Flashback: Disgraced Gold Coast MP Russ Hinze predicted 2008 Nationals and Liberal merger in 1998

A LEADING Gold Coast political figure made a bold pronouncement about the future of conservative politics in the city and in Queensland ahead of a critical by-election.

THE Gold Coast has long been considered the heartland of conservative politics in the state’s southeast.

Back in the 1970s and 1980s the city was one of the National Party’s major bases of support during the Joh era, with powerful members including South Coast MP and “Minister for Everything” Russ Hinze and Transport Minister Ivan Gibbs.

The Coast’s electorates even produced a future premier — Surfers Paradise MP Rob Borbidge who entered parliament in 1980.

Russ Hinze

After a period of Labor dominance in the 2000s, the conservatives gained total dominance over the area’s state seats at the 2012 election and maintained it, excluding the defection of then-MP Alex Douglas until the election of Labor’s Meaghan Scanlon last year.

However on a state level the conservatives have governed for just five of the past 29 years since the fall of the Nationals administration in the wake of the Fitzgerald Inquiry which revealed the Bjelke-Petersen government to be institutionally corrupt.

Much of the blame for this lack of success through the 1990s and early 2000s fell on the lack of unity between the National Party and the Liberal Party, something which led to the Coalition splitting several times.

The LNP was founded in 2008

This month marks 10 years since the parties finally merged to form the Liberal National Party of Queensland (LNP).

This moment of significance set the stage for the party’s dominance on the Coast and came 20 years after Hinze, by then a former local MP, made the call for the parties to unite.

In July 1988 Hinze was just two months into his political retirement and used his freedom to take aim both at Labor and at his former colleagues while speaking at a local event.

Hinze told the inaugural Gold Coast press club meeting at the ANA Hotel: “The non-socialists have got to somehow get together or they will kick themselves to death.”

Lawrence Springborg circa 2008. He is regarded as the father of the LNP.

He said the State National Party had lost support since Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen had resigned as Premier eight months earlier.

“If I was in the National Party I would be thinking seriously about a complete merger with the Liberal Party,’’ Hinze said.

“I am strongly in favour of one party — a conservative party.”

Premier Mike Ahern was also on the Gold Coast that day to open the new Village Roadshow film studio and said the National Party had no intention of joining the Liberals.

Hinze resigned from parliament in mid 1988 sparking a by-election.

“There is no thought of merger on our minds at all,’’ he said.

But Hinze said a merger was necessary as the National Party was losing support.

“The Queensland National Party isn’t at its strongest and it is going to get a lot weaker,” he told the audience at the Surfers Paradise hotel.

“The old Country Party was in Opposition, then became a senior partner in coalition and then as the National Party governed in its own right.

Hinze had been a major political figure on the Coast for decades (Pictured here in 1976)

“Then Mike (Ahern) comes along and says everything Joh’s done is wrong — ‘let’s change it’ — and drops from 37 to 23 per cent.

“There is no strong National Party in the rest of Australia — the only other State with any significant membership is New South Wales.’’

Hinze said the party’s failure to become more vigorous would cost it his former seat of South Coast.

Hinze died in 1991.

He delivered a broadside at the Citizens’ Electoral Council candidate, Lindsay Hartwig, the Liberal candidate, Bob Quinn, and the National Party candidate, Judy Gamin.

Mrs Gamin went on to win the seat at the by-election.

Hinze never lived to see his hopes of a merged party, dying in 1991.