Queensland's Coal Boom Under Joh: How the Bowen Basin Was Opened to the World
When Joh Bjelke-Petersen became Premier in 1968, the Bowen Basin's coking coal lay largely unshipped. By the time he left office, it was carrying Queensland's economy to the world.
Joh's Queensland: The Infrastructure and Development That Built the Modern State
Between 1968 and 1987, Joh Bjelke-Petersen reshaped Queensland's physical landscape through an infrastructure program that still underpins the modern state — dams, bridges, roads, cultural institutions, and international events that redefined what Queensland could be.
The Bjelke-Petersen Police State: Street Marches, Media Control and Suppressed Dissent
Between 1968 and 1987, Queensland under Joh Bjelke-Petersen developed the most comprehensive apparatus of civil liberties suppression in postwar Australian history — and its mechanics repay careful civic study.
Don't You Worry About That: Joh's Queensland and the Political Culture He Created
For nineteen years, Joh Bjelke-Petersen didn't just govern Queensland — he became it. This essay examines the political culture he built, and what it revealed about the state itself.
Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen: Queensland's Most Consequential and Most Contested Premier
Nineteen years. Seven elections. One inquiry that remade Queensland governance. Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen remains the most consequential and most contested figure in the state's political history.
Joh for PM: The Campaign That Destroyed His Own Party's Federal Hopes
In early 1987, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen launched a quixotic bid for the prime ministership that split the federal Coalition, handed Labor a historic victory, and accelerated his own political destruction.
Joh and First Nations Queensland: The Premier Who Opposed Land Rights
For nineteen years, Joh Bjelke-Petersen used the full machinery of Queensland's government to resist Aboriginal land rights. What that resistance built, and what it cost, still reverberates.
Fitzgerald and the Joh Legacy: The Corruption the Premier Did Not See Coming
The Fitzgerald Inquiry did not merely expose what happened beneath Joh Bjelke-Petersen's government — it dismantled the civic fiction that nothing had happened at all.
Joh Bjelke-Petersen: The Man Behind the Premier, From Kingaroy to the Lodge That Wasn't
Before the gerrymander and the police state, there was a sick child on a poor farm in Kingaroy. Understanding the man helps explain the premier — and neither fully excuses the other.
The Bjelke-Petersen Electoral Gerrymander: How One Party Held Power Despite Losing the Vote
The Bjelkemander was not merely a political trick. It was a structural dismantling of democratic equality that allowed one party to govern Queensland for decades against the expressed wishes of the majority.