Authors: Matthew Condon
The incident made Stopford even more paranoid about his decision to appear on ‘The Moonlight State’. Had he doomed his child?
Stopford says he was later told that his former wife had been offered ‘inducements’ from outside parties to come to Queensland and take Jay. ‘I’ve never been given the full story,’ he says. ‘I’ve always believed that the majority of the reason she did it was outside sources. That was the puzzle in my head.’
The Backbencher
Even in his political death throes, Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen was still vigorously pushing for the construction of the world’s tallest building in the heart of Brisbane. For a year he’d been adamant that the building would go ahead, despite the waning public interest in it and the indifference of his Party colleagues. What was it about this $800 million, 400-metre high phantasm that had so attracted the Premier’s obsessive attention? His desire to push the project through Cabinet seemed incongruous with his political fortunes of the moment.
It was his backbenchers, however, who put paid to approval coasting through before the end of parliament that year. Special modified legislation for the ‘superhighrise’ was put on the table but would not be debated until the following year. Some backbenchers said they hoped to attach so many conditions to the building that it would never get off the ground.
Bjelke-Petersen, however, stood firm, and told parliament the project could not be stopped because $25 million had already been committed to it. ‘The Government would be up for very heavy damages if you even attempted to stop it,’ the Premier warned. ‘In other words, it can’t be stopped. It has started. It will proceed.’ He insisted there was ‘no alternative’.
It was Joh at his most arrogant and bullish, and it enraged backbenchers. The development had not even been approved by Brisbane City Council. It was subject to a Special Act of Parliament that had not even been formally tabled. The building’s developer, John Minuzzo, reportedly gave the government an undertaking on funding for the building. He said he was still waiting for a response from the Foreign Investment Review Board in relation to Korean involvement in the project.
What the public didn’t know was that during a fiery Party meeting over the Central Place project, backbencher and National Party member for Springwood, Huan Fraser, stood and confronted the Premier. Fraser had been born in Wyandra, about 820 kilometres west of Brisbane, and raised on the family’s property, Claverton Park, on a tributary of the Warrego River. He had worked as a jackaroo and on the family estate before he was elected to the Paroo Shire Council in 1979. Fraser, with his wife Wendy and children, moved to Daisy Hill, south of Brisbane, in 1981. He was elected deputy mayor of Logan City, then ran for the newly created seat of Springwood at the 1986 election and won. According to a parliamentary colleague, he was a canny businessman and had made good money building spec homes for the Taiwanese community in the Logan area. ‘They liked white bricks, tiled rooves, gold taps. He built to their liking.’
One day Fraser was approached by a Korean business contact who wanted to discuss the world’s tallest building project in the city. ‘You back the old guy [Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen] on this,’ he told Fraser. ‘It’s a bloody good payout for him if it [the Central Place project] gets through. The old bloke’s got nothing.’
Fraser, a lifelong National Party member, was incensed. At the Party room meeting, according to a senior government source who was present that day, Fraser ripped into the Premier. ‘You know, he thought Joh was crooked and he wouldn’t cop it,’ the source says. ‘He told me, “This is not right. This is corruption.” He got up in the Party room meeting and did it. He said, “I know there is a bloody big pay-off to you coming as a result of this. You’re a corrupt old bastard and I’m not going to cop it.”’
Fraser didn’t present any back-up evidence. There was mention that the Korean developers of the project had a nest egg worth more than $20 million in a foreign bank account for Bjelke-Petersen if the Central Place project was passed through Cabinet.
In addition, according to Mike Ahern’s biography,
Lock, Stock and Barrel
, by Paul Reynolds, Fraser had also seen three letters – two from February 1986 and one dated March 1987 – that appeared to reveal that the Bjelke-Petersen government had committed to leasing 21 floors of Central Place for the public service. They also showed that developer John Minuzzo would be granted $5 million to outfit the floors.
Were these arrangements correct? Fraser asked the Premier.
‘Bjelke-Petersen tersely replied that Fraser did not know what he was talking about and moved to close the meeting,’ Ahern’s biography stated. ‘Fraser’s response was that, if he did not obtain an answer, he would leave the meeting and “ask the question outside”.
‘All in the room knew that Tony Koch state roundsman for the
Courier-Mail
was waiting outside the room.’
A senior government member present at the meeting says everyone was gobsmacked, including Joh. ‘The whole room – you could cut the air,’ he says. ‘Joh never said another word. Russ Hinze got up and said, “Mr Premier, I’ll take over now if you don’t mind.”
‘Joh went out and we waited until he caught the lift, we were listening, and when he did there was silence. I didn’t know what to do. Hinze said, “Why don’t we all go and have a cup of tea?” And that’s what we did.’
Later, Bill Gunn apparently suggested that Fraser get hold of the actual letters before the meeting reconvened. ‘Whether Gunn actually obtained them or read them, or was simply made aware of their contents, is unclear, but he verified Fraser’s story and told Fraser that this “would soon blow over”,’ the book said.
The source says everyone realised the enormity of what had been said and what the ramifications of it were. ‘Joh had to have the strong support of the Executive Council who would proclaim the special legislation for the building project,’ he says. ‘Joh had a plan to get his proposal through Cabinet and into Executive Council to proclaim it as a special project under the Coordinator-General’s Act.
‘Joh never went back to another meeting of the Party. The place was in turmoil. He made a desperate attempt to get it through because there was a payment. He was putting to the Party room a corrupt deal and involving all of us.’
On 13 November, Deputy Opposition Leader Tom Burns asked the Premier a Question Without Notice. It was related to the ‘continuing saga of the world’s tallest building and the twice-daily meetings that have been held to resolve the differences between the Premier and his Party members on this issue’.
Burns added: ‘I refer also to the latest edition of
Australian Business
, which claims that Minuzzo’s financial partner in the Central Place development, Youchang, is a very shadowy company about which little is known. I ask: Will he explain to the House whether Youchang is a Korean or Singaporean registered company, as there is considerable doubt about this? Will he explain why Youchang’s Australian representative knows nothing about the financing arrangements for Minuzzo’s Central Place?’
‘The government is dealing with that question at this very moment,’ the Premier said.
Within hours of parliament adjourning, the Premier launched his plans to sack five ‘disloyal’ ministers, including Bill Gunn, Mike Ahern, Brian Austin, Peter McKechnie and Geoff Muntz. Was Bjelke-Petersen trying to head off any immediate challenge to his leadership? Or was the removal of the ministers related to the rejection of the world’s tallest building project, and a possible fast-track method to expedite it?
The senior government source says: ‘The sackings were all related to that [Central Place] situation. He had to reshape the Cabinet to get that particular thing through. If he didn’t, the government was not likely to accept the Executive Council minute. It was a bombshell. Everyone knew. It was a matter of high criminality.’
Ahern’s biography said: ‘… [Joh] needed Cabinet colleagues who would not make trouble for him over the issue.’ This, Ahern suggested, was the reason Bjelke-Petersen then went to the Governor. If Ahern is correct, this explains why Bjelke-Petersen, without warning, commenced the process of the unnecessary and hitherto inexplicable Cabinet reshuffle which was to bring him undone.
Huan Fraser told
Lock, Stock and Barrel
author Paul Reynolds: ‘I had just given Mike [Ahern] the ammunition.’ (Fraser died in 2010, but his family confirmed the rendition of events in Reynold’s book.)
Former Attorney-General Paul Clauson says he doesn’t remember the Fraser incident, but the building project did concern many people in and outside of government. ‘… the project caused a lot of dissension with the troops at the time,’ he says. ‘Joh was pulling it on with [Brisbane Lord Mayor] Sallyanne [Atkinson] and we members in the Brisbane … seats were very unhappy about the idea of pushing against the Brisbane Town Plan with a ministerial override as I seem to recall.
‘It wasn’t so much the concept as the way it was being promoted and potentially executed that was the concern.’
On Sunday 22 November, Transport Minister and former police officer, Don ‘Shady’ Lane, said he received a phone call from a senior staffer for the Premier, ‘advising me that Joh intended to sack several of his ministers, including Ahern’.
Lane was straight on the phone to Mike Ahern. ‘Lane would end up being a grub as far as I’m concerned, too,’ says Lewis, who was fiercely loyal to the Premier. ‘A disloyal, ungrateful so and so … Joh didn’t particularly want him in Cabinet either, but anyhow. Just briefly, I think Joh or somebody must have said to Lane that they were … going to get rid of three ministers for something. Ahern and whoever. And bloody Lane that night rang Ahern [and] warned him.’
Reshuffle
The next morning, Cabinet met as usual at 10 a.m. There was no mention of any sackings. After the meeting, Bjelke-Petersen headed to Government House and informed the Governor, Wally Campbell, that he was set on forming a new administration. Five serving ministers would be absent from the revised make-up.
Campbell recommended he request each minister to resign their commission. Each was summoned to the Premier’s office around 10 a.m. the following day. All refused to resign. According to Don Lane’s memoir, Brian Austin told the Premier he could ‘get fucked’.
Austin, the member for Nicklin, was on his way from Buderim to Brisbane that morning when he got a call at around 6.30 a.m. ‘I was told Joh was going to sack me,’ Austin says. ‘That was the first I’d heard of it. Joh hadn’t even called me. He told me I was being sacked because of my closeness to [Sir Robert] Sparkes. I think he said he was putting together a Cabinet he could work with.’
Lane beseeched the Premier in Austin’s defence. Both Lane and Austin had defected from the Liberal Party to the National Party in the 1983 split and had made a considerable ‘sacrifice’ for Bjelke-Petersen.
‘Joh responded with the statement that some ministers, including Brian, had lined up with Sparkes against him and that if I didn’t watch out he would sack me too,’ Lane recalled.
Mike Ahern was also called into Bjelke-Petersen’s office.
‘Mike, I want your resignation,’ the Premier said.
‘What’s the reason?’ Ahern asked.
‘I don’t have to give you a reason.’
‘I want one if you want my resignation,’ Ahern said.
‘No.’
‘If you sack me, keep an eye on the television,’ Ahern responded. ‘In 15 minutes I’m going to go down and hold a press conference, and I’m going to challenge you.’
Ahern told him that if he got the sack, the National Party would not be happy.
‘I am the National Party,’ Joh replied.
Later that day, the Premier went back to Government House and told Campbell he now only had three ministers he wanted removed – Ahern, Austin and Peter McKechnie. The press said Bjelke-Petersen had ‘signed his own political death warrant’.
‘He has lost the confidence of the National Party … and the business community,’ commented Peter Morley of the
Courier-Mail
. ‘The goodwill he had built up over 20 years has been replaced by a clamour for his removal.’
Ahern announced his intention to contest the leadership of the Party. He intimated that the mass sackings were related to the ongoing Fitzgerald Inquiry. While Joh had changed his mind about sacking Police Minister Bill Gunn, the Premier had offered that Gunn change his portfolio. Gunn refused. Ahern wanted to prevent the inquiry being prematurely closed down.
Bjelke-Petersen, however, had no intention of stepping down.
‘Why should I resign?’ he said. ‘Why should I go it alone? … I have been elected as Premier. I have done a very, very good job.
‘I just want to, in the last period of my time until August [1988], I want to make sure this government is a good one and that it is loyal and that it is doing and operating without outside interference, which is one of the problems we have today. As I said, I have no intentions of resigning under any circumstances.’
In the meantime, the gossip around parliament was that late-night meetings were being held in Bjelke-Petersen’s suite at Parliament House. Some were going to 2 a.m.
‘The building was abuzz with it,’ says Mike Ahern. ‘My driver said there’s something going on. He said Sir Edward Lyons, [suspended police commissioner] Terry Lewis and Beryl Young were up there with Joh.’