Peter and Joh show too heady a brew
30.07.2009
By: Jamie Walker, Additional reporting: Tony Koch, Sean Parnell
OF all Peter Beattie's shameless publicity stunts, this one was out of the box, even by his standards. Jaws dropped when Queensland's 44th premier literally wheeled out his predecessor, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, for a tour of Brisbane's new Suncorp Stadium.
The date was August 7, 2003, and Beattie was all smiles as he pushed a wheel-chair bound Joh around the redeveloped football ground. It was to be Joh's last public appearance before his death in 2005, aged 94.
But the fallout from Beattie's rapprochement with a man who confronted him with bankruptcy in the 1980s and was Queensland Labor's nemesis for all those years before Wayne Goss led the ALP back to power, would prove to be lasting, providing a backdrop to Tony Fitzgerald's dramatic re-emergence on Tuesday.
As Beattie revealed yesterday, Fitzgerald was among those who were appalled by his chumminess with Joh. They had an animated discussion at parliament house about the Bjelke-Petersen legacy, and Beattie's insistence on applauding his efforts to develop the state economy.
Speaking yesterday from Los Angeles, where he is Queensland's trade commissioner for the Americas, Beattie said that was not Fitzgerald's only complaint. He had gathered Fitzgerald was bitter he had not backed him to become chief justice when Nationals premier Rob Borbidge elevated Paul de Jersey in 1998.
``Tony Fitzgerald would have been my first choice, but I was the opposition leader and it would have been churlish for me to criticise someone who had merit and has shown themself to be a good appointment,'' Beattie said.
``At the end of the day I can understand that probably didn't make Tony happy but when you're leader you've got to be bigger than that.''
Fitzgerald declined to comment on Beattie's claims, except to observe that ``attempts to rewrite history will no doubt continue''.
Goss said that Beattie's interaction with Joh over the years had been questionable. ``There have been a number of incidents, frankly, since 1987 where his dealings with Bjelke-Petersen have raised questions in the mind of many people,'' he said.
The two former Labor premiers have well-known history dating back to the six-year life of the Goss government, where the ambitious Beattie was left to cool his heels on the backbench until almost the very end. Goss would not say what he personally thought of Beattie's involvement with Joh, but his reference to 1987 touches on one of the more colourful episodes of Beattie's kaleidoscopic political career.
In November of that year, while Beattie was state ALP secretary, he secretly met Joh at his peanut farm at Kingaroy to discuss an outlandish proposal for Labor to prop him up in return for a number of concessions, including the dropping of defamation action against a number of Labor figures including Beattie himself. Their discussion didn't amount to anything as Joh refused to budge on reforming the state's gerrymandered electoral boundaries, Beattie's key demand.
Far from being abashed when their negotiations leaked -- from the National side, according to Beattie -- he played himself in a two-part TV dramatisation of the affair, which he also wrote, ostensibly to ``set the record straight''.
Later, as premier, Beattie would say that he reached out to Joh as a ``show of forgiveness''.
This continued when Beattie awarded him a state funeral, to the consternation of many in the ALP. Goss did not attend the service in Kingaroy but he was there on Tuesday night when Fitzgerald received a standing ovation after delivering his warning that Queensland risked sliding back to its ``dark past''.
The former corruption commissioner said yesterday he had nothing to add, except this: ``I am encouraged by reports that the present premier has said she is committed to dealing with the problems.''
