Joh by Hugh Lunn

Author:Hugh Lunn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ligature Pty Limited
Published: 2021-11-12T20:40:47+00:00

14

‘Undistinguished’ Australian of the Year

When an early Queensland election was announced by Bjelke-Petersen in October 1974, the opposition leader Percy Tucker told a press conference he was ready and happy to take up the challenge. He said it was his aim to campaign on bread-and-butter state issues: ‘Decentralization, transportation, unemployment in this state and freight rates will be some of our main planks.’ He said the ALP’s biggest asset would be the premier ‘because the people hate his guts in this state’.

But it wasn’t to be quite as simple as that, and Tucker was in for a shock, electorally. The fireworks in fact began on 23 October 1974 when Bjelke-Petersen rose in state parliament to make a long ministerial statement. This was to announce the early Queensland election, but turned into a venomous tirade against the federal Labor government. Despite the premier’s amazing disclaimer, his broadside was totally for ‘political purposes’:

At the outset I want to make it clear that this is a Ministerial Statement and therefore I do not propose to discuss in it matters which might be considered to imply that it is being made for purely political purposes. Briefly, I want to inform the House it is my intention to recommend to His Excellency the Governor that as soon as my Government has been granted Supply for the 1974/75 financial year, this Parliament be dissolved. This action is being taken so that the people of Queensland may be given the opportunity to register their views on the grave problems facing the State as a result of the restrictive socialist policies and mal-administration of the present Federal Labor Government … Since December, 1972, Queensland, together with Australian States, has suffered from Federal Government mismanagement, inflation, industrial anarchy, disruption and lawlessness. The resultant unemployment has brought social and economic disaster. This unchecked destruction of the Australian economy has eroded business confidence and the whole fabric and structure of our Australian society and way of life … Rampant inflation and its twin evil of mass unemployment, subservience to foreign powers with similar socialist ideologies, abject surrender to communist-manipulated pressure groups in the trade union movement, the whittling away of State rights and the denigration of our constitutional system, the abandonment of a social structure which recognises the family as the fundamental unit of human relations … all these threaten the future of each and every Queenslander. Labor must reverse their socialist policies if they are to get Australia out of the tragedy into which they have plunged this nation unnecessarily. My Government believes the people of Queensland are not only looking for positive guidance to free them from the ever-increasing threat of restrictive socialist domination, but are looking for an opportunity to positively register their concern with this situation. We believe they should be given that opportunity in the only way a responsible Government can give it … by allowing them to register at the ballot box their shock, apprehension and dismay with the present economic and social situation caused by the Federal Labor Government in Canberra.

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