Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen dies at 94

Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the controversial political figure credited with taking Queensland from a cinderella state to an economic powerhouse, is dead at age 94.

Sir Joh, Queensland premier for a record 19 years, died in hospital in his home town Kingaroy in south-east Queensland at 6pm (AEST) on Saturday night.

An emotional Isabelle Jonsson, Sir Joh's personal physician who nursed him through his illness-plagued final years, emerged from the hospital a short time later to announce his death.

"It is with great sadness that I have to announce that Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen died at 6 o'clock. All his family were with him," she said.

Queensland Premier Peter Beattie said Sir Joh's record of serving 19 years as Queensland Premier between 1968 and 1987 "will almost certainly never be surpassed".

State National Leader Lawrence Springborg said Sir Joh was a no-nonsense visionary.

"He had that all important common-touch like no one before him and no one since. And he had a passion for Queensland and Queensland families that is hard to surpass."

Prime Minister John Howard, who said he bore no ill will about Sir Joh's doomed 1987 campaign for PM which derailed his first tilt at The Lodge, said: "He was certainly a strong political figure and I extend my condolences to his wife and his family."

Sir Joh succumbed to Supranuclear Palsy, which had left him unable to speak or eat and caused him great difficulty in breathing.

The South Burnett Community Hospital's director of nursing Leonie Galvioli, who had tears in her eyes, said her staff were upset by Sir Joh's death which came after a six-day fight for life in hospital.

"It's a small rural community, everyone knows everyone else - they know the Bjelke-Petersens well.

"It's hard to watch anyone die," Ms Galvioli said.

Sir Joh suffered two emergencies on Saturday with his breathing that brought family members rushing to his bedside, fearing the worst.

But each time he rallied, then the end came suddenly.

Long time Joh adviser Ken Crooke, who has been helping the Bjelke-Petersen family, said an era in Australian and Queensland's political history had closed.

"Love him or hate him, no-one, then or since, has been able to bestride the political stage and stir emotions in the same way as Sir Joh.

"He had a simple rule for success in politics and that was, 'say what you think and then do what you say'.

"Joh led Queensland from a cinderella state to an economic power that has led the nation.

"Sir Joh has departed this life this evening but his achievements will live on - don't you worry about that."

Mr Crooke said final arrangements for Sir Joh's state funeral would take about five working days to complete.

His funeral will be held in Kingaroy and he will be buried in a special plot on his family's property Bethany.

Sir Joh died just hours after his eldest granddaughter Anna Noack Brown and his two great grandchildren Kahli, 5, and Landon, 22 months, arrived from their Indianapolis, US, home.

Mrs Noack Brown said she had fond memories of her grandfather who would tell her stories and take her walking on his property.

"He's been a terrific influence to have in my life as a grandfather, just perfect," Mrs Noack Brown said.

Two other of Sir Joh's 13 grandchildren, Justin, who was flying from Moscow and Carl, who was trying to get home from Egypt, were not expected to reach Australia until next week.

Federal Agriculture Minister and former mayor of Kingaroy Warren Truss, who visited Sir Joh just hours before he died, said he had been privileged to work with him during his final seven years as premier.

"He's been a great mentor and friend of mine over the years, I admired him greatly," Mr Truss said.

Sir Joh's family including 84-year-old wife Lady Flo were expected to attend a church service in Kingaroy on Sunday.

Sir Joh occupies a unique place in Australian political history.

No other premier inspired such deep affection and equally great loathing among his own constituency and the nation.

His death ends a stormy and at times quite surreal period in Australia's political history.

There were always two sides to Sir Joh.

The southern press loved to lampoon him as a bible-thumping, anti-union, right-wing peanut farmer, ready to lend his name to a wide variety of mad schemes.

In 1974, Sir Joh backed the world's first mass produced hydrogen-powered motorcar and in 1980 he tried to lure cancer quack Milan Brych to Brisbane.

Never one to take any notice of the doctrines of ministerial responsibility or separation of powers, Sir Joh managed to disarm journalists and critics alike with his homespun mantra of "don't you worry about that".

But beneath the local yokel facade was a machiavellian politician which his rivals on both sides of politics would underestimate at their own peril.

Supporters of Sir Joh point to the rapid development of Queensland during his record 19-plus years as premier.

Many a time he would point to the number of cranes on the Brisbane skyline as evidence of progress and he endeared himself to Queenslanders by bringing the 1988 Expo to Brisbane.

But his premiership also ushered in a culture of corruption of which critics believe only paralleled that of the NSW Rum Corp almost 200 years ago.

And he ruled thanks to a gerrymander which gave his National Party a great electoral advantage.

Regardless of his imperfections, Sir Joh will be remembered as one of the great forces in public life in Queensland and Australia.

A Brisbane Sunday Mail newspaper poll published in 2001 named Sir Joh was the greatest Queenslander of all time, with twice as many votes as The King of rugby league Wally Lewis and ten times as many as former swim star Kieren Perkins.

Johannes Bjelke-Petersen was born in Dannevirke, New Zealand, on January 13, 1911, the son of a Danish Lutheran pastor.

The young Joh grew up on the family property, Bethany, in Queensland's South Burnett district, and, after failing the Queensland state school scholarship examination, seemed destined to remain a farmer.

But in 1946 he was elected to the Kingaroy Shire Council and three years later entered state parliament.

In 1952, at the age of 41 when he married Florence Gilmour, the Main Roads Commissioner's private secretary.

Over the next five decades, as wife, mother and political partner, including a period as Queensland Senator, Lady Flo was one half of a formidable team.

In 1963 Sir Joh moved into state cabinet as Works and Housing Minister, a post he held until he came from obscurity to became premier in 1968 after the sudden death of Premier Jack Pizzey.

The peanut farmer was hardly known outside of Queensland but within a few years he made his presence felt.

In 1971 when he declared a State of Emergency to allow the South African Springbok rugby union team to play in Brisbane, even if it was behind barbed wire and police barricades at the Exhibition Ground.

Then with a second state election win under his belt, he was ready to face a decade of protests, led by militant unionists and left wing university students.

Some of the biggest demonstrations involved people marching for the right to march.

Thousands took to the streets of Brisbane and hundreds of police tried to stop them.

At one of the largest protests, in October 1977, a total of 662 people were arrested, mostly for traffic violations and failing to obey a lawful direction.

There were also protests over the destruction of the famous Brisbane landmark, Cloudland Ballroom, to make way for housing, and the midnight wrecking of the Belle Vue Hotel opposite parliament house.

Queensland's reputation as the deep north was enhanced when sex education was banned in state schools.

Police arrested comedian Rodney Rude for foul language and in dawn raids removed condom-vending machines from university toilets.

Yet it was on the Australian political stage he made his greatest mark.

Sir Joh's took part in regular "Canberra bashing", especially against Labor PM Gough Whitlam who labelled him a "bible-thumping bastard".

Sir Joh proved to be a unforgiving antagonist and in 1975 he helped topple the Whitlam government.

He did this by breaking convention to nominate the Whitlam-hating Albert Patrick Field to fill a casual Labor vacancy in the Senate.

This gave the Opposition the numbers to block supply and led to the eventual election of Malcolm Fraser.

Sir Joh swept through the 1977 Queensland election, then thwarted Liberal attempts to gain an extra Senate seat from the Nationals in 1980 by putting his wife Flo at the head of the Senate ticket.

In 1979, Sir Joh was returned with a record 69 seats in the then 82 seat parliament, reducing Tom Burns' Labor Party to a cricket team of 11 members.

In 1983, the Nationals won government in their own right, with the help of Liberal defectors Brian Austin and Don Lane.

In that same year he was knighted.

Sir Joh took on the electricity unions in the mid-1980s and won wide support from a public sick of blackouts and cold showers in winter.

But dark clouds started to gather with the jailing of his press secretary Allen Callaghan, and his wife Judith, on charges of misusing government funds.

Sir Joh won a $400,000 out-of-court settlement from Allan Bond, who then owned Channel Nine, after the station suggested Joh had travelled to Japan, not on state business, but for his son John.

Bond said later he paid the settlement to ensure he could do business successfully in Queensland.

But the ambitious politician by this time was setting his sights on Canberra and his Joh for PM campaign.

The campaign managed to derailed the John Howard-Ian Sinclair opposition and from then the Sir Joh edifice started crumbling.

At home, unrest was growing among his own troops.

While on an overseas trip in 1987, deputy premier Bill Gunn was pressured into announcing a "six-week" Royal Commission to deal with escalating claims of official corruption and wrongdoing.

The Fitzgerald Inquiry into corruption ended two years later and the conservatives were on the nose.

Four Bjelke-Petersen ministers went to jail following the inquiry.

His police commissioner Terry Lewis was stripped of his knighthood and thrown in jail for corruption.

In a 1989 interview with an Fitzgerald Commission investigator published in 2003, Sir Joh admitted he may have been too loyal.

"I treat people the way they treat me. That's been my philosophy all my life. I stick with people and then those people stick with me," Sir Joh said.

Sir Joh resigned as premier at the end of 1987 just short of his long-cherished goal of 20 years at the helm of the state.

But that was not the end.

In 1991 Sir Joh narrowly missed a guilty verdict for perjury, later claiming the cost of defending the court action had sent him broke.

Bitter over his treatment he was still active, bobbing up in Tasmania and the face of a number of business and political initiatives.

Back at home he greeted tourists who arrived at his beloved Bethany property for the pumpkin scones or to stay in the property's bed-and-breakfast cottages.

He was also not prepared to remain quiet in his retirement, and in 1998 he gave Pauline Hanson a ringing endorsement, saying she had struck a chord with voters the major parties could not match.

He slammed his former National Party colleagues as "stupid" and "without a hope in the world".

In his final years suffering from progressive supranuclear palsy, a condition similar to Parkinson's disease, Sir Joh professed his admiration for Labor Premier Peter Beattie, who in typical fashion played up to the link.

At the age of 92, still angry over his treatment, Sir Joh launched legal action over money he said he was owed from the Fitzgerald Inquiry and his subsequent perjury case.

He lodged with the Queensland government a $338 million compensation claim, based on the assertion the inquiry was not lawfully commissioned by state cabinet and had acted outside its powers.

But the claim was rejected by the crown solicitor who found Sir Joh had been "fortunate" not to be tried a second time for perjury.

Perhaps a clue to his character comes from University of Queensland political scientist Rae Wear who concluded Sir Joh believed he had God on his side.

"It gave him a sense of rightness," she said.

"Sir Joh was part of an authoritarian government that demanded loyalty and he was kept in power by a political culture of dominating leaders."

Sir Joh is survived by his wife of 52 years, 84-year-old Lady Flo, their son John, daughters Helen, Meg and Ruth, 13 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.