Joh Bjelke-Petersen will have a state funeral today. Many say he shouldn’t including Nigel Powell and Wayne Sanderson. They’re both wrong. We owe it to ourselves to give him one. Deny him a state funeral, and we are one with him. Give him one, and we assert and affirm the values of liberal democracy.
I have always strenuously opposed Bjelke-Petersen and most of what he stood for. If it wasn’t for Joh I may not have become involved in politics. His colossal mismanagement of the state and disregard for ethics, morality and integrity drove me to oppose him. So I joined a party that not only opposed him, but was in a position to do something about it, unlike the Labor Party, which was impotent and just as corrupt as Joh’s then Country Party.
It pains me, almost physically, to hear people from my side of politics laud Joh. The Liberal Party that I joined was better than that. Joh was corrupt. There was no excuse for what he did, and I will always remember the palpable anger on the streets of Brisbane in the 1989 election campaign from people who had once voted for him and now knew they had been betrayed.
And yet, his corruption has never been proved to the legal standard. There are reasons for that, but nevertheless, that standard has not been met. That means that the civil libertarians, if civil liberties are to mean anything, must defend Joh’s right to a state funeral, just as they would the rights of any other unconvicted criminal to their civic entitlements.
I use this term advisedly, but Joh was a fascist. His politics threatened the very existence of the society that sustained him. When the cartoonist Alan Moir portrayed him as Hitler, with crossed bananas rather than a swastika on his shoulders, it was an accurate portrayal, even though it was not helpful in the battle against Joh.
Joh used his political weight against his opponents to crush them, whatever the niceties of liberal or parliamentary democracy dictated. Many see Beattie as another Joh, but by insisting on Joh’s right to a state funeral Beattie is the antithesis – he is observing the customs and courtesies in a way that Joh never did. Many of those opposing the funeral are demonstrating what electors instinctively knew. Whatever their policies, there was actually a similarity of personality and approach between the populist and his opposing demagogues.
For those who can’t make the funeral, I have attached an order of service here. When I first read it the text made me choke. But then I realised that it is up to God, whatever he or she may be, to make the judgement as to what is appropriate. Ultimately we cannot know what leads people to do wrong things, and whether or not their good deeds, or their inability to understand moral and ethical concepts, might perhaps excuse them.
We should all mentally stand by Joh’s graveside. As a community we share in his failings. His success as a politician rested on our willingness to vote for him (and I will take on any who say it was purely due to a gerrymander because it wasn’t). It also rested on the way that some self-indulgently opposed him. The startling thing about evil is often its banality, and how domestic and unremarkable it can seem at the time.
Reading the order of service I thought it a pity that the choir from St Peter’s Lutheran School was part of the ceremony, having visions in my mind of young children with innocent trebles, but then I thought otherwise. What a wonderful opportunity to teach them about the fallibility of human judgement and the emptiness of social honours. Will anyone take that sermon up?

For a man who thinks we should all be working past the current retirement age of 65, Peter Costello seems to have a penchant for wanting to move the old and the wise on. Stories are that before her preselection he told 64 year old Victorian Senator Judith Troeth that she was too old for parliamentary work and should retire. She told him where to go, organised her numbers and now is no longer a rusted-on Costello supporter.
Now it is John Howard who is the recipient of gratuitous advice. Newspapers love a beat-up, so today they all carry stories of the Prime Minister’s missile from Athens. The inference is that Howard deliberately sent a shot over Costello’s bows. This is unlikely. If he had, he wouldn’t have been claiming to be misquoted, nor would he have sent a copy of his comments to Costello’s office in clarification. Of course, as the reaction of the Costello camp is likely to further disrupt the ambitions of their protege, whatever the truth, Howard could always claim it as a tactical masterpiece.
Every now and then Howard is a little less disciplined and a little more human than usual, and he slips up. This looks like a slip-up which even less disciplined and even more human Costello supporters have decided to beat-up. Costello, showing his usual self-indulgence, has decided to kick it along as well.
Underlying the Costello camp’s claims is the belief that there should be continual change at the top and that there is a full well of successful leaders from which to draw.
One of the few Costello supporters, apart from Costello, who is prepared to go on the record, is Peter Slipper, the member for Fisher in Queensland. On past performances though, a number of other Costello supporters will be hitting the telephones, and they include other Queenslanders, such as George Brandis and probably Brett Mason. Before any Liberal MLAs and Senators take these boosters seriously, they should look at their records.
The Queensland Branch of the Liberal Party is widely acknowledged as the worst in the country, but Brandis et al don’t get all the credit they deserve for making it that way. From 1994 to 1997 they worked to undermine the most successful administration the party had elected for somewhere around 20 years. Not only did they win elections – a rare talent in the Queensland Liberal Party – but they made the party solvent again. The key theme in the campaign against them was that the party needed “generational change”. Which of course worked on the basis that, if you guys can win elections, then anyone can. For the most recent illustration of the chaos into which the party has descended, have a read of this account of the Ryan FEC meeting and the utterances of “maverick” (at least I got the first two letters right) MHR Michael Johnson.
The fact is that successful leaders do not just happen, and they are very rare. John Howard is an essential part of the success of Australian federal Liberal campaigns, and you can’t just take the apparatus that supports him and use it to put some other leader in place. A good illustration of this is what appears to be Lynton Crosby’s failure in the UK. A failure that Howard seems all too aware of, judging by these remarks, taken from the same interview as the one where he side-swiped Costello. Howard says about his Conservative namesake that, “people don’t have the faintest idea what he believes in.” And about the campaign he says, “I don’t think the Conservatives have done enough spade work. You can’t fatten the pig on market day in politics.”
Now here’s a quick quiz – in one sentence, what does Peter Costello stand for? I doubt whether there is a single back-bencher, let alone voter, who could give me a satisfactory answer for that. And until they can, Costello hasn’t even satisfied the first condition to be considered as the next Prime Minister of this country. Oh, and he wouldn’t want too many more Judith Troeths – Howard’s not the only one with occasional bouts of hubris.

Anyone remember seeing this in the Australian election? No, and neither did I. So why is alleged political mastermind Lynton Crosby allowing the other Howard, Tories’ leader Michael Howard, to use the line in the UK election? Look at the poster in this article.
Perhaps Crosby doesn’t have as much influence as is alleged, or perhaps he is not as good an operator as he makes out. Either way, the UK election is not going to add to his lustre as a political campaigning genius.
The “lying” accusation in Australia was deployed against John Howard and probably increased his majority. Similar things appear to be happening in the UK, with a twist – they have a third-party alternative which is more viable than our Greens, and they don’t have preferential voting.
A poll conducted online for The Times, while probably less accurate than off-line polls contains some interesting qualitative information. While most voters appear to think Blair is dishonest, only a net 7% will change their votes because of the Iraq war. A net 12%, however, are less likely to vote Conservative because of the “tactics and issues raised by the Conservatives”. In both cases the major beneficiaries are the Liberal Democrats – the viable third party. (Although not too viable – their leader Charles Kennedy is favoured for Prime Minister by only 24%, even though 42% of the electorate thinks that there is value in voting for them.)
As in Australia, the War in Iraq, and indeed honesty in government, are side issues. As always, it is issues, and the record of the Government and the Opposition that count. The negatives for Blair are leadership (75%), immigration (75%), failure to improve public services (71%), rising taxes (70%), Iraq (63%), and the party has become too right wing (22%). The negatives for Howard are his party’s record on tax and the economy (78%), using immigration as a cynical ploy (70%), threat to public services (69%), negative campaigning tactics (74%), his leadership (68%) and the party is too right-wing (52%).
It’s the truth/trust dichotomy again. They are both liars, but one is marginally better than the other. Still, there are some “protest vote” levers available for Crosby. Only 21% of voters think a large Labor majority is desirable. Most (46%) want either a Labour government with decreased majority, or a hung parliament. Problem for Crosby is that with a viable third party, electors don’t have to vote for the Conservatives to bring about either of those results.
There is substantial elector acknowledgement that the Conservatives could win if enough voters stay home or vote Liberal Democrat – 41% agree it is a risk while 30% don’t and 29% don’t know – but perhaps not enough.
So, the only thing that could save the Tories is the slight possibility that in a first-past-the-post system enough normally Labour voters could vote Liberal Democrat in electorates where the Tories have a sufficiently substantial vote to then slip in front of both them and Labour. I wouldn’t have thought this was likely to happen to the extent necessary to do anything more than produce a hung parliament. Crosby will need a better result than this.