While the US protests against Trump, a new documentary reflects on Queensland's 'last king'

Australia Broadcast Center

4 hours ago

Upon learning the results of the 2024 US election, Australian director Kriv Stenders was "pumping the air", but not for the obvious reason.
What: An eerily timely look back at the chaos and carnage of Joh Bjelke-Petersen's near-20-year reign as premier of Queensland.
Starring: Richard Roxburgh
Directed by: Kriv Stenders.
When: Streaming on Stan now
Likely to make you feel: like this is all very familiar...
The born-and-bred Queenslander wasn't looking forward to the promised chaos of a second Donald Trump term. But he was excited about what it meant for his latest project, Joh: Last King of Queensland.
The film tracks the industrious rise and spectacular fall of Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the controversial premier who ruled the state from 1968 to 1987 before being ousted from office following the exposure of widespread corruption within his government.
Through a range of voices — from Indigenous activist and poet Lionel Fogarty, to Nationals leader David Littleproud, to Bjelke-Petersen's own children — Stenders pieces together a vision of one of Australia's most divisive political figures.
And while, for some, Bjelke-Petersen is a distant memory in Australia's political history, Stenders says there's never been a better time to revisit the past.
"The film is a cautionary tale really, saying, 'Just be aware that you know this has happened before and it could happen again,'" he told ABC Entertainment.
Raised in a farming family in Kingaroy, north-west of Brisbane, Bjelke-Petersen entered politics as the Member for Nanango in 1947. Steadily climbing the ladder within what was then known as the Country Party, he was voted in as premier of Queensland by 1968.
A child of 60s Queensland, Stenders came of age knowing nothing but the business-forward, conservative values of the Bjelke-Petersen government.
"My childhood and my early adult life were kind of basically lived under Joh's shadow. As I got older, especially as I became a teenager, I realised that it was actually an oppressive regime," he told ABC Entertainment.
While crowing about his fierce protection of Queenslanders from the ills of socialism, poker machines and rude movies, Bjelke-Petersen prioritised the state's economic growth above all else. He held onto power through electoral gerrymandering and wielded a corrupt police force like a weapon against dissenters.
While he might have excelled at boosting business, his quest for total power came at the cost of Indigenous and democratic rights, as well as Queenslanders' civil liberties.
In 1971, he declared a state of emergency to clamp down on anti-apartheid protests around the South African Springboks' rugby union tour. When his directives were ignored by demonstrators, he unleashed dozens of police officers on the public, ending in bashed heads and broken bones.
By 1977, his government had rushed through an amendment to the The Traffic Act that effectively banned street protests, unless you could procure a very rare permit from then-police commissioner Terry Lewis, who was later jailed for corruption.
As Bjelke-Petersen declared: "Protest marches are a thing of the past."
"The oppressiveness of Joh's police state was really quite scary," Stenders says. "It was a way of threatening and controlling the populace."
But for Stenders, who was already deep into the Brisbane music scene and would eventually direct the music videos for sunshine state icons The Go-Betweens, there was a silver lining: the local punk scene was thriving.
The political climate inspired bands like The Saints and The Parameters. The latter's 1983 single 'Pig City' — itself a rallying cry against the police corruption within Bjelke-Petersen's government — is featured in the documentary.
"[Music] was a form of activism. It was a really exciting time, there was something to rail against, there was something to fight against," Stenders says.
"Brisbane was a bit of a wasteland back then; in a funny kind of way, the artistic community was closer and stronger because of it."
By the late 80s, following a disastrous tilt at prime minister — which ended in a messy (and temporary) federal Coalition party split — Bjelke-Petersen's actions were catching up with him.
Between December 1986 and January 1987, Brisbane's Courier-Mail published articles reporting around 20 illegal brothels were operating in the Fortitude Valley area of Brisbane, apparently unchallenged by police.
On May 11, 1987 a Four Corners report revealed that police in Brisbane had been ignoring and even condoning illegal gambling, organised prostitution and drug trafficking, with some taking payments of up to $100,000.
A day later, an independent judicial inquiry into the allegations that senior police were being paid to protect organised crime was announced — later known as the Fitzgerald inquiry.
As the inquiry began to link the corruption back to his government, Bjelke-Petersen announced he would resign on August 8, 1988: the 20th anniversary of his swearing in as premier.
But, by November 1987, the National Country Party leadership had spilled, ousting the once-powerful premier who refused to leave his office to face the press, Parliament or even his own party.
To get into the mind frame of Bjelke-Petersen in his final days, Stenders reached out to Australian actor Richard Roxburgh to embody the then-disgraced politician through arresting deliveries of Bjelke-Petersen's own speeches.
The director was fixated on the concept of a defeated but still fighting Bjelke-Petersen in the last days of his "power", preaching his accomplishments to an empty room.
"I thought, 'Let's all sit around his last three days in office, barricading himself in like Hitler, basically reflecting on his life.' That mechanism just unlocked the film for me."
Roxburgh, who recently worked with Stenders on political drama The Correspondent, dived head first into an "enormous amount of documentary footage" to capture Bjelke-Petersen's mannerisms, taking care to never fall into parody (Gerry Connolly already had that bit on lock, anyway).
"Anytime you play a character, no matter what the kind of public evaluations of that person, you have to find the things that that person believed so deeply in," Roxburgh told ABC Entertainment.
"With Joh, he was deeply religious. Yet there was a side of him that could go down these kinds of darker corridors that we learn about.
"It's finding the checks and balances that he had with his own psychology, the way that he could justify a lot of the things he did within the frame of his religious belief and his absolute certainty."
"He was a politician but he was a human being," Stenders agrees. "It is very easy to categorise him as a monster or as a clown, but that's dangerous because it gives them the remit to not act like human beings."
It's been almost 40 years since Bjelke-Petersen was in power, and 20 years since he died, aged 94.
But Stenders says there's never been a more pertinent time to rediscover the red flags from throughout his reign.
"The big elephant in the room is obviously Trump," he says.
"Trump is a populist leader that very much has drawn exactly from Joh's playbook in everything that he did in terms of his manipulation of the media, his use of force, even to the point where he refused to leave office."
One of the catalysts for Stenders taking on King of Queensland was his firm belief that, in order to change power, first you must understand it.
"The film was really an attempt to unlock the enigma of Joh and to say, 'Hey, listen. We actually did have a Trump here.' This is actually also within our capability, this is within our bandwidth of creating this kind of leader," he says.
In regards to LGBTQIA+ rights, Indigenous rights and abortion access, Stenders says the "ghost" of Bjelke-Petersen is still alive today.
"Joh may be dead and buried, but his influence is certainly still being felt on a weekly, monthly level in Australian politics."
Revealed - Joh: Last King Of Queensland is streaming on Stan now.