The 90s were insane in Queensland

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]Do you know what this district is? This is Munding Burough in South Townsville.

[00:00:06]In 1995, Labour's Ken Davies won this seat by just 16 votes. This gave Labour the 45th and final seat they needed to form government. Except that's not how the story ended. 6 months later, a Queensland judge found that 22 soldiers deployed as peacekeepers in Rwanda did not receive their ballots in time for the vote. This could have changed the whole outcome and so he ordered Munding Burough to go to a revote. Except this time, Labour replaced Davies with the popular mayor of Townsville, Tony Mooney. In sense, Davies ran as an independent and drew votes away from Labour. This helped give the Liberals the victory. Except I'm still not done.

[00:00:51]Labour no longer had a majority. And so the leader of the Nationals, Rob Borbage, cobbled together an alliance of Nationals, Liberals, and an independent called Liz Cunningham. But this government was so structurally vulnerable to attack. And who would exploit that vulnerability? Well, Pauline Hansen. This video is going to explain how Pauline put the queen in Queensland.

[00:01:16]>> I don't even know, man. I just thought that sound cool.

[00:01:21]>> So, we're going to go through the wild ride that Queensland was in the 1990s.

[00:01:26]And it's worth noting that just weeks before the decade began, Labour came back to government for the first time since 1957. Wayne Goss ran a goated campaign. After the Fitzgerald inquiry showed that key members of the Nationals government were connected to criminal corruption rings, Goss campaigned on a clean Queensland. really missed opportunity to call it Queensland. Goss promised to implement the anti-corruption recommendations from the report and promised to end electoral malaportionment where rural votes were worth more than urban ones. Effectively, under the long-running nationals premiered Joe Peterson, the government drew up so many rural electorates that the rural vote was sometimes worth three times the urban vote. And after winning, Goss got cracking straight away. This photo right here is so close to proving a point that I want to make. So, here's Goss. And here is his chief of staff, Kevin Rudd. Over here is unfortunately not Wayne Swan. It's some professor. But it kind of looks like Labour's campaign director and state secretary, Wayne Swan. Together, they formed a triumvirate. In fact, the new Labour cabinet called them a troa, a Russian term for a three-h horse formation.

[00:02:37]Cabinet resented the fact that Goss took the council of these two unelected party men above them. And so with the help of Rudd and Swan, Goss got to work cleaning up Queensland. The Queensland police had a unit called the special branch which were implemented in surveillance of political enemies. State nationals using a special police force to surveil political dissident. Never. So Goss made himself police minister so that he could personally oversee the abolition of that unit. And to get rid of the culture of jobs for the boys, Goss introduced the public sector management commission.

[00:03:13]This commission had the sole purpose of monitoring public sector job appointments and government contracts as well. But Goss had to deal with the issue of completely uneven electorates.

[00:03:24]Now don't get me wrong, nerfing rural seats obviously was in Labour's own interest. And to be frank, before Joel Peterson, they'd actually abused the rural malortionment for their own benefit. But Goss' campaign was specifically on one vote, one value. So in 1992, new laws were made that only allowed a difference of 10% between electorate populations. But rather than have each party draw up its own map when they're in government, the Electoral Redistribution Commission was tasked with independently drawing the new borders. Goss encouraged them to act free of government interference. So Goss would have been pretty popular, right?

[00:04:01]Like whatever your politics are, corruption bad is pretty universal across the board. Well, these reforms were in his first term and he comfortably won re-election in 1992.

[00:04:12]But in 1995, things would be a lot more difficult. Remember, Goss had alienated much of cabinet because he consulted Rudd and Swan far more than them. A talented and rising Labour MP called Peter Bey even clashed with Goss publicly. After Bey argued that the scope of investigation into past corruption should go much further than Goss had advocated for, Bey called Goss out of touch. Even though Bey was highly rated and loved by the press, Goss refused to have him in his ministry until right before the 1995 election.

[00:04:43]This damaged Bey's relationship with both Goss and Kevin Rudd as well. Look, I love Kevin07 more than probably anyone, but he doesn't exactly strike me as the kind to let go of grudges.

[00:04:53]>> That's how Bey describes himself, the media tart of Australian politics. So, look, Peter's Peter, and everyone in Queensland knows he's a media tart.

[00:05:03]>> But there were external issues as well.

[00:05:05]The Nationals were now led by Rob Borbage, someone who had a much cleaner image than his predecessors. Borbage was effective for two reasons. One, he ran a tough on crime campaign, which always works against labor in Queensland. And two, Paul Kedig had made indigenous rights a key part of his time as prime minister, including protecting indigenous native title claims on land in rural and regional areas. Orbid was able to leverage that against labor. But there was one other huge factor going into 1995, the Greens. So in 1992, a number of pro- environment groups like the Queensland Greens, the New South Wales Greens, the Green Independence in Tasmania, and a couple of anti-uclear groups in WA confederated into what we now know as the Greens Party. And Goss wanted to build a highway from here to here.

[00:05:53]However, that would go through koala habitat. In the decade or so that the Australian Greens movements had been around, whatever the iteration of the Greens was, they'd always preferenced the Labor Party above the coalition.

[00:06:05]This was based off a pact made between Bob Hawk's Minister for the Environment, Graeme Richardson, and the deacto leader of the Greens movement, Bob Brown. But for the first time in the 1995 election in Queensland, the Greens actually didn't order preference flows to go to Labor in all of the seats. This was especially costly because Queensland only had optional preferential voting, so many protests actually never circled back to a major party. And in three marginal electorates, the Greens explicitly preferenced the coalition above Labor. Now, forgive me, I'm not as good as data analytics as Benas from the Pod. But in the 1995 Queensland election, Goss won with a one seat majority with Munding Burough being the closest. It came down to 16 votes, but 2,265 people voted for the Greens. According to Anthony Green, in cities like Munding Burough, where the Greens gave no instruction either way to either preference the Labor Party or the Coalition, only 41.9% of people bothered to actually preference the Labor Party.

[00:07:05]In seats where the Greens explicitly gave the order to preference the Labour Party above the coalition, 50.5% of preferences then flowed through to Labor. Based on the best assumptions that we can have, that means for Munding Burough, Labor would have access to an extra 8.6% 6% of the 2,265 votes. This would have given them 195 extra votes in the final count, expanding the victory to 211 votes against the Liberals. Obviously, this is still a very thin margin, but it's certainly decisive. However, because those 22 soldiers in Rwanda were unable to vote in time, it went to a revote.

[00:07:41]But before we get to the Munding Burough rematch, if you do want to learn more about state labor history and get connected with Labor members across the country, the link's below. But the Munding Burough bi-election is fascinating for a couple of reasons.

[00:07:53]One, it was literally the casting vote on who the government was, and so it was less a case of voting for a local candidate and more deciding which party wanted to govern Queensland. Two, Labour actually changed their candidate to the popular mayor of Townsville, Tony Mooney. Internal polling found that Davies was a bit of a liability and a drag on Labour votes. Three, Ken Davies was so incense that he ran as an independent. And remember, it was optional preferences, so there was no guarantee of preferences flowing back through to Labor. And four, the Greens candidate, Tony Clooney's Ross, wanted to preference Labor last because he felt that Mooney had approved too much development as mayor of Townsville.

[00:08:30]However, upper management at the Greens could see the bigger picture. This seat would certainly decide the government, and their preferences would almost certainly flip the tide one way or the other. If they preferenced the Liberals above Labor, Queensland would fall to the coalition and the senior partner of that coalition would be Joby Belki Peterson's party. If this did happen, their credibility as a progressive party would be in the toilet. And so the Greens opted not to contest the seat. In the end, the Liberals won and it was certainly more comfortable winning by 1,084 votes. However, Davies won 835 primary votes. Out of those 835, we don't know whether they then went and preferenced the Liberals or still preferenced Labor or just put no one down as a preference whatsoever. But out of those 835 voters, it's not unbelievable to think that at least 542 of them would have preferenced the Liberal Party as a protest against Labor. If those, and I do want to emphasize the word hypothetical, 542 votes stayed with Labor, Labor would have won. Perhaps a lesson about parachuting a candidate. Let's get it trending. Ken Davies was robbed. But with this, Rob Borbage was able to cobble together an alliance between Cunningham, the Liberals, and his Nationals Party. Now, casual Opans will be thinking, Rob Borbage, I feel like I know that name. Where do I know it from?

[00:09:48]Well, remember this.

[00:09:49]>> Welcome back to Weekend Sunrise. Now, it's time for our weekly or say what segment.

[00:09:54]>> I can't believe we were gas lit into thinking that that guy had showmanship.

[00:09:57]>> That's just in Australia. I mean, going crazy around the world. Although in Croatia, I believe he's known as Timomatic apparently. Right now it's time to get up and dance. Here is Timatic or Tim Matage with if looks could kill. No, but remember this. What makes a politician successful? Getting reelected by his or her constituents, right? Yeah. That that that's how you judge success. What makes a politician successful? Go. Making society a better place. No. No. You see, just 2 months after Rob Borbage formed his minority government, Australia was rocked by the Port Arthur massacre. Immediately, John Howard, who was also new to the job, took action by working towards a ban on shotguns and semi-automatics. But logistically, if he was going to do that, he needed to have the states on side. So, Howard went about organizing the National Firearms Agreement, which required all states and territories to ban automatic and semi-automatic firearms with a nationwide government buyback. Now, for Liberal and Labour, this was fine because their voter base weren't gun owners. However, Borbich was the sole nationals premier, and for obvious reasons, his rural base used guns a lot more. Queensland was also a unique state for another reason. Going into the 1996 federal election, so the Howard versus Keading one, the Liberals had endorsed a candidate for this seat of Oxley right here. You might be familiar with that candidate. It was Pauline Hansen. In January of 1996, she wrote this to the Queensland Times. How can you expect this race to hold themselves when the government showers them with money, facilities, and opportunities that only these people can obtain, no matter how minute the indigenous blood is that is flowing through their veins? And this is what is causing racism. The Liberals then responded by disendorsing her, but by this point, the ballot had already been printed off. And so, the Liberals had to do this. Sorry about this, everyone. Um, I just want to clear something up. This is the band area. We are the band. This imaginary line at the edge of the stage is where the band ends. This man, he's not in the band. He's merely dressed like the band.

[00:12:02]>> But Oxley represented a new type of electorate. Economically, they were Labor voters. However, they were much more socially conservative and particularly rejected what conservatives described as Keading's moralizing on indigenous issues. So, if you wanted to protest against the Labour Party on indigenous issues while also not giving your vote to who in your eyes are the elites, which is the Liberal Party, who do you vote for? Well, they voted for Pauline Hansen, a woman who was considered too right-wing for the Liberals.

[00:12:31]>> I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians.

[00:12:34]>> But this couldn't have come at a worse time for Borbage. Riding the wave of a local popularity, Hansen founded a new conservative party called One Nation.

[00:12:43]And One Nation didn't just campaign on racial issues. That's because Hansen vehemently opposed Howard's gun buyback as well. After the gun buyback, many regional nationals who were part of local branches canceled their party membership. As political orphans, where would they end up going? Well, to One Nation. This bolstered the new party with grassroots support and an army of people willing to put their hands up to be candidates for the party. But Borbage also still had to fight the old enemy, the Labour Party. After losing Munding B, Wang Gosh resigned the leadership and went to the backbenches. His plan was to eventually leave and contest against Hansen for Oxley in the next federal election. But this plan was scuppered by Goss being diagnosed with a brain tumor.

[00:13:28]He fought the tumor and managed it for 17 years before dying in 2014. As Goss obviously had to cut back to manage it, his political career was effectively over. But Goss was replaced by the guy he once overlooked, the charismatic Peter Bey.

[00:13:42]>> My priority is to put people first.

[00:13:44]>> He's a doer, not a dead.

[00:13:45]>> Today's Labor will get Queensland moving again.

[00:13:49]>> Labor.

[00:13:50]>> So going into 1998, it was a three-h horsese race. Labour had only just lost government by one seat and now rejuvenated under Peter Bey were the strong favorites to form government.

[00:14:02]Borbish was cobbling together a coalition of nationals liberals in Cunningham and was also wedged on his right flank by One Nation. But remember, Hansen had won Oxley, a traditionally Labour seat. So Labour also had to worry about One Nation cannibalizing their blue collar vote and ran ads like this.

[00:14:19]For reference, when he's talking about Sheldon here, he's talking about the leader of the Liberals, Joan Sheldon. I must say, I've thought about One Nation, but I realize if I voted for them, I'd be helping Joan Sheldon get back in.

[00:14:32]That's no way. I'm sick of privatizations, these selloffs like Suncorp. And look at all the job losses.

[00:14:40]And now they're even selling prisons.

[00:14:43]Who wants Sheldon or those National Party Playboys? I'd rather go back to voting Labor than see Sheldon in for three more years. But the election result was not a good one for Labour.

[00:14:54]They gained no more seats and their primary vote dipped by 4%. However, it was much worse for Borbage. The Liberal primary dropped by 6% and the Nationals by 11%. And where did all of these voters go? Well, to one nation who primaried at 22.68% and gained 11 seats. So, no one had a majority.

[00:15:15]>> It's too late. They haven't. They've never listened and they're still not listening. that every Labor Party member in this state can be proud of the fact that the Labour Party's principles were not for sale.

[00:15:28]>> I may not be overly excited at the result, but I accept the will and the verdict and the judgment of the people.

[00:15:38]>> The next day, Peter Bey claimed victory and said that only Labor could form government.

[00:15:43]>> Labour needs 45 seats to govern. How many have you got?

[00:15:46]>> Well, I think we've probably got about 44. Uh, more likely 43. We could win 43, 44, 45, or 46. So, we can either just fall short or just get over the line.

[00:15:55]Lori, it's very close.

[00:15:56]>> You see, Cunningham was joined by another independent called Peter Wellington. For Bobish to stay on, he would need to unite a coalition of Nationals, Liberals, One Nation, and then Cunningham and Wellington. Instead, Wellington agreed to support Bey. But not long after, Wellington was no longer needed. You see in this seat right here, Mulgrave, a One Nation candidate called Charlie Rapult had won the seat. After it was revealed that his partner took out a domestic violence order against him, he resigned and it triggered a bi-election. This time, One Nation bled votes to both the Nationals and Labor with Labour comfortably winning the seat and in doing so won their final puzzle piece. This was the beginning of a steep decline for One Nation. You see, One Nation had their own troker issue. There was Pauline who was president and the broad vision setter. There was David Oldfield who was national director or CEO for lack of a better word. And there was David Etrich who was the campaign strategist. At their first AGM in February of 1999, many members protested against their dictatorial control of the party and the fact that these three were basically entrenched in the party's constitution. It devolved into a shouting match with a number of ejections from the meeting. And so just days afterwards, Sha Nelson, Dorothy Pratt, and Ken Turner resigned from the party. So in less than a year, One Nation had gone from 11 MPs down to seven MPs. It's why Barnaby is such a coup for the party because he's trying to transfer peacekeeping infrastructure over from the Nationals into One Nation that historically hasn't had it there.

[00:17:28]But for Pauline, it got even worse. for the 1998 federal election. Her seat of Oxley had a redistribution which made it much more likely to go to Labor. So instead, she contested this seat next door, Blair, but lost. It still got worse, though. In that amazing 1998 Queensland election for One Nation, they were set to run a Gold Coast accountant called Terry Sharples. But Sharples clashed with David Oldfield over where preferences should go, resulting in Sharples being disendors. However, afterwards, Sharpers claimed that One Nation had committed fraud. You see, in order to help keep elections clean, political parties are allocated money by the government for campaign spending to help reduce the dependence on private donors with vested interests. The more electors that you compete in, the more money that you need. And so, political parties are given far more money than independents. After the 1998 election, One Nation claimed $498,637 in reimbursements. But Sharples raised an issue here. He argued that One Nation had fraudulently claimed to be a political party and so when they asked for that reimbursement, they effectively defrauded the government out of half a million dollars. If true, this would have huge legal consequences for One Nation. Sharples got financial backing by Tony Abbott, who organized a trust called the Honest Politics Trust, to which Hansen called it a slush fund to fight off the Liberals right-wing opponents. Heaven helped this country if Tony Abbott is ever in control of it. I detest the man. The crux of Sharp's argument was that One Nation didn't actually have the necessary 500 signatures to be a political party when they first registered. You see, back in 1997, One Nation submitted a list of 1,000 signatures to the Queensland Electoral Commissioner. However, those signatures were not signatures for the party, but instead for a separate thing called the Pauline Hansen support movement. Let me explain it like this.

[00:19:28]If someone like Jeremy Buckingham got targeted in a political witch hunt, I would sign the Jeremy Buckingham support movement. However, if Jeremy Buckingham then used this to say, see, Mr. M is a member of legalized cannabis, that would be lying. The case was an embarrassment for Hansen. As it got litigated, a tape recording from a Townsville meeting in 1997 emerged where Hansen and Etridge stated that there were only three true party members. Testimony was also given from former One Nation official Andrew Khn. He stated that Etridge instructed him to compile and submit the membership list for registration without verifying that the individuals were actual party members. In 2000, one of the troker, David Oldfield, was booted by Hansen and Edridge. In 2001, the Queensland Supreme Court dregistered One Nation. It still got worse for Hansen, though. In 2003, Hansen was jailed for criminal fraud.

[00:20:22]However, she successfully appealed it a few months later with her lawyers arguing that submitting the Pauline Hansen support movement was not proof that she knew that they were not party members. In other words, to prove fraud, the prosecution needs to show that you knowingly deceive someone. And that list that Hansen had didn't show that Hansen knowingly defrauded the Queensland government. But this opened up an opportunity for Bey to have a golden run in the 2000s as the Conservatives were in disarray. In fact, the Nationals and Liberals entered into a formal merger to become the LMP and prevent another decade of right-wing infighting. And if you want to find out what happened to Pauline Hansen in between her leaving jail and coming back to Parliament, click this link right here. The Mystery Mystery podcast goes beyond what's in the videos and every rating and follow helps me pay the bills. And come on, can you help us dislodge Abby Chatfield from the Opole charts?