Bjelke-Petersen's Downfall
Considering his long period of dominance in the arena of Queensland politics, Joh Bjelke-Petersens's decline was surprisingly rapid. The "Joh for Canberra" campaign unnerved many even with the Queensland National Party, with Bjelke-Petersen's actions "perceived by many senior people without his party of a person who was convinced he was greater than his party". The Fitzgerald Inquiry into corruption in Queensland began on May 26, 1987 and quickly implicated several high-ranking members of the National Party. The charges moved steadily up the ranks of the National Party and soon came to implicate Bjelke-Petersen, who was accused of systemic corruption and would later narrowly avoid a conviction for perjury. Bjelke-Petersen's attempts to maintain his stranglehold on the National Party came to nothing, with senior ministers soon manoeuvring to remove him from office. A Morgan Gallup poll released on December 4, 1987 put Bjelke-Petersen's approval rating at a record low of 22%. On December 11, 1987, Bjelke-Petersen announced his resignation from the office of premier. In less than year, he had gone from the apex of his political success to ruin.
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“Children demand that their heroes should be fleckless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.”
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