Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen: 13/1/11 - 23/4/05

He was the Premier of Queensland with a strange name from 1968 to 1987. About a year ago I wondered what the fuss was about Joh. This Wikipedia entry helped me out:

The government was despised in left-wing and civil libertarian circles for its intolerant approach to political protest. ... In 1977 the government went so far as to ban street demonstrations altogether, leading to further violent protest.

Extensive Special Branch monitoring (including telephone tapping) of suspected subversives was routine, including not only Labor Party parliamentarians, but also National Party figures who had incurred Bjelke-Petersen's displeasure. Bjelke-Petersen regularly accused political opponents of being covert communists bent on anarchy, and his forceful rhetoric won him particularly high approval among conservative and rural voters.

Just my kind of guy...

He's going to receive a state funeral and I think that's probably not a great thing. But because all I know about him came from Wikipedia (no disrespect to the wonderful Wikipedia), I'm not in a good position to comment. However, some other people had interesting things to say.

Quentin Dempster (who looks like my high school maths teacher, but don't hold that against him because I'm sure my teacher had a lot to do with my choice to study maths at university...or maybe that's why you'd hold it against him) provides the details of Joh's corruption. Just one serious example:

Bjelke-Petersen became Premier on 8 August 1968 and three weeks later companies in which he had shares (Exoil NL and Transoil NL) were given oil prospecting leases on the Great Barrier Reef.

Thank you Paul Kidd:

Joh turned the sunshine state into a corrupt cesspool, encouraged or at least allowed the police force to become utterly debased and corrupt even beyond Australian standards, he spied on his enemies, trampled on civil rights and, not surprisingly, spewed venom and hatred towards gay men and lesbians. "Insulting, evil animals," he called us.