Jack Pizzey - Political Career

Political Career

Following his discharge from the AIF, Pizzey returned to teaching, and by 1946 was involved in administration at the Queensland Board of Adult Education. He resigned from the Department of Public Instruction in 1949 and became involved in representing the interests of sugar cane farmers as manager of the Childers Cane Farmers' Co-Operative and secretary to the Isis District Cane Growers' Executive. This representative role encouraged Pizzey to run for parliament, and in 1950 he won the safe Country Party seat of Isis in the Legislative Assembly of Queensland.

In 1957, a split in the Australian Labor Party's Queensland branch brought down the Labor government, forcing an election. The Country-Liberal Party Coalition won a sweeping victory, its first in 22 years. With his educational background, Pizzey was appointed Minister for Education in Frank Nicklin's cabinet, and retained this job for more than a decade. He was also deputy leader of the Country Party, but he took other concurrent roles also: he held the portfolios of migration (1960–68), Aboriginal and Islander affairs (1962–68) and police (1962–68). As education minister, Pizzey was praised for his focus on secondary schooling, although his sweeping intervention in education matters was considered to have led to Brisbane's first teachers' strike in 1968.

Nicklin retired as Premier and party leader on 17 January 1968, and Pizzey succeeded him in both posts. Just over six months after his appointment, Pizzey died suddenly, in Brisbane, of a myocardial infarction. He was succeeded for a week by the Leader of the Liberal Party and Deputy Premier, Sir Gordon Chalk, until the Country Party chose its new leader, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen.