Читать книгу Lazarus Rising - John Howard - Страница 22

On 2 June 1987 I arrived back at our home in Wollstonecraft close to 8.30 in the evening. Janette met me at the door and said, ‘They’re in the lounge room'. She was referring to the delegation from the Queensland National Party. This was the end of a quite remarkable day in the distracting saga of the ‘Joh for PM’ campaign, which did such immense damage to our prospects of winning the 1987 election. The delegation had come to signal an unapologetic surrender in a campaign which had engulfed and enfeebled the federal coalition for close to a year.

The events of the early days of June 1987 may have ended the ‘Joh for PM’ push, but its ramifications would haunt the Liberal and National parties for some years into the future.

How did it all come about in the first place? As the Coalition in Canberra, and the Liberal Party in particular, struggled through the early part of 1986, there were murmurs out of Queensland that Joh Bjelke-Petersen, that state’s long-serving Premier, might take a tilt at Canberra.

Disunity within the Liberal Party and the constant speculation about my leadership encouraged anti-Labor people to believe that an alternative to the orthodox Coalition approach in Canberra was needed. Importantly, Andrew Peacock and Joh Bjelke-Petersen had a warm regard for each other. It stemmed from Peacock’s heavy involvement, as Foreign Minister, in negotiating with the Indonesian Government on border issues affecting Queensland. Joh liked Andrew, who was always ready to sing the Premier’s praises in public. There was also the Russell Hinze factor. Hinze, a senior Queensland minister, wanted to be state Premier, and to do that he had to get rid of Joh. How better to achieve this goal than to have Joh launch himself in a bid for Canberra, irrespective of the outcome?

Peacock and Hinze had a mutual love of horses, which brought them together. Hinze would frequently deride my standing in the polls, largely in private, but from time to time publicly. There is little doubt that through these difficult days Andrew Peacock was in communication with Joh and Hinze.

The Fraser years had also provided a hangover. At the beginning Fraser worked closely with the Queensland Nationals and incurred the enmity of Queensland Liberals such as Eric Robinson for being too close to them. This friendship soured. Bjelke-Petersen resented the Fraser ban on sand mining on Fraser Island. He thought Fraser was too friendly with Robert Mugabe and had little time for Fraser’s strong anti-South African stance.

Then there was the bottom-of-the-harbour tax legislation, which wounded many in Queensland’s so-called white shoe brigade. I learned this from comments made to me years later by people who were in a position to know. Many of them were strong financial backers of the Nationals in Queensland, and the Premier frequently mentioned this issue amongst his litany of complaints about the Fraser Government.

Also, by virtue of his intervention in federal politics regarding his Gair manoeuvre and the appointment of Patrick Field to the Senate, both of which hurt Whitlam, Bjelke-Petersen always felt that the federal Coalition owed him a lot.

One of the active proponents of Joh’s Canberra campaign was the developer Mike Gore, a fierce critic of my 1982 bottom-of-the-harbour laws. Many believe that Gore paid for research in 1986 by the Canadian company Decima, which allegedly showed that Joh being part of the anti-Labor push would add considerable value to the conservative cause across Australia. Gore had obtained special legislation from the Queensland Government for his Sanctuary Cove development. To Mike Gore, Joh could walk on water. Lake Burley Griffin would be no problem.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen was a rural populist. He placed a premium on development, often without too much regard for competition considerations. When it came to investment in Queensland and the economic growth of the state, he was a corner cutter. This approach achieved results and produced a buoyant Queensland economy, which lasted long after he had gone. Sometimes people were unreasonably enriched in the process, yet the state prospered. As Treasurer, I had several heated discussions with him about my insistence on Australian equity being involved in large coal projects.

Sometimes his preference was that the entirety of the projects should be owned by Japanese investors. His priority was investment in Queensland. I supported that too, but I wanted Australians to participate in that investment where Australian equity was available.

Like all premiers, particularly Queensland premiers, he was happy to beat the anti-Canberra drum. Finishing one very cranky telephone conversation with me regarding a foreign investment decision of mine, he said, ‘Why don’t you just leave us alone and let us run Queensland?’

The Australian newspaper became a prominent vehicle for the propagation of the Joh cause. The editor at the time, the late Les Hollings, gave huge coverage to anything that Bjelke-Petersen said or did. The paper’s editorial pages championed the causes of lower taxes and reduced union power. That was fine by me, but the underlying theme from contributors like Katherine West and Des Keegan was that I wasn’t quite up to the task and a person with the heft of Joh was needed.

These were all ingredients which led to the ‘Joh for PM’ campaign. They were not, however, the overriding reasons why it happened. In the end it happened because Joh Bjelke-Petersen himself believed that he could become prime minister. It was not rational, but it was real.

By 1987 he had been Premier of Queensland for 19 years. Australia had a federal Labor Government, and Labor was in power in all other states except Tasmania. Joh was a hero to people on the right and centre-right of politics, not only in his own state but elsewhere. He spoke with the authority of being in government. I spoke with the limitations of being an Opposition leader, and one who was under pressure within his own party.

Bjelke-Petersen had beaten Labor on numerous occasions. He had demoralised the Liberals in Queensland with his remarkable win in November 1986. Although some former National Party insiders say that Joh had resolved to tilt for Canberra before the 1986 election, his amazing victory removed serious doubts in his mind. Until then the possibility of the ‘Joh for PM’ campaign gathering traction was remote.

To win 49 out of the 89 seats in the Queensland parliament was a huge accomplishment for the National Party. A week out from that election a deadlocked parliament looked likely. The all-out National Party assault during the final week shifted many people who traditionally might have voted Liberal towards Bjelke-Petersen, in the name of having a stable, conservative government in Queensland. This victory persuaded him, and many around him, that he had broad vote-winning appeal, including amongst blue-collar Labor voters.

There was another simple reason why he turned his gaze to Canberra. 1986, despite the triumph it was, was his last state election. It became, therefore, a question of why not have a go for Canberra. In the atmosphere of Queensland politics after the election, such issues as the unlikelihood of his state popularity translating fully into the federal arena never occurred to his spruikers. There have been very few successful translations of successful state political figures into positions of equal power and prominence federally. Behaviour deemed popular, even loveable, at a state level becomes quirky and even embarrassing at a national level.

There was also the reality that many Liberals who happily declared their regard and support for Bjelke-Petersen whilst he was Queensland Premier had a completely different attitude towards the prospect that he might be the alternative to Bob Hawke as prime minister. As Christmas 1986 drew near, none of this seemed to matter. The victory in November had converted a fanciful dream into a tantalising possibility.

Until Bjelke-Petersen’s Queensland election victory, I did not judge that the ‘Joh for PM’ campaign, although distracting, would become a reality. Watching Joh’s victory speech that night in November 1986, my concern deepened. I said to Janette, who had watched it with me, ‘This is going to create terrible trouble for us.’

My concerns were realised almost immediately. In a post-election interview with the Australian on 3 November he said, ‘This time I won’t be working through them. They’ll work with the policies I set or I will work against them, and I’ve told them that.’¹ Hinze had been even more direct: ‘We need a type of leader like Sir Joh in the nation,’ he said. ‘Howard tried to help Knox [the Queensland Liberal leader] and was not accepted. It’s a problem for the conservative parties in Australia, we have to find a new leader,’ he continued.² When pressed, he said that Andrew Peacock was one of the politicians capable of saving Australia.

Bjelke-Petersen was unresponsive to any personal overtures. I rang him on Christmas Eve 1986. He was polite in response but decidedly distant. It was plain that he had no intention of sitting down with me to plan a joint strategy to defeat Hawke.

The Bjelke-Petersen push had precious little to do with philosophy. It was driven by the desire to achieve and wield power. The Queensland Premier and I were close on some issues. We were both socially conservative and shared similar views on industrial relations, although we differed on other economic policies. He frequently railed against ‘trendies’ in the Liberal Party — hardly applicable to me. But our similarities meant nothing.

Although, as fellow premiers, Sir Charles Court, of Western Australia, and Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen often made common cause against Canberra, Court was dismayed by the Joh for PM campaign. He thought it ill-advised, doomed to fail and damaging to the Liberal cause. He tried in various ways to persuade his former premier-in-arms against it, and expressed concern to me about some of the people around Bjelke-Petersen.

Joh used the Christmas/New Year period to keep the speculation going. He held a major rally in Wagga Wagga on 31 January and announced his strong support for a 25 per cent flat tax policy. He spoke of ‘starting a bushfire that will spread across Australia'.³ That meeting was addressed by Des Keegan of the Australian and the activist leader of Australia’s surgeons, Bruce Shepherd. He personified the type of person who caused me difficulties with Joh. A very conservative man, he professed support for me and had actually told me in advance what he proposed saying at the Wagga Wagga rally, but also told me what a great man Joh was. Shepherd railed against the so-called trendies in my party such as Ian Macphee and Peter Baume. I told him that the Liberal Party was a broad church and that it was the final policies which emerged that really mattered.

In January 1987 I went to Perth for some America’s Cup activities and had breakfast with Ian McLachlan, still president of the National Farmers Federation (NFF) but there for a meeting of the Elders board. He was an impressive figure who I liked and really wanted as a Liberal candidate at the next election. Then one of Australia’s largest woolgrowers, his leadership of the NFF had made him a real poster boy for industrial relations reform on issues such as the Mudginberri abattoir. Whilst being friendly, he was unwilling to commit. Shortly afterwards, John Carrick, who had been a NSW senator since 1971, told me that he would resign his Senate seat in favour of Ian McLachlan, if that would help. I rang and told McLachlan of this. He was non-committal. Carrick had made a huge gesture, but I don’t think that Ian was fully seized by this. A few weeks later I called to see McLachlan when in Adelaide. We had a long and friendly talk, but it was of little avail. He said that he did not wish to commit specifically to either the Liberal Party or the Nationals. He kept referring to the right-hand side of politics. McLachlan said that he had been in touch with Bjelke-Petersen. He said, ‘You know, he really thinks he can do it. I am going to take a detailed look at his proposals.’ He also said that the NFF was resolutely opposed to a consumption tax and would campaign hard against it if it became Liberal policy. The farmers wanted fuel excise abolished. I left that meeting feeling dispirited.

A huge complication throughout was the poor relations between Bjelke-Petersen and the Nationals’ federal leader, Ian Sinclair. The Queensland Premier had no interest in getting closer to his federal colleague, and Ian Sinclair struggled to find the right modus operandi for handling Joh. Relations between Joh and the federal Nationals had always been problematic. In the Fraser Government days, Peter Nixon had been the man to deal with Joh. Nixon was neither in awe of Joh nor insensitive to his raw populism. He was a straight shooter, and on many occasions both Malcolm Fraser and Doug Anthony would ask Peter Nixon to ‘deal with Joh'.

Tension built as parliament prepared to resume in February 1987. Tactically, Bjelke-Petersen’s first objective was to break the federal coalition. My aim was to preserve it. I knew that if the federal coalition held, there was no real prospect of a ‘Joh for PM’ campaign getting off the ground. Crucial to maintaining the federal coalition was the determination and leadership authority of Ian Sinclair.

We held a joint party meeting on 2 February, after which I called on Bjelke-Petersen to be either supportive or to keep out of the federal scene. On the same day, at a news conference, Ian Sinclair reiterated his commitment to the Coalition and said that no individual premier or leader of any state parliamentary party ‘will have a direct role in determining any other course'. That was the right attitude.

The agitation from the Queenslanders continued, and attention shifted to a separate meeting of the federal parliamentary National Party, set for 16 February. This shaped as a test of Ian Sinclair’s authority to hold the federal Nationals in the Coalition. Before the meeting, I spoke to him about the need to reaffirm the commitment of the Nationals to the Coalition.

The outcome of that National Party meeting could not have been worse. Instead of a clear statement of support for the Coalition, what was described to me by Peter McGauran, a National MP, as ‘an olive branch to Bjelke-Petersen’ emanated. It said nothing about the Coalition. Rather, it welcomed the thrust of what the Premier of Queensland had been seeking to achieve and expressed support for his general philosophy. This outcome told me that, when push came to shove, Bjelke-Petersen had enough influence to break the federal coalition. The Queenslanders were in mortal fear of their party endorsements. Not only could Bjelke-Petersen corral them but also at least two from other states.

This was anything but an endorsement of the federal coalition. The following day, I told Ian Sinclair that I would not preside at a joint party meeting, scheduled for later that day, unless he was willing to have his National Party colleagues join in an affirmation of the Coalition, to be publicly made after the meeting of the two parties. After consulting his colleagues, Ian said he would do as I wished. The joint party meeting was held, and the statement I wanted was issued.

The statement said that Ian Sinclair had informed the joint party meeting of the desire of the National Party to continue in coalition with the Liberals. It also reaffirmed that the maintenance of the Coalition was the most effective instrument to defeat the Hawke Government. Cracks were being papered over.

The shove came from the central council of the Queensland National Party meeting at Hervey Bay on 27 February. Effectively, that meeting called on the parliamentary members of the federal National Party to withdraw from the Coalition. The ‘Joh for PM’ campaign came out of the closet at that meeting. ‘Joh for PM’ T-shirts were distributed and ostentatiously donned by people such as the Deputy Premier of Queensland, Bill Gunn. I attached significance to him as my colleague Wal Fife, who had been a fellow Education Minister with Gunn some years earlier, had conveyed to me assurances from Gunn: ‘Don’t worry, Wal. It won’t happen.’ The bandwagon was well and truly gathering pace. Ian Sinclair had attended the meeting and rang me afterwards sounding deeply depressed about the outcome, but assured me he would continue to resist any breaking of the federal coalition.

Sinclair publicly ignored the Hervey Bay resolution. The Queensland members of the National Party decided to wait until a meeting of the federal council of the National Party, due at the end of March, before deciding whether or not to bail out. Meanwhile, the central executive of the NSW party reaffirmed its strong support for Ian Sinclair as leader, and the maintenance of the federal coalition.

Separately, the federal member for Groom in Queensland, Tom McVeigh, withdrew from the federal parliamentary National Party. There were rumours at the time that McVeigh had been offered a job by Bjelke-Petersen in return for vacating his very safe Darling Downs electorate in favour of the Premier.

In directing the parliamentary Nationals to leave the Coalition, and threatening their endorsements if they did not do so, the Queensland Nationals were doing something which for decades both the Liberal and National parties had publicly held against the Labor Party. Dictation from unelected party bosses had been a characteristic of the Australian Labor Party in the 1950s and ‘60s.

To people such as Doug Anthony, this thuggish behaviour by the unelected central council of the Queensland National Party was contrary to fundamental beliefs of the two coalition parties.

Speaking at the Sydney Rotary Club on 2 March, Doug Anthony said, ‘I cannot stomach the intimidatory (sic) action against sitting members of parliament. Threatening them with their preselection if they don’t obey the organisation is political blackmail … For 60 years, the party was proud of its parliamentary freedom and goodwill. For the Queensland organisation to direct and threaten elected members of parliament smacks of those features of the Labor Party we have always deplored.’ He went on to say that if the federal coalition were broken, ‘the mantle of blame would fall fairly and squarely on the Queensland National Party'.⁴ He said it was absurd of the Queensland National Party to imagine it could ever win seats in metropolitan Sydney or Melbourne and that all that would occur would be the re-election of the Hawke Government. Doug Anthony understood precisely what was at stake.

The federal council met in Canberra on 27 March 1987. It resolved that it be left to the parliamentary Nationals to determine when they would withdraw from the Coalition. Many, me included, saw this as a real breakthrough, and perceived that the Queenslanders had backed off. We were wrong. All they had done was to embrace a tactical retreat. Time had been bought, so it was later claimed by Sparkes, the Queensland Nationals president, and others, to deny Hawke the option of an early election. If that was the reason then clearly it did not work.

The Queenslanders did not waste much time. The State Management Committee of the Queensland National Party met on 10 April and ordered its remaining 11 federal parliamentarians to leave the Coalition. This, of course, ignored the decision of the federal council to leave the timing of Coalition withdrawal to the parliamentary party. It was yet another illustration of how the Queenslanders held the National Party in the rest of the country in contempt. It was poetic justice that, in the end, this contemptuous indifference was the undoing of the whole Queensland enterprise.

I sensed that it would probably be short-lived, but I tried the tactic of holding together a remnant coalition. This was to consist of Nationals who remained committed to the Coalition, namely non-Queenslanders and Liberals. I announced a reshuffled shadow ministry with fewer National Party representatives.

Meeting on 28 April, the full parliamentary National Party rejected two of the stipulations I had made relating to meetings of the parliamentary Nationals as part of the deal I had concluded with Sinclair to keep a remnant coalition going. They regarded them as inconsistent with the continuation of their party as a separate parliamentary entity. Their reaction was understandable, but so had been mine: to do all in my power to preserve as much unity as possible between the two parties.

It was the Nationals who had broken the coalition. It had been the unwillingness of the parliamentary collective of National Party members in Canberra to defy the Queensland organisation which had brought about the crisis. If the Queenslanders in the federal parliamentary National Party had stood together and defied their party organisation and stayed in the coalition, there is no way that all of them would have lost their endorsements. If they had all displayed the fortitude of Stan Collard, who defended the right of the parliamentary members to decide these things, history would have been different. Instead they let him be picked off, and he alone lost his preselection.

At 8.30 pm on 28 April 1987, in Canberra, feeling very sad about it, I announced the end of the federal coalition. I said:

Mr Sinclair and I reached an agreement which was an honourable agreement. But because a few Queensland National Party members did not have the guts to stand up to the maverick Premier of Queensland, the National Party has broken that agreement and thus the National Party has brought an end to the Coalition. Therefore, the Liberal Party will now go all out to win government in its own right. If we fall short by a few seats of achieving that goal at the next election I will negotiate a new coalition agreement with the National Party so that we can get rid of the Hawke Government, form a new Coalition Government, and implement policies which will benefit all Australians.⁵

They were brave words, uttered with much passion, but I knew in my heart just how difficult our predicament had become.

We were a spectacle of disunity and weakness. Labor could not have believed its extraordinary good fortune. The ‘Joh for PM’ push had sucked all the oxygen out of the air for me, my party and those parliamentary National Party members who were genuinely trying to concentrate on our main job, and that was to oppose and hopefully defeat the Hawke Government. Ian Sinclair had done his level best to save the Coalition.

It was an immensely dispiriting time for our supporters throughout the country. Constant preoccupation with the threat to the Coalition posed by the Queensland Nationals had rendered serious policy work virtually impossible. Not only was an enormous amount of my time, and that of other senior colleagues, focused on the Bjelke-Petersen issue, but the totally compromised independence of the parliamentary Nationals meant that they were in no mood to focus on, let alone commit to, particular policies.

The Queensland Nationals had achieved their negative objectives. They had wrecked the federal coalition and completely undermined Ian Sinclair’s leadership. They had gravely weakened my own position as alternative Prime Minister. Yet, with the exception of John Stone, the former Treasury secretary, they had not recruited any star or high-profile candidates willing to run under the Joh banner. None of the other prominent potential recruits mentioned from time to time materialised. Some made it plain they would not sign up with Bjelke-Petersen. One was Greg Chappell, the cricket great, who in a telephone conversation with me firmly ruled out any possibility of becoming a candidate for the Queensland Premier. The negative part had been accomplished fairly easily. The more difficult part of presenting as a credible alternative conservative force had not been achieved.

By contrast, Hawke continued to govern decisively. On 13 May the Treasurer delivered a major economic statement outlining a reduction of $4 billion in the prospective budget deficit. It gave the appearance of a government dealing directly with the economic challenges then facing Australia.

Hawke had been presented with the irresistible temptation to call an early election. He readily succumbed, and announced it at 5 pm on 27 May. It was a double dissolution, obtained on the strength of Senate rejection of the Australia Card legislation.

Not since its formation in 1944 had the Liberal Party of Australia faced a federal election in less propitious circumstances. Its 40-year coalition with the Nationals had been brutally broken. It had, for months, been racked by leadership speculation and, due in no small measure to these two factors themselves, had not completed enough policy work to go to the people with a comprehensive program, credibly costed.

Early on 2 June 1987, Ian McLachlan telephoned me in Canberra to say that he was having absolutely nothing further to do with the Joh campaign. McLachlan’s flirtation with Joh had hurt us a lot. He was a credible figure. No end of effort had been made to encourage him to endorse the federal coalition. Yet he had stubbornly refused, saying that he didn’t think that we had the bottle to take the tough decisions needed if we got into government.

Alexander Downer, who had only been elected in 1984, had three months earlier publicly offered to vacate his very safe seat of Mayo to make way for McLachlan as a Liberal candidate. It was a big thing for Downer to do. He had his heart set on a long political career but was motivated by his deep affection for the Liberal Party and driven by his alarm at the spectacle of disunity presented by the Liberal and National parties. There had also been the Carrick offer.

Whatever had been his prevarication in the past, by 2 June McLachlan had become quite angry. He told me, after a meeting with them, that the Queenslanders had done no serious work. They had no policies to speak of. His disillusionment gave me some hope. It was sorely needed.

The Queensland Premier had been in California when Hawke announced the election and was thus caught quite unprepared.

John Stone also telephoned me that same day. He had secured a spot on the Nationals’ Senate ticket for Queensland. John would be the main architect of Joh’s taxation policy and was the one person who gave some nationwide credibility to the Queensland push. John had always been quite an admirer of Bjelke-Petersen. In his call he hinted that the Queenslanders knew that the ‘Joh for PM’ campaign could not succeed. He said that they wanted to see me as soon as possible, to discuss ways of working together to defeat the Hawke Government.

So it was agreed that Joh and his senior National Party people would see me at my home in Sydney later that evening. They had been in Melbourne during the day, where the abortive meeting with Ian McLachlan had taken place.

Accompanied by Tony Eggleton, Liberal federal director, and Grahame Morris, my chief of staff, I went to Sydney for one of the more remarkable political meetings of my entire life. ‘They', to whom Janette referred, did not include the man himself. At the last minute Bjelke-Petersen, who had come to Sydney, had decided to sit it out, either at the airport or at some hotel. In the lounge room of my home, I found three emissaries from the north. They were Sir Robert Sparkes, the formidable president of the Queensland Nationals, his likeable and friendly deputy, Charlie Holm, and the state director, an advertising man called Fred Maybury. They hurriedly tried to explain Joh’s absence. Then we began our discussion about what was to happen.

They were an interesting trio. Holm was a traditional Country Party man from rural Queensland. ‘He’s the sort of man you would buy a horse from,’ remarked my wife later. He was seen by most people as an honest broker. Sparkes had played a major role in building the National Party organisation and had a good political brain. He had never been enthusiastic about the ‘Joh for PM’ campaign and only signed up quite late in the piece, when he realised that the momentum had gathered so strongly that it could not be ignored. Fred Maybury, given his advertising background, was completely obsessed with market research. He had been an enthusiast for the Canberra push by Bjelke-Petersen from way back.

They hadn’t come to apologise but to acknowledge, grudgingly, that the game was up. They accepted that the Liberal and National parties, facing an election on 11 July, needed to cobble together as much unity as possible, even though it was the 11th hour.

Maybury had brought an armful of research material with him. He plonked it on the lounge room floor. Given that the die was already cast, I didn’t quite see the point of this. The bizarre feature of the evening was that he kept telling all of us that it would have been possible for Joh to have made it, if it hadn’t been for what he saw to be the perfidy of the NSW Nationals.

He was right, but I was the last person to think that the NSW Nationals had done the wrong thing. To me, they had been heroes. For all the political skills and strategic planning of which the Queensland Nationals were alleged to have been capable, they had ignored the most fundamental step needed to achieve their goal. They had not enlisted the support of the National Party organisation throughout Australia for the ‘Joh for PM’ campaign. Without this they never had any hope. Doug Moppett and his colleagues had outsmarted them.

The real rabbit killer to the ‘Joh for PM’ campaign had been delivered at a meeting in my office in Canberra just a few weeks earlier. Then an agreement was struck, not only to maintain the decades-old joint Senate ticket between the Liberal Party and the National Party in New South Wales, but to implement a strategy that would cripple Joh in New South Wales.

That meeting was attended by Doug Moppett, the chairman of the NSW Nationals, his state director, Jenny Gardiner, Bronwyn Bishop, president of the NSW division of the Liberal Party, Dr Graeme Starr, the state director of the Liberals, as well as Tony Eggleton, Ian Sinclair and me.

Moppett had shown genuine strength in the face of the Queensland push. From the beginning he had been scathing about what his northern confrères had in mind, and contemptuous of the way in which they had undermined his federal leader, Ian Sinclair. He and Jenny Gardiner shared the historic warmth of the NSW Nationals towards cooperation with the Liberals.

I had always strongly supported close cooperation with the Nationals. The reaffirmation of the joint NSW Senate ticket was very important. Equally important was our agreement that if any ‘Joh for PM’ Nationals stood against sitting Liberals, then the NSW Nationals would campaign against the Joh Nationals in support of sitting Liberal candidates. In similar vein, the Liberal Party would support sitting Nationals and Nationals endorsed by the party organisation in New South Wales against any ‘Joh for PM’ Nationals. This tight electoral pact was designed to shut out the Queenslanders. It succeeded.

Although Sparkes and Holm said very little, Maybury bitterly complained about what the NSW Nationals had done. It was quite extraordinary, because he was venting his spleen to someone who thought that the NSW Nationals had behaved honourably and in the best traditions of close coalition harmony. I thought that Doug Moppett, in particular, had displayed tenacity and strength where many others melted away.

We talked at our Wollstonecraft home for about an hour and a half. The message out of the meeting was clear. The ‘Joh for PM’ campaign was finished, but they thought it had all been rather unfair, because if the rest of the National Party had come on board it might have been successful!

Given all that had happened over the preceding few months, I felt considerable relief. There still remained the awkward issue of a meeting between the Queensland Premier and me. We all knew that without that meeting and a declaration from the two of us that we would work together, there was no hope of stitching up even a façade of unity for the election campaign. They wanted me to go and see Joh in Brisbane in the next few days.

After Sparkes, Holm and Maybury left, I held a council of war with my two Canberra colleagues and Janette. Despite all the rough edges, and the possibility that I would be criticised for going cap in hand to someone I had called a ‘wrecker', we all agreed that it was more important to achieve the public outcome we wanted than worry about personal dignity. To have any hope at all in the election we needed to put as much of the Coalition disunity behind us as possible. We could not even begin to do this unless Bjelke-Petersen and I had been seen to have mended fences.

I went back to Canberra that night with Grahame Morris and Tony Eggleton. The following day was devoted to a series of phone calls between me, Sparkes and Stone.

In my discussions, I told both Stone and Sparkes that whilst I accepted that a visit to Brisbane was necessary I would not undertake it in the absence of a guarantee that Joh would come good on acknowledging that his Canberra fantasy was over. They gave me those guarantees. I remained dubious but arranged to fly to Brisbane the next day.

There was a lot of fog at Canberra Airport the following morning, but that was not the real reason for my delayed departure on the RAAF jet. Maybury had rung Eggleton very early to say that Joh was having second thoughts — more likely that Maybury had persuaded Joh to have those second thoughts. At one point Maybury rang my home looking for me. He spoke to Janette and told her that the whole thing was off. Agonising phone calls followed, with my speaking to Sparkes, Maybury and finally Joh. I obtained Joh’s word. His press secretary, Ken Crook, even read out the news release Joh would issue.

I finally left for Brisbane. The meeting with the Queensland Premier was awkward but it achieved its purpose. A statement was issued which declared our determination to work together to defeat the Hawke Government. Deference was paid to the Queensland Nationals’ views on taxation, without compromising anything which the Liberal Party might say on the subject during the election campaign. Bjelke-Petersen’s demeanour was of a man who knew that his great dream would not be realised.

When I returned to Canberra, the house was still sitting. There were predictable cries of derision from the Labor side of the house that I had behaved weakly towards Bjelke-Petersen. I was happy to wear all of that. Hawke even moved a censure motion against me; that was going too far. He sounded rather foolish. A week earlier I would not have thought anything like what had been achieved in the previous 48 hours was remotely possible. Against all the odds of recent months, I now gave the Liberal Party just a faint chance of winning the election racing towards us. But the odds against us were colossal.

* * *

The really fatal blow to our 1987 election campaign was the discovery by the Labor Government of a double counting error in the Liberal tax policy after that policy had been released on 10 June at Box Hill in Melbourne.

Savings from cutting expenditure on certain programs were also included in savings from reducing payments to the states which, in turn, had included some payments under those same programs. The mistake involved several hundred million dollars. The tax policy document had been largely prepared in my office but also with the involvement of the relevant shadow ministers. All had been working under near impossible conditions, but when parties make mistakes of this kind, they have to carry the blame. No excuses are permitted. It was our mistake, and when it was exposed, it did us irreparable damage. If the policy had been prepared under different conditions, then adequate time would have been available for further checking, and I am sure that the mistake would not have arisen.

I had to go through the painful experience of calling a press conference, admitting the error and endeavouring to explain that the tax commitments we had made elsewhere in the policy could be properly funded in another manner. I did the best I could but the damage had already been done. Although he did not tell me at the time, Tony Eggleton later let me know that a private poll conducted for the party by Gary Morgan not long after the tax error was discovered showed that the Coalition was 18 points behind Labor.

Although it was of little ultimate consolation, the rest of the campaign went remarkably well for the Liberal Party. Bob Hawke refused to debate me, which barely earned a rebuke from the press.

The Liberal and National parties achieved a nationwide swing of 1 per cent. The final result on a two-party-preferred basis was 50.8 per cent for Labor to 49.2 per cent for the Coalition; we had actually shaded the ALP on the primary vote. Unfortunately for the opposition parties, the swing had not been evenly distributed, and despite the nationwide swing in its favour, the Coalition suffered a net loss of seats to the ALP. The Liberals won the suburban seats of Lowe in Sydney and Chisholm in Melbourne, but lost Michael Hodgman’s seat of Denison in Tasmania as well as the Queensland seats of Forde, Petrie, Hinkler and Fisher. Labor also captured the Northern Territory from the Country Liberal Party. Hawke increased his majority from 16 to 24 seats.

The cumulative leadership difficulties within the Liberal Party, the broken coalition as well as the policy mistakes had severely damaged our chances. It was, nonetheless, clear from a regional analysis of the poll that electors had especially punished the Queensland Nationals. Not only did both parties lose seats in Queensland but the loss of the Northern Territory could also be attributed in no small part to the Queensland connection.

The ‘Joh for PM’ push destroyed more than the Coalition’s prospects in the 1987 election. It began the Queensland Premier’s own political decline. Not only had he been unsuccessful in his bid for Canberra but, in the process, had done much gratuitous harm to what was still seen as his side of politics in its bid to unseat the Hawke Government.

In a few short months he went from being a political Messiah to someone whose best years were behind him. To all but his most ardent followers Joh increasingly became a political liability.

For all the damage he had done to our prospects in the 1987 election, I recognised the huge contribution he made to his state as Premier. At his state memorial service in Kingaroy, some 18 years later, on 3 May 2005, I said, ‘The reality nonetheless is that he made a massive contribution, a defining contribution, to the growth and the expansion of the state of Queensland.’

The ‘Joh for PM’ campaign had wrecked our chances of winning in 1987. I must acknowledge though that disunity in the Liberal Party helped create a vacuum on the anti-Labor side of politics. This encouraged Joh and his supporters to think that they could successfully indulge their ludicrous political fantasy. A completely united, strongly performing Liberal Party would not necessarily have aborted the Joh push but at the very least it would have given its architects greater pause to think.