Sir Johannes "Joh" Bjelke-Petersen, KCMG (13 January 1911 – 23 April 2005), New Zealand-born Australian politician, was the longest-serving and longest-lived Premier of the state of Queensland. He held office from 1968 to 1987, a period that saw considerable economic development in the state. His uncompromising conservatism (including his role within the downfall of the Whitlam federal government), his political longevity, and his leadership of a...
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Sir Johannes "Joh" Bjelke-Petersen, KCMG (13 January 1911 – 23 April 2005), New Zealand-born Australian politician, was the longest-serving and longest-lived Premier of the state of Queensland. He held office from 1968 to 1987, a period that saw considerable economic development in the state. His uncompromising conservatism (including his role within the downfall of the Whitlam federal government), his political longevity, and his leadership of a government that, in its latter years, was revealed to be institutionally corrupt, made him one of the best-known political figures in twentieth-century Australia.
Bjelke-Petersen was born in Dannevirke in the Southern Hawke's Bay region of New Zealand, and lived in Waipukurau, a small town in Hawke's Bay. Bjelke-Petersen's parents were both Danish immigrants, and his father, Carl, was a Lutheran pastor. In 1913 the family left for Australia, moving to Kingaroy in south-eastern Queensland and taking up dairy farming.
The young Johannes...
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