The Joh era: Excerpt from Jacks and Jokers

THIS excerpt from a new book reveals how Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen was out to defeat the Liberals at the 1980 state election.

Former Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen.

IT wasn’t just Labor who were out to defeat the Liberals at the 1980 state election. Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen was at it too ...

IN the lead-up to the 1980 state election in late November, Dr Denis Murphy, newly elected Queensland president of the ALP, received a remarkable communiqué from Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen.

Bjelke-Petersen suggested they meet on some urgent political business and Murphy obliged. He met the premier in his office in the Executive Building on George St.

News_Image_File: Peter Beattie and outgoing ALP secretary Manfred Cross in 1981.

Denis Murphy was an extraordinary conciliator as well as a respected academic and author. He had managed to negotiate an internal reorganisation of the Labor Party – the change from the Old Guard to the New Guard – without much longstanding fallout or enmity, and was determined to not only modernise and replenish the Party’s finances but to make the ALP a viable election force. But nothing could have prepared him for the offer Bjelke-Petersen was about to put on the table.

The then Federal Leader of the Opposition, former Queensland police officer and minister during the Whitlam era, Bill Hayden, was keeping an eye on Labor candidates for the state election when his attention was drawn to the Party’s man standing for Ipswich – Joe Sciacca. Sciacca was up against the formidable Llew Edwards.

“I didn’t give him much chance of beating Edwards because Edwards was very highly respected and popular, although he wasn’t a populist sort of political operator,” says Hayden. “He (Joe) was a very private person. And the family had a coal mine … a coal miners’ background.

News_Image_File: Bill Hayden with Denis Murphy.

“All of a sudden Joe’s spending money, got a TV company in. And I thought, Jesus, this is going to be costly. And I said, ‘Where are you getting that money from, Joe?’ And he said, ‘It’s coming from head office. I don’t ask any questions. I just take it.’ And it’d be thousands.”

Hayden was nonplussed, so he paid Murphy a visit.

“Denis Murphy … told me that Bjelke-Petersen had contacted him and offered him so many thousands,” Hayden recalls. “It was a … five-figure amount and a very big five-figure amount. And he (Murphy) went up and had a talk with (Bjelke-) Petersen and (Bjelke-) Petersen said, ‘Well, we’ll give this money to you but you’ve got to spend it on these campaigns.’ They were all … seats that the Liberals held.

“Edwards’ was one and I don’t know who the others were, but Joh wanted to get rid of them.”

According to Hayden, Denis Murphy was to proceed to the offices of broking business Bain & Company to pick up the money. He was then handed a cheque.

“(Murphy) said, ‘Oh, no. I’m not going to accept a cheque. I want money in a … in a briefcase. I want new notes’,” Hayden recalls.

News_Image_File: Sir Llew Edwards.

“And he told me he got all that money later in notes in the briefcase. And … he said, ‘I couldn’t take bloody (ALP State Secretary) Manfred Cross. He’s been a boy scout for too long. He won’t be part of this.’

“And when this came out, but no one knew the detail, Manfred said, ‘I think they’re trying to blame me as going with Murphy.’

“He said, ‘It’s just not true. I know nothing about it’.”

Hayden says: “But that was the depth of animosity between the Coalition parties … (Bjelke-Petersen) wanted to get rid of the … he would rather have a Labor man in Ipswich than Llew Edwards. So he was … Joh Bjelke-Petersen was fighting on two fronts.

“Basically within his Coalition he was fighting the Liberals and he was fighting the Labor Party on the other front.

“I honestly don’t think he took Labor too seriously. I think he thought he’d get away with it. There was arrogance there. Been running around for a long time doing all of these Machiavellian deals.

“You know, they were pretty ruthless bastards …”

Legendary ALP figure Manfred Cross confirms the cash transaction: “It was a secret deal. We were offered money. I have no doubt it happened. It was not out of character for Denis – he was very pragmatic.

“He might have gone to pick up the money on his own. I don’t think the Administrative Committee knew about it.”

Hayden’s story would later be supported by another anecdote from farmer and grazier and the Member for Callide, Lindsay Hartwig.

“It was an August evening just prior to my overseas trip to Zambia (in 1980, three months before the state election),” he recalled.

“I was sitting in the (parliamentary) dining-room – I can show honourable members the table – when the member for Archerfield (Kevin Hooper) walked in.

News_Image_File: Joe Sciacca.

“I was the only member in the dining room at that time and the honourable member made to go to the area in which the Labor Party usually sits.

“I said, ‘Kevin, come over here and sit with me. There are two of us here; let’s talk, even though we are on opposite sides of the fence.’

“Within a few minutes we were joined by the Premier. I am prepared to go on any lie-detecting machine that anybody can bring forward and I am prepared to swear an oath on the Bible that in the ensuing minutes the Premier and the member for Archerfield discussed ways and means of defeating Liberal Party members at the coming election.”

Hartwig remembers Independent Labor members being mentioned.

“I heard the Premier say, ‘Kevin, we have to seek ways and means of defeating these Liberals.’

“I don’t tell lies, but I kept that a secret. As a matter of fact, I went outside and had a good vomit.”

Jacks and Jokers by Matthew Condon (UQP, $29.95). Published on Wednesday.

© Matthew Condon 2014