Joh’s ‘kitchen cabinet’

I came across an article I’d like to share regarding former Queensland premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. Some say he was a bit of a rogue but, by crikey, he got a lot done without running up a huge state debt.

Mingling with the better-known dignitaries at former premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s state funeral were three people who had never held public office, never run a government department or controlled billions of dollars in developments.

Bjelke-Petersen’s long-time driver Ron Walsh, his police guard Bob Carter and, above all, government pilot Beryl Young, were nevertheless some of the most influential people of their time.

The ex-Victorian bank clerk, now 73, was far more than just a pilot to the premier, who died in 2005. Former National Party MP turned independent member for Callide, Lindsay Hartwig, once said she exerted more influence over the premier than the powerful Nationa Party trustee Sir Edward Lyons.

“Believe me, Beryl Young is Joh’s closest adviser. She is usually consulted on any major decision. She’d make Ted Lyons look like a poor relation.”

She was part of Bielke-Petersen’s “kitchen cabinet”, an inner sanctum including senior government researcher Wendy Armstrong, press secretary Ken Crooke and State Treasury head Sir Leo Heilscher.

It was a relationship that raised some eyebrows and many more hackles, particularly among ministers and other, less well-paid, pilots. Ms Young, who piloted Joh interstate, around the state and even overseas in a Piper Navajo, then a Beech King Air and finally an executive jet, was once granted a whopping $30,000 pay rise. It took her salary to $75,000, slightly less than that of a Boing 767 captain and more than almost any other public servant at the time.

But the premier, who said she landed an aircraft “like a butterfly with sore feet”, was adamant she was worth it. After taking up flying at 16, she moved north before starting her job as Bjelke-Petersen’s pilot in 1969. He claimed she saved his life at least three times.

She liked to recount the odd war story herself, including the time they were flying into Mackay in dreadful conditions.

“We were at minimum altitude and you couldn’t see anything in front of you,” she said.

She was waiting for him to confirm when he sighted land, but when he saw mango trees through a patch of cloud all he said was,

“Have we got that box of mangoes on board?”

Her boss, himself a pilot but not qualified to fly a jet, was investigated by the Federal Aviation Department after he was filmed apparently flying the government jet. Although he was widely believed to have regularly taken the controls over the years, an offence which could have seen his pilot sacked, he said the incident was a set-up photo opportunity.

Quotable quotes by Sir Joh:

“Don’t you worry about that”

“Goodness gracious, I know what you’re trying to do.”

“Just you wait and see.”

“Let me tell you, what is good for Queensland is good for Australia.”

On press conferences: “I call it feeding the chooks.”

On unionism in his maiden speech on August, 1947: “It is a form of treachery and can only lead to economic upheaval of a severity not often experienced.”

On industrial relations: “The 40-hour week has given the opportunity to many to while away their time in hotels.”

On John Howard and Ian Sinclair during his Joh for PM campaign in 1987: “You can push a 44 gallon drum of molasses up a hill easier than you could push these two fellas.”

On the Joh for PM campaign. “I’m a bushfire raging across the country.” And when it failed: “I never really wanted to go anyway.”

On former Chinese leader Mao Zedong: “Red is red wherever it is - and I don’t trust any of them.”

On finances under Gough Whitlam: “Australia is bankrupt. It is even worse than that.”

On human rights: “What’s the ordinary man in the street got to do with it?”

On condoms: “We don’t want any of that sort of thing up here.”

On press criticisms: “The greatest thing that could happen to the state and nation is when we get rid of all the media … then we could live in peace and tranquillity and no one would know anything.”

On anyone in general in Canberra: “He’s got one leg each side of a barbed wire fence.”

Comments about Sir Joh

Gough Whitlam in 1974:

“(He) is a Bible-bashing bastard - the man is a paranoiac, a bigot and fanatical.”

Columnist Phillip Adams, comparing Sir Joh with Peter Sellers’ character, the moronic Chance, in the movie, Being There :

“Both (Joh and Ronald Reagan) have visions as limited as their vocabularies, yet both these grotesque garden gnomes are seen as colossi by their deluded followers. The louder we laughed at them, the more powerful they became. The more improbable their careers, the more certain their ascendancy.”

Former ALP national president Barry Jones:

He is the Ayatollah of the north: How can you have an open debate in the Kafka-like atmosphere of secrecy and cronyism of Joh-style politics?”

John Howard on the Joh for PM campaign:

“Tropical cyclone Jo has already petred out.”