Joh Petersen and the “Black Hand” warnings

Responses to my recollections last week from long past days when I was his media “minder”, have shown that liking and disliking for Joh Petersen are still very much alive. I have more stories to tell but before relating a few of them I want to remind you of Dr Rae Wear’s splendid biography ‘The Lord’s Premier” (published by UQP).

Dr Wear teaches Australian politics at the University of Queensland where she is Senior Lecturer, School of Political Science and International Studies. Previously she taught at Toowoomba’s University of Southern Queensland.

This biography is essential reading – and fluidly easy to read - for anyone trying to understand the labyrinth of politics of that time.. Wear brings the years alive, as her biography summary relates..

As saviour to some, reviled by others, Joh Petersen became the butt of jokes and even assassination attempts. His influence spread well beyond Queensland – and in the mid-1970s he nominated an unknown furniture polisher to the Senate to help bring down the Whitlam Government. Remember?

As Wear reveals, young Petersen had been a loner who worked hard to overcome crippling childhood polio and the poverty of life on his family’s farm. After a long apprenticeship on the Opposition backbench, he finally made it to the top; and brought to the Premiership his old-style autocratic rule by way of a media-driven appeal to the electorate.

Joh proved both cunning and ruthless as his 40-year political career unfolded. Wear analyses the complex reasons for his electoral success, recounting his Danish immigrant background and Christian piety.
Two more memories
I have two memories among many: When Joh was first Premier, the Opposition making huge gains by claiming radar policing had turned into deliberate revenue raising. It was indeed pretty rampant. I suggested to Joh we should erect Radar Warning signs on those stretches of road where radar traps might occur. The warnings would slow drivers down and if they didn’t slow down they were fair game. Joh rang Commission Bischof who was somewhat startled at this command from his new Premier – but he complied. The “Black Hand” signs went up State-wide – and in the Far North the word went arund that the Mafia was suddenly at work.

My second memory is how delighted the new Premier was at telling jokes against himself. Like when Joh and one of his Ministers, either Ron Camm or Ernie Evans, believed a huge oil slick at Repulse Bay could indicate an oilfield on the ocean floor.

They put out a re-jigged farm drilling rig to test the possibility and the test came up nil. Then the intrepid pioneers discovered the slick had come down on the currents from much further north where a tanker had got into trouble.

Dr Wear’s chapters on Joh’s relationship with the Country Party organisation and its wealthy president Sir Robert (Bob) Sparkes, and how he commanded the Cabinet are, for most of us, eye-openers. Dr Wear writes:

“Within the Christian tradition, there is a teaching that the charisma vital to true leadership can best be acquired by those who abandon possession and titles. Perhaps Bjelke-Petersen intuitively grasped this, for his biographer saw in Bjhelke-Petersen “a genuine fear that to admit any trappings of affluence (would ) in some way detract from his ability to lead.”

Hence Joh and Flo’s relatively modest household at Bethany.