It's called a street to die.
It's more on Tamati Hall than Westminster.
Jennifer Byrne reports.
You can tell it in the atmosphere, the air, even if you're up at about 10,000 feet or
more, you know when you're over Queensland.
At ground level, the border crossing to Queensland is nothing exotic.
Scarcely even noticeable.
People in other states look at us and say we're different.
I go down to Sydney, Melbourne, I go to the races, you know, and people say we'd like
to have your Premier down here.
We even like you.
I think it's a definite form of government.
There's no wishy washy, you know, we'll sit on the fence and tell you some other time.
You'll get your answer.
But politically Queensland is the nation's oddity, both in style.
I find today in politics, they can't walk in a straight line.
They duck under the table, around the table, hide behind cupboards and do this and do that.
It's absolutely disgusting.
And especially personality.
I think that I'm such an affable, lovable, law abiding person.
People like to lumber things on me.
Maverick dogmatic politicians, a highly disciplined party machine.
However, for 27 years they've delivered power and the nationals have known how to use it.
For the past two years that power has been absolute and there are accusations they've
misused it.
Take Oxford in the case of the TAB sub-agency licence.
Oxford's a smallish town dominated by dairy cows and gravel quarries about an hour's drive
south of Brisbane.
Four years ago, Mrs Elsa Frith applied to the state's TAB for the sub-agency licence.
Well we had the news agency and we thought that it would be a good service to the area
and also would help us in the business and we wrote in and asked.
And then in early 82 we had a gentleman out and he had a look and he was very enthusiastic
and we were excited.
So you felt very confident?
Well we had it.
We had it.
We told everybody we had it.
It was on his part we had it.
And we waited six weeks and then eight weeks and then I started phoning up and then we
realised there was something wrong.
Well I did and that was it.
Did they ever say anything to you?
Really nothing but you know how someone says nothing but they're telling you something
and no names were mentioned.
And did you get from what he said?
I couldn't get it for a while.
I misunderstood and then after it was repeated to me I said to him, oh I see.
Well I won't phone anymore.
I'm sorry to have been a nuisance ringing up all the time.
And that was the last time I phoned them.
Time passed, Elsa Frith became the local postmistress.
Finally this year the licence was awarded.
But it went across the street to the Oxford Tavern owned by Junefair, the family company
of one Russell Hind, Minister for Roads.
For sure it was a fortunate company, lucky enough to have its bottle shop right in the
way of a recent road diversion.
Now the Minister for Racing's lucky company had the TAB licence.
Unluckily though when someone thought to track down the original and unsuccessful Frith application
it was found to carry a notation, political interference.
There's been so much written about it, said about it and there's been nothing done to
rectify what if it is all true and there was political interference it's a shocking thing
to a normal working family, working person if someone in a high position can interfere
in a person's life when you can't fight back on equal terms.
There's nothing been proved that I did or said anything wrong in that application, no
one's proved anything.
I was disappointed, I was like a balloon that goes down at a kids party, that's how I felt
when we didn't get it.
But you're sort of suspecting something, you assume something but you're sort of hoping
you're wrong aren't you, that everybody's good and above board, you're hoping that you're
wrong.
The Labor Party took a far less generous view.
As far as Front Bencher Wayne Goss was concerned, Queensland's omnibus minister was gone.
Mr Hins I believe has three options, resign, resign or resign.
Mr Hins at first fought back, denying any interference.
They're making something out of something that doesn't exist.
Subsequently he withdrew the June Fair application, a move which saved his substantial political
hide but did not solve the mystery.
What do you think's happened?
I think that there was interference, I can't say for sure who it was but I think we're
entitled to know and I think that there's come a time when this sort of thing has to
stop and someone has to stop it and if it has to be stopped by having an open inquiry
why not have it.
Of course there will be no inquiry, inquiries just aren't this government's style.
Its response to these things is to stonewall and given the infrequency with which parliament
sits in this state, given the outright refusal of the likes of the Premier and Mr Hins to
answer questions they don't like and given the intense secrecy which surrounds the top
levels of government and the bureaucracy, well eventually the scandal dies for lack of interest
and if it takes someone's livelihood or even just their trust with it as has happened countless
times since the Nationals came to rule, well that's just politics, Queensland style.
Any hotel in Queensland positioned as the Oxford Tavern is, ordinarily it would have
been approved.
The TAB break their neck to get a site like that.
This famous Mrs Frick as we refer to her makes application for a TAB licence in a post office
in an area that you couldn't swing a cat.
Now let's be realistic about it, it surely couldn't be regarded as a reasonable applicant.
What about this famous notation political interference?
Now if it was me it would have said ministerial decision and political interference is not
me.
Is it possible someone politically interfered?
It's possible but what everyone in that house, there's 82 members in there, every day they
come into the house, every day the people come into this room they ask you to do something,
is that political interference or is it political representation?
What's the difference?
Now the person who ever put that on the paper said political interference, it could have
been one of three or four or five different people but it wasn't me.
The case of Elsa Frick is unusual in that it became public but its thrust, its testament
to the exercise of power by the already powerful is disturbingly familiar.
The politicians call it free enterprise, most observers though use the phrase agrarian socialism
to describe the network of boards, committees and tribunals which effectively control the
state's rural industries, be they dairy, sugar or grain.
You have the same people on popping, the same names popping up all the time on boards, in
fact I could almost say the whole structure of the whole thing is almost incestuous because
we have the same, well for argument's sake you have one fellow, head of the milk board,
head of the milk entitlements committee and head of the pasteurisation tribunal and that
one fellow is Sam Damani.
Now if there's some disagreement between those bodies I mean it's a case of Caesar judging
Caesar isn't it, the whole thing's a joke, it would be if it wasn't so serious.
You're talking really about patronage, about extreme patronage.
Sure, sure he used to be a liberal, he's now a member of the National Party and it's an
unwritten law in Queensland that if you want to be appointed to a body you have to join
the party first.
The power of the regulating bodies is immense.
In the dairy industry for instance they determine how much milk each district or dairy zone
may produce and further how much of that white milk it may then process and bottle for sale
to Brisbane, processing being the lucrative side of the industry, attracting a special
21 cents a litre bounty on each bottle sold.
Jim Egan's complaint is that his main competitor South Coast Dairy is permitted to bottle and
so earn the 21 cents bounty on 100% of the white milk it produces.
His own cooperative by contrast may bottle only 17.5% of its milk, selling the rest to
competitors including South Coast for it to bottle.
That arrangement Jim Egan estimates costs his Logan and Albert cooperative 1.7 million
dollars a year, put it into liquidation last month and according to Jim Egan has a very
sour taste to it.
You have the situation where people with vested interests sit on certain boards and they had
a vested interest in transferring milk away from our association.
Now you've got Alan Hollendale who is the chairman of South Coast Dairy who's been trying
to take us over for years.
He is a member of the Milk Entitlements Committee which allocates milk to an association or
away from it now.
They allocated milk away from us on two occasions, we took them to court on two occasions and
beat them, they did it a third time and well we never really had a chance to, we would
have appealed against it I'm sure only of course we've gone in liquidation in the meantime.
Said Mr Hollendale is the man Russell Hins nominated to the chairmanship of the TAB when
Sir Edward Lyons resigned earlier this year.
And said Mr Hins was 20 years chairman of directors of the company with the majority
holding in South Coast Dairies.
Do you feel very much that you're a small outfit up against the big boys in a sense?
Oh sure, yeah there's no doubt.
I don't suppose Jenny at any time we seriously considered or thought we could beat them,
we know as well as anyone that it's a David and Goliath situation except not too many
miracles seem to happen these days.
Opposite the Hins dairy farm at Oxford is a park blessed in the name of that man of
miracles St Francis of Assisi, friend of animals and birds.
But the larger dedication is to Russell Hins whose attitude to friendship and politics
encapsulates so much of the spirit of Queensland.
Well don't you accept that that's the way that politics works throughout the world?
Looking after friends?
No not looking after friends but what Sir Edward the Commonwealth Bank says get with
the strength.
Is there something wrong with that?
Do you think that different moral standards apply too?
I mean what you said about patronage I don't think really is...
What sort of moral standards are you talking about?
I'm talking about appointing to boards, to commissions, to you don't have inquiries but
statutory bodies to quangos to things like that.
I mean does it help to be a National Party member?
Well I would think that if you're looking around for somebody to put onto an organisation
you put somebody in you can trust.
You will automatically take somebody if you're unpollicative persuasion.
There's nothing wrong with that surely.
Well that's what I'm saying that is not I don't believe an argument that would be maybe
advanced in New South Wales or Victoria would you accept that is one of the moral differences?
I couldn't see Mr what's his name in New South Wales?
It'll come to you.
Well I'll have to excuse myself here.
Ran, his name's Ran.
He wouldn't be appointing anybody to a board from a National Party or a Liberal Party?
No.
All of us, the people in this state we'd all like to know exactly what goes on behind the
scenes.
What goes on when we innocently apply for something and feel that it should be judged
on its merits.
Why is it interfered with?
Who interfered with it?
And there's always some drama on about someone like on a farm or here or there always something
happening to someone.
Maybe I was ignorant to it before maybe it's been happening for years and I've never noticed
it but once it happens to you you notice everything then and it's time that it's stopped.
There's an old saying about never apologise never resign.
Is that your philosophy too?
No you don't resign.
See and it wasn't a National Party bloke that told me that Ronnie Senator Ron McAuliffe.
Strong Labour.
Never resign Russell.
He said let them try yet they find it bloody hard.
After this break Jennifer Byrne continues her report on Queensland with a look at how
Sir Joe soon to be 75 hopes to steer the Nationals to another majority in the next election.
That's after this.
After two decades of total power in Queensland the National Party Premier of Queensland Sir
Joe Bjorki-Peterson is being compared by some to King Lear a bit wild and not a little bit
mad.
Not in the psychotic sense rather in his annoyance at groups and individuals and events that
don't conform to his view of things like unions and environmentalists and elections of federal
Labour governments.
Jennifer Byrne continues her report.
The National Party is the success story of Australian politics I think in Australia in
the 20th century.
I mean their growth, the growth of their vote, their strategies and their techniques have
been absolutely brilliant in many ways and of course the Premier himself has a kind of
home-spun philosophy and a rural appeal which appeals to a large number of people in Queensland.
Election night 1983, Sir Joe Bjorki-Peterson's golden moment.
He'd routed not only the Labour Party but his former coalition colleagues and from now
he'd be flying solo.
There's no problem we will be a government in our own right we will operate very effectively
and very efficiently.
But it was to be a bumpy ride.
Since the coalition broke up it's just been one series of absolute crises and mistakes
and foul-ups from that time on.
They have got themselves into so many jams they've had about half a dozen instances where
they've introduced legislation quickly and found it was defective and they've had to
repeal it.
It's become quite apparent that when they were in coalition the Liberal Party was the
moderate force now on any criteria since the time they've governed in their own right.
It's been a series of mistakes and some of them quite serious.
The crowning of Miss Queensland in 1986.
Sir Joe of course would never agree.
For him it's all been a most exhilarating even discombobulating experience.
Tonight with them we appreciate very much the very large sum of money that I understand
has been raised that I'm to announce.
It's $1,348,767.
Tremendous sum of money.
And he is not a man to acknowledge mistakes.
Yes that's a lot of money.
$1,348,767.
Yet there can be no doubt it's been a difficult period.
The economy, that great boom engine of which Sir Joe so often boasted, has gone sour.
The state now has the highest number of unemployed in its history.
The abortion raid was a fiasco.
Queensland detectives acting with all the delicacy of the Keystone cops to cause personal
distress, moral outrage and a humiliating political climb down.
Mid-year the Premier lost his closest advisor and friend Sir Edward Lyons to scandal over
breaches in TAB betting rules.
I wasn't trying to protect him.
I was not trying to protect him.
Why not?
I was trying to give him a fair hearing by the law.
And while he unsuccessfully defended Lyons to the end, he's picked damaging fights with
both the sugar industry over deregulation and federal assistance proposals and the mining
industry over freight charges.
On the internal level the normally smooth running party machine has never been in worse
repair, bitterness which persists over the Lyons affair, open dispute over succession
to the leadership and Sir Joe's choice of deputy, the unthreatening but deeply boring
Bill Gunn.
Sir Robert Sparks, the party's master tactician, has been out of action due to illness.
While former manager Mike Evans has abandoned the party fold altogether for a consultancy
career, he has noted the changes.
I think it's a certain breakdown of discipline at the parliamentary level.
I think that's fairly obvious.
Why is it that?
Because they can't kick the Liberals now so they have to kick each other.
Well I understand a bit of that happens behind the scenes but I think that's probably the
main area of concern for them that there appears to be a breakdown of discipline.
Sir Joe has adopted blank denial as his best defence.
The National Party is absolutely, you know what granite is like, the different types
of stone, granite stone is very very tight, you can't bust it or split it unless you've
got tremendous, well, lots of dynamite.
Well we're rock solid like that.
We are absolutely rock solid and as I've always said, come out with clear cut proof, evidence,
innuendos, accusations.
I'm so used to Labor making them.
They have made them and invented them like putting sausages through a sausage machine.
They've made it look bad, they've tried to.
They've done it to me all my life and they never come forward with any evidence.
Innuendos, innuendos.
But Premier, there is objective evidence that in fact the Government has committed a series
of blunders and there have been some unfortunate events.
I mean, regardless of what the Labor people say.
Which ones are you referring to?
Well the abortion raids I think was a mistake.
Well interestingly enough, have you forgotten that our popularity ratings they went up,
they escalated right up here after the month after that.
And so do you call that a calamity?
Well another word could be authoritarian.
And do you resent or accept that in fact?
The more you do in that area the greater my vote.
Twice during the period that I've been Premier we've had massive demonstrations, thousands
of people milling around in the streets of the city and we with thousands of policemen
have prevented them from marching.
And it does look as if we are trying to control and demontate people as it were in their lives
but it's not so.
We're trying to maintain a freedom for the majority, not just a few.
And every time, every occasion my vote goes up.
Sir Joe's most cherished achievement has been on the industrial front.
His victory over striking power workers and his government's extraordinary legislative
and practical assaults on the state's trade unions.
And he won't stop, he insists, until he's totally beaten the problem.
Oh there's a lot more to do.
These people, they've had their day, they've been to the top and I speak about the militant
union leaders, not the rank and file.
The rank and file want to work, they don't want to lose the day's pay, we're on their
side.
Is it a crusade for you?
Well you can call it a crusade if you like, it's a mission.
Oh I don't think there's any doubt about that, this is just the beginning.
He's now got a taste for an attack upon the unions.
You've got to look at his motivation for why he's attacking the unions.
Number one, he's had a long deep seated hatred of unions from the days when he was running
a business himself.
Number two, he's been over to Britain and he's had a look at the American legislation,
he's most impressed by what the conservative governments are doing there.
Number three, he wants to bring down the Hawke government and he believes that by stirring
up enough industrial unrest to make it spread into other states and cause industrial disruption,
that that will in turn embarrass the Prime Minister because you see he's tried every
trick that he tried on the Whitlam government against the Hawke government but the Hawke
government has refused to bite.
You're a local Bob, what sort of reaction can we expect in this part?
Oh terrific mate, plenty, plenty of work, plenty of vote to you.
The government's more immediate struggle has been to retain the seat of Redlands which
went to by-election yesterday following the death of a cabinet minister, a death which
caused particular grief given the nationals knife-edge majority and lack of an alternative
candidate.
The one they got was persuaded to join the party just five days before the pre-selection
vote.
While the official opponent is Labor's Con Shaka, the Premier's real adversary as it's
been for the past two years is the Liberal Party, the former partner which he regards
now with boundless disdain.
The greatest thing that's happened to this state is the National Party became a government
in their own right, for then we could start to deal with the unions and then we could
start to have positive policies without this wishy-washy stuff that we had when they were
there.
And the feeling is reciprocated.
Director of the Queensland Liberal Party, John Moore.
The National Party is based on a combination of the old country party and this new lot
which I refer to as the White Shoe Brigade.
I heard you've actually called them White Shoe Troglodots.
Well that's a bit generous.
They're an ageing party and an ageing government, both making a lot of mistakes.
Now that to me means we're in for a lot of changes in the next three to five years.
For the Liberals decimated to a six pack at the last election, the only real possibility
for power rests in return to coalition.
The interesting question given the mutual loathing which exists with the Nationals is
coalition with whom?
We're going to the next state election to win in the name of the Liberal Party.
Now if we fail to do that, depending on the numbers, we'll then look at forming coalitions.
Our first option will naturally be with the National Party.
But the Labour Party is an option.
I mean you're talking about forming coalitions.
In Queensland politics anything's an option.
Sharing of power is what it's all about.
But can you share power with the Nationals?
They don't seem to want to share power with anybody.
No, I know, but they may have to.
If you haven't got the numbers, you haven't got power.
The very mention of coalition is an affront to the Premier.
And his vehemence has itself been a major contributor to party disunity.
I really believe that there is a predominant coalition feeling amongst the grassroots membership
of the party.
Mike Evans put it forward and for his pains was labelled a turncoat by the Premier.
Well I think he was wrong.
I mean I'm not disloyal to anyone.
I think I made the point before that if it hadn't been for two former Liberal ministers,
there would not have been a National Party government of its own right, right now.
You know, I think that's a pretty sobering point of view.
Another who has felt the lash of the Premier's tongue on the coalition issue is Sir Roderick
Proctor, a leader of Brisbane's corporate establishment, chairman of the company building
Queensland's first casino, Jupiter's, on the Gold Coast just outside Surfers Paradise.
He is also a trustee of the National Party.
That he is prepared to speak out at all reflects the considerable concern within business circles
at the National's solo flight record.
Yeah I'm inclined to think that the two party government, the coalition government, did
have a set of balances which was probably to the good and it always worked very well.
Is this a strong feeling within the broad business community?
I think that most businessmen would prefer the alternative of having a more balanced
situation with both parties involved.
Well you're a trustee of the National Party and your view on the coalition is very much
in conflict with the view of the Premier who believes that they shouldn't go back into
the coalition.
Do you feel uncomfortable with that?
Yes it would conflict to an extent.
I've got a duty not to criticise my leader as it were.
It's just as I mentioned earlier that there is a sense of having a little more balance
in the government if both of the two conservative parties are represented.
They blocked us.
They would vote against us in the House.
They would not let us do anything to the unions.
They would not have confrontation.
And boy am I glad that we get out of it because we could do what we're doing.
Single party government.
Yet there are those in your party who say that you should be back in coalition.
I mean there is a feeling that the National should start talking to the Liberals.
No there isn't.
No feeling?
There's one or two fellows who I don't place much value on or much importance on talking
that way.
Do you regard it as sort of traitorous to talk about coalition?
No I think it's just sheer stupidity on their part to talk that way.
Whether the government is just suffering from a midterm low or something more serious, even
terminal, the Nationals are unlikely to take any chances.
A new electoral redistribution is due by the end of next month and on the past record Queenslanders
can expect some highly imaginative cartography.
I was a backbench member of Parliament and I've always been a little bit boisterous and
I said now Premier if you want the boundaries rigged leave it to me and we'll make a job
of it.
And I said and if you don't do it of course, well then of course the people won't give
you the opportunity to do it again.
I wouldn't make that statement today but I certainly made it and I'm not backing off
it but if you realise and analyse what I said that's what governments do.
Will you be involved in the redistribution?
No they don't allow me to.
Is it because of your attitude to these things?
Well I guess you couldn't blame them could you?
The problem about the gerrymander in Queensland is that a redistribution when it's completed
doesn't even have to go back to the Parliament for debate.
Out of the seven new seats that are being planned I'd be very surprised if the National
Party doesn't win at least five of them.
You think they in fact know that?
Absolutely.
I have no doubt in my mind whatever that the basic boundaries and concepts were drawn before
the redistribution was established.
Now I'm not casting aspersions on the people doing the redistribution.
What I'm saying is that the terms of reference which the redistribution commissioners were
given placed such limitations upon them that they can do very little.
Like a temporal King Canute Sir Joe Bielke-Peterson has held back the tide of advancing years
the occasional illness, the even more occasional challenger to his throne and every scandal
his political enemies have tried to pin upon him.
Eventually of course he will be engulfed and then as Sir Joe probably well knows all the
bread and circuses and judicious pork barrelling the National Party can produce won't fill
the void.
Well I guess that's his problem isn't it?
It's been important that he should groom someone and I think the fact that he hasn't is a problem
for the party.
Is that the biggest problem the party has?
The biggest problem.
That there's no one to fill his shoes?
Well there is but that person's not obvious at this stage.
Queensland needs a strong tough leader who'll stand up to Canberra, stand against socialism
and stand for what's right.
The fact that every day of my life there would be many people come up to me and say don't
you give in Mr Premier you keep staying Premier we want you we need you the nation needs you
and that's something that never stops it goes on and on even this morning again I had a
phone call from one person I've never met him that I know of rang up to say just that
and what the nation needs you.
That's correct.
Jennifer Byrne reporting there and if you missed the news at the start of Sunday there's
been a significant swing away from the Nationals in the Redlands by-election it's too close
and too early to state whether the Nationals have retained the seat.
Next on Sunday Peter Thompson with the new Australian film Birkin Wills.