Let his own bury him

But since I’ve got the only soap-box currently on offer, you will just have to make do with my attempt.

In the editorial referred to earlier, the Courier said the old rogue should be buried with all the pomp and circumstance the state can muster because “such a funeral recognises the importance of the office he held”.

In other words each and every Premier, no matter what ignominy they heap upon the office, gets buried with a bang? Nonsense!

Let's apply that argument to Keith Wright, convicted child sex offender, who was the alternative Premier in 1983, and might have been elected to the office, but for the grace of God and the gerrymander.

Ah, so suddenly there are limits to the “because you held the office” argument you get a state funeral. Glad we got that sorted. No state funeral for those who disgrace the office, you say.

I rest my case. In all likelihood Bjelke-Petersen would have been in jail (a cell beside Wright's?) if National Party true-believer Luke Shaw hadn’t perverted the course of justice first by not declaring his political allegiance before being sworn to the jury ,and then by obstinately obstructing its deliberations, in Joh's perjury trial.

How much abusing of the office do you want to hear? For starters the old crook not once had to face an honest election in his state career, and refused any attempt to get rid of the rigged boundaries, even when the push came from his then Liberal mates.

He messed with the judiciary, made the state a cronies paradise to be hived off at mates rates, persecuted opponents (remember John Sinclair?), hand-picked that other crook Terry Lewis as Police Commissioner, vetoed any accountability or a Parliamentary committee system, he blocked proper investigations into allegations of police brutality, so say nothing of the lives, marriages, careers destroyed by his bastardry.

And that is only the half of it and not even the worst of it. Democracy is a precious and fragile thing, something built up and defended over thousands of years by blood, sacrifice and toil (ANZAC Day, lest we forget). It is a social contract, an instinct that guides the conduct of citizens in a civil society.

Bjelke-Petersen was thoroughly and unfailingly anti-democratic, an autocrat whose words and actions undermined our democratic institutions, instinct and heritage. He is not worthy of our collective, institutional respect.

By all means let his family mourn and remember him well. As a society there are dangers in misplaced, self-indulgent sentimentality. Once again, Queensland is being seduced into thinking maybe he wasn’t really so bad after all. No he wasn’t. He was worse.

And while the wrecking ball is out, let’s swing it at this jerry-built house of empty rhetoric: “He got things done for Queensland.” Bjelke-Petersen did nothing more than premiers are elected to do.