Talk:Joh Bjelke-Petersen/Archive 1

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Was he born in Waipukurau? Most Who's Who entire give his place of birth as Dannevirke

Contents 1 Patrick Field 1.1 Parliamentary report 1.2 Bjelkemander 1.3 Success 2 Joh was never acquitted

Patrick Field

The previous version referred to Joh breaking convention by appointing an Independent Senator. In point of fact, Field was a member of the ALP when appointed and in the December 1975 federal election was placed on the Labor Senate ballot.

Joh had rejected Labor's nominee Mal Colston, citing doubts about his integrity, and asked for a list of three names from which to choose the replacement. Labor refused to provide any names other than Colston, and so Joh selected Field, a man with impeccable Labor credentials, but strongly anti-Whitlam.

The only convention cited by any authority is that a casual Senate vacancy should be filled by a member of the same party. In the 1962 case, "Sir Frank Nicklin had done a similar thing in the sixties by using coalition numbers to reject the ALP's first choice" (Hugh Lunn, "Joh", University of Queensland Press, 1978, p216). Joh went to some pains to ensure that Field was a longstanding ALP member holding a current party membership and with a long union history behind him, he having been re-elected to the presidency of a union some months earlier. At the time of his nomination on 3 September 1975, Joh made sure that Field had his Labor membership card in his pocket and quoted the number and branch of issue in Parliament. Skyring 11:48, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm. While the 1962 case did represent a precedent, it seems that it was very much the exception rather than the rule. In other words, I think that counts as a "convention". Certainly Labor thought so - and, ultimately, this view was endorsed by the success of the later constitutional referendum. And while Field may have been a Labor Party member, he was chosen specifically because he opposed Whitlam, so for all intents and purposes, given the situation he may as well have been a National Party member. --Robert Merkel 22:55, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The point at issue as to what, precisely, was the convention at the time is that it was a convention to appoint a member of the same party as the deceased or resigned Senator, not that the State Parliament be bound to choose the nomination of the party. The Senate unanimously passed a resolution when NSW Premier Tom Lewis appointed Cleaver Bunton to the effect that the replacement should be of the same party. (Gavin Souter, "Acts of Parliament", Melbourne University Press, 1988, p529). I think it is safe to say that this resolution represents a clear statement of whatever convention the entire Senate thought should apply to filling casual vacancies, and while I do not have the text of that resolution before me, Souter does not mention anything about party nominations, merely party membership.

And if you look at the text of the 1977 amendment of s15, a remarkably ugly slab of legalese set in the middle of an otherwise elegantly worded Constitution, you will note that it likewise says nothing about party nominations. It may be assumed that this widely supported amendment represented the will of the people as well as being the setting down of whatever convention was seen at the time as applying to Senate casual vacancies. It would be instructive to look at the Hansard debates of the time.

The point I am making here is that if you apply the text of the 1977 amendment to Patrick Field, you will see that he would have been covered by it, as he was a member of the ALP during the entire period of his appointment and sitting.

As regards to section 15, which I agree is remarkably ugly, you'll note the section that reads:

Where--

(a) in accordance with the last preceding paragraph, a member of a particular political party is chosen or appointed to hold the place of a senator whose place had become vacant; and

(b) before taking his seat he ceases to be a member of that party (otherwise than by reason of the party having ceased to exist),

he shall be deemed not to have been so chosen or appointed and the vacancy shall be again notified in accordance with section twenty-one of this Constitution.

So under this rule, Whitlam could have arranged to have Field expelled, and the appointment would have automatically lapsed. Therefore, Joh would have had no option to appoint Labor's preferred nominee if he were to appoint anyone. There doesn't seem to be anything stopping a state parliament repeatedly nominating donkey candidates, or refusing to nominate a candidate at all, though.

Whitlam could have done any number of things. But he didn't. Field remained a member of the ALP and was therefore a valid choice under the Senate casual vacancy convention as expressed in the new s15. And yes, you are correct, State Parliaments don't have to nominate replacements. Odgers has something useful to say on this. Skyring 05:47, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You say he might as well have been a member of the National Party, but this is immaterial, even if true. Field was a member of the ALP and therefore no convention was broken. That is why Joh went to such lengths to ensure that Field's long and respectable Labor party membership was beyond dispute, even making sure that on the day of his selection by State Parliament, Field had his current ALP membership card tucked into his coat pocket. (Hugh Lunn, "Joh", University of Queensland Press, 1978, p222). If Joh had wanted to break with convention, he would have merely appointed a Country Party member to fill the vacancy.

But if you have a pre-Field statement of the convention, I should be very glad to hear it. Crisp, in a 1962 edition of "Representative Government of Australia" discusses Senate casual vacancies without mentioning any convention at all, noting one prominent case, that of Reade and Earle, where both party and conscription stance were reversed. Skyring 00:16, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ah, but this is the problem. As I understood it, the usual practice was to appoint the preferred nominee of the party who had lost a Senator, not merely any random party member. I find your examples interesting but not persuasive yet. If you're going to answer this question properly, we'd really need to look at *all* the casual vacancies filled by a state government controlled by the other party than the retiring/deceased Senator from 1901 until Field's appointment and see what the practice was. --Robert Merkel 04:46, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Of course State Parliaments usually appointed the nominee of the party supplying the vacancy. The question is whether there was a recognised convention in 1975 that they do so. I have not found any source that states that this was the case. The recognised convention was (and is) that replacement Senators be from the same party and of course this was done to preserve the expressed wishes of the voters. However it was then and remains now a matter of simple practicality that a State Parliament is not obliged to appoint a replacement Senator if the nominee is not acceptable. The references I have found as to what the recognised convention was at the time indicate that Tom Lewis breached the convention by appointing an Independent, but that Joh did not, because Field was of the same party. In the same way that Joh made sure that his paperwork was impeccable in the Gair Affair, he did the same with Field, taking pains to check that Field's credentials as a Labor man were beyond reproach. The "black-letter" law of the Constitution gave him the power to appoint anyone he wanted to fill the vacancy, but he was very careful in his choice. If one asks why did he do this, the only answer that makes sense is that he wished to comply with the accepted convention. In "letter" if not spirit. Skyring 05:47, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Parliamentary report

Skyring, have a look at this Parliamentary library report, and specifically the section on the Field affair. Interestingly, it lists a 1987 case where the deadlock situation I mentioned above actually happened; the Tasmanian government refused to appoint the Labor nominee, and the position remained unfilled. However, it does say that the convention did "break down" twice in 1975; and surely appointing somebody who would vote to bring down the government of his own nominal party, and install the Opposition into government, is breaking the "spirit" of the convention, if not the "letter". --Robert Merkel 05:00, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The Parliamentary library is a treasure trove of such information. They even provide free copies of their periodic topical collections, such as the texts of Senate Occasional Lectures. I have a stack of them beside me as I speak. The key words in your reference are "all parties and the State Parliaments had adopted the practice of filling the casual vacancy with a member of the same political party as the resigned or deceased Senator". Although this is equated to a convention and is said to have broken down, clearly if Field remained a member of the ALP then the convention was not broken, even in its post 1977 form. It seems to be a widely-accepted myth that Field was expelled by the ALP, but I can find no definitive statement that this was so, and it seems to me that if Field was even a nominal ALP candidate for the December 1975 election, then he must have remained a member between September and December.

As with many things about Whitlam and the Dismissal, myths have grown up, presumably as an attempt to portray Whitlam as the victim of a vicious campaign rather than an unwitting architect of his own destruction. The recently-released Cabinet papers for 1974 reveal that he made some significant mistakes and ignored repeated warnings from within and without his government that he was heading for trouble. The accepted myth for the Field affair seems to be that Joh ignored the ALP's nominee in favour of an independent and therefore broke convention. It seems to be easy to believe this, especially considering that Joh was a bit of a bastard, but the facts don't bear it out. Joh rejected Colston on grounds of integrity, the ALP refused to nominate somebody acceptable to Joh, so Joh picked a staunch Labor man as a replacement. Not with the best of faith, to be sure, but certainly in line with the existing convention. Skyring 05:47, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

OK. It's not disputed that the Field appointment was constitutionally acceptable in 1975. Post-1977, it probably would have resulted in an empty Senate seat. It is also clear that this was a variation in the usual practice followed by state governments of both parties, if not unprecedented, and a very clear deviation from the intent of the usual practice. It would be remiss of the article not to point out how unusual it was. I'll try an alternative wording tomorrow morning and see if you can find it acceptable. --Robert Merkel 07:46, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Taking that broad hint, I've had another go. I'm not happy about the perception given that Joh was a key player in the 1975 Dismissal, because so far as I can see he would have had no knowledge of Fraser's plans (though I am sure that he would have thoroughly approved). It was just another chance to score a political victory over opponents who thought they knew the rules but didn't. Skyring 21:27, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Bjelkemander

This is a topic which could probably benefit from an article all its own. The system of giving rural areas more electorates than the number of voters would indicate was actually a scandal of the previous long-serving Labor administration. In the 1956 election, the ALP won its seats with an average of 7000 votes each, against 9900 for the Country Party and a massive 23800 for the Liberals. The greatest disparity was between the seats of Mount Gravatt with 26307 voters and Charters Towers with 4367.

In 1972, the Country Party reaped the benefit of the same system, with CP seats won with 7000 votes, Liberal with 9600, and Labor 12800. The biggest difference was between Pine Rivers with 16758 voters and Gregory with 6273. (of course, given the continued expansion of the Brisbane metropolitan area, these large figures for Mount Gravatt in 1956 and Pine Rivers in 1972 are reflective of the suburban sprawl moving into previously rural areas before new and fairer boundaries cound be drawn up. Nevertheless, the disparity is there.)

The situation in 1972 of Joh governing on a 20% vote is bizarre but true. Typically the Country Party would win seats with a small margin, while the Liberals and especially the Labor Party would win their fewer seats with greater margins, reflecting the fact that Liberal and Labor voters tended to live in identifiable "clumps". The ALP was also hamstrung by the many DLP voters who put the Coalition ahead of Labor, so there was 7.7% of the vote that flowed away from the ALP.

Having said that, even if in 1972 the seats had been determined by a proportional representation system, the results would have been ALP 39, L/CP 36, DLP 5 and Independents two, presumably resulting in a Liberal Premier governing with the support of the DLP.

All of these figures are readily available from historical sources, but it must be said that Hugh Lunn's excellent biography of Joh is by far the best and fairest (and most colourful) source. He devotes a whole chapter to the Bjelkemander. In contrast, the "official" biography produced at the height of Joh's powers and sold in huge numbers to supporters, is a load of steaming tripe with barely the slightest blush of criticism of The Great Man. I don't think it mentions Patrick Field at all! It certainly doesn't mention the fifteen years Joh spent living alone in a cow bail, something that affords Lunn (and his readers) endless pleasure. Skyring 21:27, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I've written a quick article on the infamous Bjelkemander, primarily to back up my claim that it was a more democratic revision of the Labor system preceding it. It is interesting to note that Bjelke-Petersen spoke out strongly against the Labor scheme on its introduction, using language which could equally well be applied to his own 1972 changes. I'm not going to pretend that it's a particularly good article, and interested editors are invited to help beat it into some sort of professional shape. Skyring 23:48, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Success

"some people consider him to be one of the most successful politicians in Australian history."

I intend to rv this. I can't think of any criteria of political success that doesn't include Joh. Love him or hate him, and I realise that views are polarised, the FACT is that he governed Queensland for two decades, he ran the place pretty much as he wanted despite often strenuous opposition, and he won election after election. For a politician, that's success, regardless of what side of the political fence they are on.

Joh was never acquitted

The first jury was hung, and IIRC the judge declares a mistrial in those circumstances. The prosecutor decided not to attempt to try him twice, which is a prosecutor's perogrative. I happen to find the view of the Queensland Crown Solicitor in 2003 on Joh's compensation claim quite appropriate:

"One can say with some justification that Sir Joh was fortunate that the Special Prosecutor decided not to put Sir Joh on trial a second time," [1].

--Robert Merkel 12:54, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that opinion doesn't count. Do you have a source for your "mistrial" comment? I'm not saying you're wrong, but in a quick Google I couldn't find anything definitive to support a mistrial verdict. Or an acquittal, for that matter. I think you're right, because if he was acquitted, then he couldn't be tred for the same thing again, but still I think we need a checkable source. The only ones I could find that seemed to be certain of their facts came from one extreme of politics or the other! Pete 17:32, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The quotation was reflecting my personal views of the bloke, not the substantive issue here. Sorry about that.

As to the substantive point, as this page explains, if the jury is hung in any criminal case the judge orders a retrial. The prosecution can then decide to drop the case, which is what happened here. --Robert Merkel 23:20, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Robert! Pete 23:28, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)