waters around them if they were declared reserves.
Bjelke-Petersen tried to scuttle Mabo and in 1985 passed the Queensland Coast Islands Declaratory Act, which had the effect of abolishing all rights and interests of the indigenous people of Murray Island.
But the High Court found that legislative action was in obvious breach of the commonwealth's Racial Discrimination Act of 1975.
On June 2, 1992, the High Court ruled that white colonisation had not extinguished the traditional land rights of native Australians, and Mabo's Merian people were granted occupation, use and enjoyment of the Murray Islands.
Another case, the most disgraceful of all, concerned John Koowarta, a leader of the Wik people from Aurukun on western Cape York. Koowarta, a top stockman, and a group of his people approached American businessman Remington Rand, who owned Archer River cattle station, in 1974 and offered to buy the property, which had been the Wik people's traditional homeland.
Rand agreed to sell at market rates but Bjelke-Petersen soon heard of the deal and set out to block it, labelling it ``land rights by the back door''. Koowarta signed an agreement to purchase and attempted to transfer the lease, but was blocked by the Queensland government. So Koowarta took the case to the Human Rights Commission, which upheld his complaint.
Koowarta's case also went to the High Court, which in 1982 found the Queensland government had contravened the Racial Discrimination Act of 1975. But Bjelke-Petersen then declared the Archer River property a national park, forever denying the Wik people the right to buy the land.
Bjelke-Petersen's Christianity stopped at the door of his Lutheran church each Sunday. History will show he ran Queensland with a tyrannical zeal, his sole aim to better the lives of those who supported him.

Tony Koch was a political reporter in Queensland from 1980, covering parliament for 15 years, 10 of them as press gallery president.