Joh Bjelke-Petersen - Rise To Power

Rise To Power

In 1952, Bjelke-Petersen married typist Florence "Flo" Gilmour, who would later become a significant political figure in her own right. In 1957, following a split in the Labor Party, the Country Party under Nicklin came to power, with the Liberal Party as a junior coalition partner.

Bjelke-Petersen became one of Frank Nicklin's cabinet ministers in 1963 as minister for works and housing. When Nicklin retired in January 1968, Jack Pizzey became Nicklin's successor both as Premier and as Country Party leader. Pizzey died unexpectedly within seven months of assuming office. In the election for leadership of the Country Party, Bjelke-Petersen won. He became Premier on 8 August 1968. (During the interval between Pizzey's death and Bjelke-Petersen's accession, the premiership was held by the Liberals' leader, Sir Gordon Chalk.) At this stage Bjelke-Petersen was still not very well known even to most Queenslanders, let alone outside the State.

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. This system was originally introduced by the Labor Party in 1949 as an overt electoral fix in order to concentrate its base of rural voters in as many districts as possible. Under Nicklin the bias in favour of rural constituencies was maintained, but reworked to favour the Country and Liberal parties.

This bias worked to Bjelke-Petersen's benefit in his first election as premier, in 1969. His Country Party only won 21 percent of the primary vote, finishing third behind Labor and the Liberals. However, due to the Country Party's heavy concentration of support in the rural and remote zones, it netted 26 seats, seven more than the Liberals. Combined, the Coalition had 45 seats out of 78, enough to consign Labor to opposition even though it finished percentage points ahead of the Coalition on the two-party vote. Ironically, while in opposition, Bjelke-Petersen had vehemently criticised the 1949 redistribution, claiming that Labor was effectively telling Queenslanders, "Whether you like it or not, we will be the Government."

Soon afterward, Bjelke-Petersen came under fire for several questionable business dealings, and was nearly deposed by his own party in October 1970. He only survived the resulting spill motion when he suddenly produced a proxy vote from an MP who was out of the country, and was never contacted.

In 1972 Sir Joh strengthened the system to favour his own party, which led to his opponents referring to it as the "Bjelkemander," a play on the term "gerrymander". Although Bjelke-Petersen's 1972 redistributions occasionally had elements of "gerrymandering" in the strict sense, their perceived unfairness was more because rural areas were granted more representation than their population would have dictated if electorates contained equal numbers of voters (or population). The lack of a state upper house (which Queensland had abolished in 1922) allowed legislation to be passed without the need to negotiate with other political parties.

At the 1972 election, the Coalition only saw off Labor's strongest challenge in recent memory due in part to this redistribution. He thus remained premier even though the Country Party only got 20 percent of the primary vote. However, at this election—and in all other elections held during his tenure—the Coalition's combined two-party vote was larger than that of Labor. With Labor weak and chronically divided in Queensland throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Bjelke-Petersen would win five more elections, often at the expense of his Liberal coalition partners as much as Labor. His campaigns stressed social conservatism, law and order and unrelenting attacks on Labor.

In 1984 Bjelke-Petersen was created a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) for "services to parliamentary democracy". He was then generally known as "Sir Joh" (rather than "Sir Johannes"), and his wife generally (if incorrectly) known as "Lady Flo."