When his party finally turned on him, Bjelke-Petersen barricaded himself in his office. By some accounts, he tried to contact the Queen and convince her to intervene on his behalf.
“He wasn’t Rudolph Valentino in the looks department,” now-federal MP Bob Katter says. “He couldn’t string three coherent words together, but he was an innovator.”
“I was struck by his humility, and it wasn’t bunged on. He just thought it was naturally his job to go and boil the billy and make tea for people.
“What happened to Joh is, he was stabbed in the back.”
The Stan documentary re-examines the legacy of Bjelke-Petersen as a disgraced leader.
It covers everything from his early life in Kingaroy, to the infamous 1971 Springboks tour and associated police brutality during his declaration of a state of emergency, his role in the dismissal of Gough Whitlam, Indigenous protests in Queensland, the rise of Brisbane punk and radio station 4ZZZ, the “Joh for PM” campaign, the ABC’s Moonlight State expose, and the Fitzgerald inquiry.
Richard Roxburgh portrays Bjelke-Petersen in the documentary.Credit: Stan
Sallyanne Atkinson, the Liberal mayor of Brisbane through part of his tenure, is one of several who comes to the defence of a man charged with – but not convicted of – perjury.
“I will go to my deathbed not believing that Joh was corrupt,” she says.
“I base that on the fact that I never saw any evidence of corruption or greed or looking for wealth.
“I think what he did do, which was a sort of country way, was a few favours for mates.”
Behind the scenes of Joh: Last King of Queensland, former PM John Howard discusses Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. Credit: Stan
The Bjelke-Petersen children, former PM John Howard, election analyst Antony Green, musicians Ed Kuepper of the Saints and Lindy Morrison of the Go-Betweens, journalist Chris Masters, and former MP David Byrne are among others adding their voices.
Woven into the narrative of the documentary are monologues to the audience, in a convincing performance by Richard Roxburgh as the premier.
Several commentators draw parallels between Bjelke-Petersen’s leadership and the rise of US President Trump decades later.
“We look at Joh and think [he’s] once in a generation … then we look at Trump and we go ‘hang on’,” investigative reporter at The Australian, Mathew Condon, says.
“Some bells start to ring in terms of what we’ve gone through.
“I mean the template was already here with a peanut farmer at the bottom of the world, and now we see it play out on a world stage. There are eerie and uncanny parallels.”
Joh: Last King of Queensland is available on Stan from June 22, 2025. This masthead watched an early edit of the documentary that might differ from the final cut.
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