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Authors: Matthew Condon
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attitude to my report was dismissive.’
Just days after this incident, Powell went on sick leave. When he returned to work the next month, he was ordered to report for duty at Woolloongabba. He’d been sent back to uniform.
Flying Lessons
By 1983, Joh Bjelke-Petersen had been Premier for close to 15 years, and while he was still immensely popular with the public, and seen on a national level as something of a country bumpkin, an eccentric who could be counted on for a laugh, there were those closer to home who felt the job of running Queensland did not always attract the former peanut farmer’s full attention.
Dr Llew Edwards remembers the Premier being missing in action from annual budget preparation meetings. ‘Joh wouldn’t even turn up, you know, and if he did turn up he’d be there for five minutes and get bored and leave,’ Edwards says. ‘He’d never read any of the pre-preparation papers and there was a senior group of Ron Camm, me and Joh, and I don’t ever remember Joh attending those budget preparation meetings, or budget profiling meetings.’
In essence, Edwards was left to run Queensland as Bjelke-Petersen went off on his flights of fancy. ‘He trusted me and I had a good relationship with him, and we had some very nasty differences, but we never let it go beyond that difference,’ Edwards recalls.
Edwards says it took some tactical, behind-the-scenes manoeuvring to manage the Premier and some of his more quixotic decisions. ‘We would try to jump in ahead of him and raise issues in the pre-Cabinet decision discussions … it might be about building a new airport or something,’ Edwards recalls. ‘If there was something we knew was going to go off the track … Ron Camm and I were extremely close and he’d back me up before Joh would get … he wouldn’t even know what we were talking about at this stage still, and we would then get the Cabinet sort of all expressing views.
‘If it was something we were worried about that would bring disgrace to the government, you know, that was how we had to handle it. Looking back, it wasn’t the best way to run a government. But it was fairly successful.’
At one point, Premier Bjelke-Petersen literally went missing without explanation. He didn’t show up to Cabinet meetings for six weeks in succession.
Edwards asked: ‘Where’s the Premier?’
Nobody had an answer.
Troubled by this, Edwards vowed to meet Bjelke-Petersen face to face in his office and get an explanation for his absence. He rang the Premier’s office and asked for a meeting. He was pencilled in for 3 p.m. one day.
A convivial Premier was there to greet Edwards. ‘Look Joh, we’re all getting very anxious,’ Edwards informed him. ‘You haven’t been to Cabinet for six weeks, we don’t get an apology, and your office won’t tell us where you are.’
Bjelke-Petersen interrupted him and said: ‘Llew, I’m learning to fly a helicopter, and the only time they can fit me in for lessons is on a Monday morning.’
Edwards was incredulous. ‘I thought, you know, it showed two things at the time,’ remembers Edwards. ‘The trust that he had in us, we could say that, and I think he did, and secondly, he put these individual priorities above anything else. I think that summates the kind of man he was. That he would suddenly desire to do something, and would break every rule in the world, every regulation and not necessarily law … to achieve that, and that’s why I think he was, you know, with a background of leaving school at nine …
‘He had a very introverted approach to most things and couldn’t cope with the modern world and the demands of that world in many areas.’
The Sheriff of Mareeba
In the tiny town of Mareeba, 417 metres above sea level on the Atherton Tablelands in Far North Queensland, its place name Aboriginal for ‘meeting of the waters’, Lindsey ‘Ross’ Dickson was a no-nonsense policeman who was liked and respected. Here, where the Granite
Just days after this incident, Powell went on sick leave. When he returned to work the next month, he was ordered to report for duty at Woolloongabba. He’d been sent back to uniform.
Flying Lessons
By 1983, Joh Bjelke-Petersen had been Premier for close to 15 years, and while he was still immensely popular with the public, and seen on a national level as something of a country bumpkin, an eccentric who could be counted on for a laugh, there were those closer to home who felt the job of running Queensland did not always attract the former peanut farmer’s full attention.
Dr Llew Edwards remembers the Premier being missing in action from annual budget preparation meetings. ‘Joh wouldn’t even turn up, you know, and if he did turn up he’d be there for five minutes and get bored and leave,’ Edwards says. ‘He’d never read any of the pre-preparation papers and there was a senior group of Ron Camm, me and Joh, and I don’t ever remember Joh attending those budget preparation meetings, or budget profiling meetings.’
In essence, Edwards was left to run Queensland as Bjelke-Petersen went off on his flights of fancy. ‘He trusted me and I had a good relationship with him, and we had some very nasty differences, but we never let it go beyond that difference,’ Edwards recalls.
Edwards says it took some tactical, behind-the-scenes manoeuvring to manage the Premier and some of his more quixotic decisions. ‘We would try to jump in ahead of him and raise issues in the pre-Cabinet decision discussions … it might be about building a new airport or something,’ Edwards recalls. ‘If there was something we knew was going to go off the track … Ron Camm and I were extremely close and he’d back me up before Joh would get … he wouldn’t even know what we were talking about at this stage still, and we would then get the Cabinet sort of all expressing views.
‘If it was something we were worried about that would bring disgrace to the government, you know, that was how we had to handle it. Looking back, it wasn’t the best way to run a government. But it was fairly successful.’
At one point, Premier Bjelke-Petersen literally went missing without explanation. He didn’t show up to Cabinet meetings for six weeks in succession.
Edwards asked: ‘Where’s the Premier?’
Nobody had an answer.
Troubled by this, Edwards vowed to meet Bjelke-Petersen face to face in his office and get an explanation for his absence. He rang the Premier’s office and asked for a meeting. He was pencilled in for 3 p.m. one day.
A convivial Premier was there to greet Edwards. ‘Look Joh, we’re all getting very anxious,’ Edwards informed him. ‘You haven’t been to Cabinet for six weeks, we don’t get an apology, and your office won’t tell us where you are.’
Bjelke-Petersen interrupted him and said: ‘Llew, I’m learning to fly a helicopter, and the only time they can fit me in for lessons is on a Monday morning.’
Edwards was incredulous. ‘I thought, you know, it showed two things at the time,’ remembers Edwards. ‘The trust that he had in us, we could say that, and I think he did, and secondly, he put these individual priorities above anything else. I think that summates the kind of man he was. That he would suddenly desire to do something, and would break every rule in the world, every regulation and not necessarily law … to achieve that, and that’s why I think he was, you know, with a background of leaving school at nine …
‘He had a very introverted approach to most things and couldn’t cope with the modern world and the demands of that world in many areas.’
The Sheriff of Mareeba
In the tiny town of Mareeba, 417 metres above sea level on the Atherton Tablelands in Far North Queensland, its place name Aboriginal for ‘meeting of the waters’, Lindsey ‘Ross’ Dickson was a no-nonsense policeman who was liked and respected. Here, where the Granite
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