this is especially rich coming from a Queensland paper… how soon we forget…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joh_Bjelke-Petersen
Here are some snippets to save you reading the whole thing…
“Within months of becoming premier, Bjelke-Petersen encountered his first controversy over allegations of conflict of interest”
"three weeks after becoming premier, Bjelke-Petersen’s government gave two companies, Exoil NL and Transoil NL—in both of which he was a major shareholder—six-year leases to prospect for oil on the Great Barrier Reef "
“Plans by Country Party members to support a Labor Party vote of no confidence in parliament were quashed after the intervention of party president Robert Sparkes, who warned that anyone who voted against Bjelke-Petersen would lose their status as the party’s candidate at the next election.”
“Bjelke-Petersen seized on the controversial visit of the Springboks, the South African rugby union team, in 1971 to consolidate his position as leader with a display of force.”
“A crowd of demonstrators also mounted a peaceful protest outside the Springboks’ Wickham Terrace motel and were chased on foot by police moments after being ordered to retreat, with many police attacking the crowd with batons, boots and fists. It was one of a series of violent attacks by police on demonstrators during the Springboks’ visit to Queensland”
“Bjelke-Petersen praised police for their ‘restraint’ during the demonstrations and rewarded the police union for its support with an extra week’s leave for every officer in the state. He described the tension over the Springboks’ tour as ‘great fun’, ‘a game of chess in the political arena’. The crisis, he said, ‘put me on the map’.”
“Bjelke-Petersen began regular media and parliamentary attacks on the Whitlam Labor government, vowing to have it defeated, and he and Whitlam exchanged frequent verbal barbs, culminating in the prime minister’s 1975 description of the Queensland premier as ‘a Bible-bashing bastard … a paranoic, a bigot and fanatical’”
“Bjelke-Petersen also vehemently opposed the Whitlam government’s proposal for Medicare, a publicly funded universal health care system.”
“In 1975, Bjelke-Petersen played what turned out to be a key role in the political crisis that brought down the Whitlam government. Bjelke-Petersen alleged that Queensland police investigations had uncovered damaging documentation in relation to the Loans Affair. This documentation was never made public and these allegations remained unsubstantiated”
“television cameras captured an incident during the confrontation in which a police inspector struck a 20-year-old female protester over the head with his baton, injuring her. When Police Commissioner Ray Whitrod announced he would hold an inquiry, a move supported by Police Minister Max Hodges, Bjelke-Petersen declared there would be no inquiry. He told reporters he was tired of radical groups believing they could take over the streets.”
“In 1977, Bjelke-Petersen announced that ‘the day of street marches is over’, warning protesters, ‘Don’t bother applying for a march permit. You won’t get one. That’s government policy now!’”
“When, after two ugly street battles between police and right-to-march protesters, the Uniting Church Synod called on the government to change the march law, Bjelke-Petersen accused the clergy of ‘supporting communists’”
"The government’s increasingly hardline approach to civil liberties prompted Queensland National Party president Robert Sparkes to warn the party that it was developing a dangerous ‘propaganda-created, ultra-conservative, almost fascist image.’ "
“Florence Bjelke-Petersen (his wife) was elected to the Senate in October 1980 as a National Party member and six weeks later Joh was successful for a fifth time as premier at the 1980 Queensland election, with the Nationals converting a 27.9 percent primary vote—their highest ever—into 35 of the parliament’s 82 seats, or 43 percent of seats.”
“In 1984 Bjelke-Petersen was created a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) for ‘services to parliamentary democracy’. Author Evan Whitton suggests the premier had made the nomination himself.”
“A ‘Joh for PM’ campaign was conceived in late 1985, driven largely by a group of Gold Coast property developers, promoting Bjelke-Petersen as the most effective conservative challenger to Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke, and at the 1986 Queensland election he recorded his biggest electoral win ever, winning 49 of the state’s 89 seats with 39.6 percent of the primary vote.”
To start with, I linked BT because that’s where I found this, but the reporting was done originally on SMH (with which BT shares all its content) by a Melbournian author.
Bjelke-Petersen isn’t really the same thing. The dude was a dictator, for sure, but he stayed in power through dictatorial means like using the police against opponents and taking advantage of gerrymandering. Which is what most of your quotes demonstrate.
He didn’t do it through the standout self-aggrandising that defines Trump.
Be careful to merely associate self-aggrandising with Trumpism - there is a lot more to it. I’d argue that in his first term, he largely checked his boundaries and tried to see what he could get away with. But he wants to be a dictator, an autocrat, and now that he has the majority of SCOTUS on his side, and more and more of the red states slipping into outright Republican autocracy, he has a lot more wind in his back. A second Trump term will be disastrous, and that’s not because of his self-aggrandising.
We elect “Donald Trumps” all the time.
Clive Palmer.
Craig Kelly.
Barnaby Joyce.
Bob Katter.
Pauline Hanson.
Jacqui Lambie.
They only differ from Trump in degree, not in tactics.
This “article” is a thought bubble, not even a fully fleshed out one.
It isn’t the crimes that Trump is accused of committing that are evil, it’s the lieing, manipulating, etc that got him in position to do it.
The shit that Palmer did to get elected were basically strong arming an entire electorate to support him.
The shit that Hanson has done through funneling electoral funds through friendly advertising companies SHOULD be considered fraud.
Bob Katter and Jacqui Lambie don’t belong anywhere near this list. Neither of them are remotely Trumpian. You and I might disagree with their philosophies, but there’s no denying that they are completely genuine and they fight for what they believe their constituents really want.
I’d argue Pauline Hanson kinda fits that description too, although it’s certainly far less clear with her. But what’s definitely true of Hanson and those other two is that they are focused on the issues, not on themselves. When you think of Pauline Hanson, the first thing you think is “racist”, it’s not “self-obsessed” or some other word like that, which would be the first thing about Trump.
Craig Kelly and Barnaby Joyce I don’t know quite as much about, but the general sense I get of them is more along the same lines. Bad political positions, bad people in their personal lives, but not focused on bigging themselves up like Trump is.
Which leaves Palmer. Who definitely does fit that. But who, it’s very notable, did not have a lot of electoral success. He got himself elected once, in one seat. His party has a single seat in the Senate, which no longer really even derives itself from Palmer who hasn’t been strongly publicly involved in the party since long before that Senator won his election latest election. Palmer doesn’t have the capacity to become a Trump because he doesn’t have the capacity to win the widespread national success that would be necessary for that.
Oh, Hanson is absolutely self-obsessed. So much so that she had herself put in her party’ constitution as party leader for life with the right to determine her successor.
I wouldn’t class Katter or Lambie as Trumpian, but specifically Katter is very self-obsessed. In general though he is, despite his deeply irritating shtick*, fairly harmless and benign.
Palmer may not have had straight-up electoral success - but he has successfully manipulated public opinion and influenced election outcomes by injecting himself along with huge amounts of money into the campaign cycle and blasting his positions out there. We can largely thank him for the Coalition winning the 2019 election which they themselves absolutely expected to lose. The thing about Palmer is figuring out what his goals are, and aside from making money, those goals thus far have been focused around either preventing a Labor government, or preventing parts of Labor’s agenda. However, if those goals ever change towards getting more political power, then Palmer will be able to spend a lot of money to achieve his goals.
One could argue that key reasons for Australian electoral outcomes being fairly benign are the preferential voting system (as opposed to first past the post in the US) and compulsory elections - high voter turnout is generally recognised to prevent swings towards the extreme. In the US, 60% voter turnout is considered high, whereas here the turnout is generally north of 90%.
*By shtick, I mean his general ‘oh, don’t mind me, I’m just a funny old dodderer’ demeanour, from which he can pivot in half a second flat to become really toxic and aggressive
