Peter Beattie | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Beattie in 2013 | |
| 36thPremier of Queensland | |
| In office 20 June 1998 – 13 September 2007 | |
| Monarch | Elizabeth II |
| Governor | Peter Arnison Quentin Bryce |
| Deputy | Jim Elder Paul Braddy Terry Mackenroth Anna Bligh |
| Preceded by | Rob Borbidge |
| Succeeded by | Anna Bligh |
| 45thTreasurer of Queensland | |
| In office 28 July 2005 – 2 February 2006 | |
| Premier | Himself |
| Preceded by | Terry Mackenroth |
| Succeeded by | Anna Bligh |
| Leader of the Labor Party in Queensland | |
| In office 19 February 1996 – 13 September 2007 | |
| Deputy | Jim Elder Paul Braddy Terry Mackenroth Anna Bligh |
| Preceded by | Wayne Goss |
| Succeeded by | Anna Bligh |
| Leader of the Opposition of Queensland | |
| In office 19 February 1996 – 20 June 1998 | |
| Deputy | Jim Elder |
| Preceded by | Rob Borbidge |
| Succeeded by | Rob Borbidge |
| Minister forHealth of Queensland | |
| In office 31 July 1995 – 19 February 1996 | |
| Premier | Wayne Goss |
| Preceded by | Jim Elder |
| Succeeded by | Mike Horan |
| Member of theQueensland Legislative Assembly forBrisbane Central | |
| In office 2 December 1989 – 13 September 2007 | |
| Preceded by | Brian Davis |
| Succeeded by | Grace Grace |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Peter Douglas Beattie (1952-11-18)18 November 1952 (age 72) Sydney,New South Wales, Australia |
| Political party | Labor |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 3 |
| Education | Atherton State High School |
| Alma mater | University of Queensland Queensland University of Technology |
| Profession |
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Peter Douglas BeattieAC (born 18 November 1952) is an Australian former politician who served as the 36thPremier of Queensland, in office from 1998 to 2007. He was the state leader of theLabor Party from 1996 to 2007.
Beattie was born inSydney but grew up inAtherton, Queensland. He worked as a lawyer, union secretary and ALP State Secretary before entering politics. Beattie was elected to theQueensland Legislative Assembly at the1989 state election. He served as a Health Minister from 1995 to 1996 underWayne Goss, and then replaced Goss as party leader followinga change in government. Asleader of the opposition, Beattie led the Labor Party back to power at the1998 election, and won further victories at the2001,2004 and2006 elections. He retired in 2007 and was succeeded by his deputyAnna Bligh.
After retiring as Premier, Beattie was appointed to a series of corporate government and academic boards and held numerous academic roles. He made an unsuccessful attempt to enter federal politics at the2013 election, standing in theDivision of Forde. In 2016, Beattie was made chairman of the organising committee for the2018 Commonwealth Games on theGold Coast. He was appointed a Commissioner of theAustralian Rugby League Commission in July, 2017 and chair in February 2018 and Deputy Chair of the Rugby League International Federation (RLIF) in November, 2018. Beattie joined the board of the Medical Research Commercialisation Fund in July 2010 and became chair in July 2019.
Beattie was born inSydney as the youngest of seven children. Following the death of his mother when he was four years old, he was raised by his grandmother atAtherton, a small town in North Queensland, and attendedAtherton State High School where he was both Dux and School Captain.[1] He moved toBrisbane to attend theUniversity of Queensland after winning a Commonwealth Scholarship, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree and aBachelor of Laws degree. He was President of the Student Club atSt John's College. He completed aMaster of Arts degree fromQueensland University of Technology, and then began practising as a lawyer.
Prior to his election to parliament, Beattie was asolicitor of theSupreme Court of Queensland and secretary of the Railway Station Officers' Union.[1]
In 1974, he joined theAustralian Labor Party, which had been in opposition for 17 years and had just suffered the worst defeat in its history at the hands of the dominantNational Party Premier,Joh Bjelke-Petersen.
In the1980 federal election, Beattie was theLabor candidate for the federalDivision of Ryan and was defeated by the Liberal incumbentJohn Moore, but achieving a 3 per cent two-party preferred swing in the process. He only nominated for Ryan to give him the right to appeal to the National Executive of the ALP from a six-month suspension from the Queensland ALP for criticising the state parliamentary party for incompetence.
Beattie started a Reform Group within the ALP led by DrDenis Murphy and himself to reform the Queensland branch of the party, which was dominated by elderly andconservative trade union leaders. In 1981 the federal Labor Party leader,Bill Hayden (himself a Queenslander), led a federal intervention in Queensland, and Beattie became QueenslandState Secretary. Eight years later these reforms paved the way for the election ofWayne Goss when he became Queensland's first Labor Premier sinceVince Gair in 1957.
At the 1989 election Beattie was elected to theQueensland Parliament asMP forBrisbane Central. Something of a maverick within the parliamentary party during his early term, Beattie was opposed by old guard faction leaders and kept out of the ministry for his role as Parliamentary Chair of the Criminal Justice Committee. His main post was as chairman of the parliamentary committee overseeing the Criminal Justice Commission (now theCrime and Corruption Commission), a role in which he frequently took an independent stand against improper behaviour by supporting the CJC CommissionerSir Max Bingham against theGoss government, earning Goss's ire. Beattie also publicly criticised Goss for being out of touch. As a result, Goss did not appoint him to the ministry until Labor's near defeat at the 1995 election, where Beattie became Minister forHealth. He was only in office for six months before theGoss government lost office following defeat in theMundingburraby-election.
Goss then stood down as ALP leader, and Beattie was elected in his stead unopposed, thus becoming Opposition Leader. His first act as Opposition leader was a tactical one, moving a motion in Parliament preventing the newCoalition government underRob Borbidge from calling an early election. Labor was unpopular at the time and feared that an early election could give the Coalition an outright majority. The motion carried.
At the 1998 state election, Labor won 44 seats out of 89, and was only denied a majority whenOne Nation won six seats that otherwise would have gone to Labor if not for leakage of Coalition preferences.[2] The balance of power rested with two independents,Peter Wellington andLiz Cunningham, and the 11 One Nation MPs. Labor needed the support of only one crossbencher to make Beattie premier, while the Coalition needed them all for Borbidge to stay in office. After negotiations with Beattie, Wellington announced his support for Labor, allowing Beattie to form a minority government. Beattie said the ALP would govern as if it had a majority of ten.[3]
A few months later,Charles Rappolt, the One Nation member forMulgrave, abruptly resigned. Labor'sWarren Pitt, who had held the seat from 1989 to 1995, won the ensuing by-election,[4] giving Beattie a majority in his own right. Pitt would have retaken his old seat a few months earlier, if not for Coalition preferences leaking to Rappolt.
Shortly before the2001 election, he faced a crisis when a CJC inquiry - the Shepherdson inquiry - revealed that a number of MPs and party activists, including Deputy PremierJim Elder, had been engaged in breaches of the Electoral Act by falsely enrolling people to boost their faction's strength in internal party ballots. Former ALP state secretary and newly elected MPMike Kaiser, as well as a senior adviser to Wayne Goss had been falsely enrolled some years earlier as part of a factional battle. Beattie acted swiftly, forcing Elder and several other MPs to quit politics and to leave the ALP. In the ensuing campaign, Beattie claimed a Labor win would ensure stable government. He argued the only alternative was a Coalition government propped up by One Nation and former One Nation MPs—an argument that gained particular resonance when Borbidge's own party room reneged on Borbidge's promise not to preference One Nation.[2] Beattie was rewarded with a smashing victory, winning 66 seats out of 89—the biggest majority Labor has ever won in an election. It also took all but one seat in Brisbane. The Liberal Party ended up with only three seats in parliament.
Beattie's key agenda was to transform Queensland into Australia's "Smart State" by restructuring the economy and reforming the education system, skilling the workforce and encouraging innovation, research and development and high techbiotechnology,information technology and aviation industries to locate in Queensland including Virgin airlines. In 2003, the Premier was awarded anhonorary doctorate of science from theUniversity of Queensland "in recognition of his leadership and commitment to higher education through Smart State initiatives and his support for research in the fields of biotechnology andnanotechnology".[5]
Beattie's government drove an innovation agenda in new industries which reduced Queensland's unemployment level below its target of 5%. In February 2004 Beattie again went to the polls but a crisis blew up shortly before the election, with a highly critical report on the state of Queensland's system ofchild protection. Beattie accepted full personal responsibility for the issue, and paradoxically turned the issue into a positive for the government. At the 7 February elections Beattie won 63 seats, a net loss of only three, losing four seats to the National-Liberal Opposition but gaining one from them. This made him one of the most successful state politicians in Australian history.
Having delivered on his Smart State Strategy, the Beattie government was riding high in public support. However, in the latter part of 2005, Beattie faced potentially his most serious political crisis: the revelations and inquiries into Queensland Health and theBundaberg public hospital afterJayant Patel, anIndian-born surgeon who performed several botched operations, some of which resulted in death, fled the country to theUnited States, where he had previously been struck off the register. As was his style, Beattie faced the crisis head on. Amid the controversy and evidence at an Inquiry established by the Beattie government, the health ministerGordon Nuttall resigned his portfolio, theSpeaker,Ray Hollis, resigned after controversy associated with his use of Parliamentary expenditure, and the Deputy Premier and Treasurer,Terry Mackenroth, retired, forcingby-elections in the safe Labor seats ofRedcliffe andChatsworth on 20 August.Labor suffered major swings against it and both seats were lost to the Liberal Party, the first serious electoral setback for Beattie since becoming Premier.
Following the retirement of thePremier of New South Wales,Bob Carr in 2005, Beattie became the longest-serving state Premier among his contemporaries.
Beattie went on to win the September 2006 election convincingly in a third landslide, with a slight swing towards the ALP in terms of its primary vote, and two party preferred result. The Government even won back the two seats of Redcliffe and Chatsworth it had lost in the recent by elections.[6]CoalitionOpposition LeaderLawrence Springborg stepped down. Before the electionLiberal LeaderBob Quinn was forced by his party colleagues to step down a fortnight before polling day.[7] The campaign of Quinn's replacementDr Bruce Flegg was characterized by inexperience and indecisiveness and lacked an organised, professional approach.[8] Premier Beattie therefore was never challenged by the opposition and was able to secure a fourth consecutive term in office with another landslide victory. This result puts Beattie in the realm of iconic political figures. He is the only state Labor leader sinceNeville Wran, NSW Labor Premier from 1976 to 1986, to do so and is Queensland's fourth longest serving Premier after Labor'sWilliam Forgan Smith (1932–1942), the Country Party'sFrank Nicklin (1957–1968) and National Party Premier SirJoh Bjelke-Petersen (1968–1987).
Beattie announced on 10 September 2007 his decision to retire from politics. His resignation as Premier officially took effect on 13 September 2007. At the time of his retirement, he was the longest-serving state premier in the country.[9] Beattie had groomed his deputy Anna Bligh to be his successor for some time and the Labor caucus electedAnna Bligh as its leader on 12 September.[10] In 2009, Anna Bligh led her party to a state election victory, thereby becoming the first Australian female to be popularly elected as state premier in Queensland.
He officially stood down as the Member for Brisbane Central on 14 September 2007. Beattie then served as Queensland's Trade Commissioner to North and South America based inLos Angeles, a position he was appointed to by Anna Bligh in March 2008.
In late May 2010 Beattie announced that he was retiring from his position as Queensland's Los Angeles-based trade and investment commissioner.[11] to take up an appointment in the US. In June 2010 it was announced that he had accepted a position withClemson University inSouth Carolina.[12] On 24 August 2011, theGillard government appointed Beattie as Australia's first Resources Sector Supplier Envoy charged with promoting a Buy Australian at Home and Abroad program for supplying products to the Australian resources industry.[13]
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Beattie's popularity often led to speculation that he would enter national politics,[14] particularly after federal Labor's defeat at the2001 federal election. But Beattie resisted such suggestions, saying that he loved Queensland too much to leave, and anywayCanberra was "too cold".[15] On announcing his retirement he again ruled out a move to federal politics, saying that he would, politically speaking, disappear.[16]
However, in August 2013, Beattie announced his intention to run in the2013 federal election in the Queensland federal seat ofForde following an approach by Prime Minister Rudd to Beattie who was then living in New York. The ALP was in electoral trouble and Beattie was convinced to run to save Queensland seats. Following the ALP's disastrous national campaign, Beattie was defeated by incumbent Liberal National Party MPBert van Manen.[17]
Beattie's description by Liberal Leader Dr David Watson as a "media tart"[18] as well as his political successes have led to a love-hate relationship withThe Courier-Mail, Brisbane's daily newspaper. ColumnistPeter Wear, for example, ran a long-running satire on Queensland politics in general with the major role played by "President for Life Mbeattie".
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The controversy over the performance of the government-owned electricity supplierEnergex during the severe 2003-2004storm season inSouth East Queensland resulted in the characterisation of Beattie as "Power Point Pete" byCourier-Mail cartoonistSean Leahy, with the location of the drawing's eyes and nose designed to replicate the holes of a power point.
In August 2007 theBeattie government proposed to reduce the number of councils from 154 to 72, which would result in the merger of a number of regional and extra-metropolitan councils into larger Regional Councils. This proved particularly unpopular in the affected Councils as several hundred local politicians lost their positions.
In May 2005 Beattie released his autobiographyMaking A Difference, in which he described his upbringing, political life and his views on key issues, including health, education and social reform. The book is part memoir, part manifesto.[19] Beattie says that the reason he released the book while he is in office, rather than when he is retired, is because no-one would want to read about him if he was not in the public arena. It was Beattie's third book after his autobiographical pieceIn the Arena (1990) and the thrillerThe Year of the Dangerous Ones. Beattie wrote a fourth book "Where to from here Australia?" published in 2016.
Peter Beattie donated his personal collection of records to theState Library of Queensland's John Oxley Library. The papers cover the years between 1955 and 2010 and include photographs, correspondence, diaries, political ephemera, speeches, clippings and other material relating to his time as a solicitor and politician.[20] In 2019 the State Library produced a digital story with Peter Beattie. The interview by Peter Shooter covers the events leading up to the reform of the Queensland Labor Party, and focuses on those events which have contributed most significantly to Queensland's historical record and on Peter Beattie's achievements in government.[21]
Beattie joinedSky News Live as a commentator across multiple programs in February 2015.[22] Beattie began co-hosting his own TV program withPeter Reith in April 2016 which continued with former Queensland Premier Campbell Newman in 2017 until May, 2018 when Beattie retired from Sky News to focus on his position of Chair of the ARLC. Beattie was a regular political election commentator on Channels 9 and 7 from 2007 to 2015 and a regular Columnists for The Australian Newspaper from 2010 to 2015.
In May 2016, PremierAnnastacia Palaszczuk appointed Beattie chairman of the challenged Gold Coast Commonwealth Games Corporation, the organising committee for the2018 Commonwealth Games. It was criticised by the Queensland Opposition as a political appointment but well received by the Commonwealth Games Federation.[23][24] The Games were highly successful and regarded as the best games ever, however, organisers received criticism after broadcasters failed to show footage of the athletes entering the stadium for theclosing ceremony, broadcasting "My Kitchen Rules" instead. To avoid any blame games Beattie accepted responsibility, publicly apologised and described it as "clearly a stuff-up".[25]
Beattie was appointed to the board of theAustralian Rugby League Commission (ARLC) on 25 July 2017, as an independent commissioner.[26] In February 2018, he was appointed chairman of the commission in place ofJohn Grant.[27] He is a supporter of reforming the organisation's constitution to giveNational Rugby League (NRL) teams and state organisations direct representation on the board.[28] As Chair of the ARLC, Beattie brought in major reforms including a new "No Fault" stand down rule for players charged with serious offences and ended the battles between the ARLC and the Clubs.[29] He is also a strong supporter of the Magic Round pioneered in Brisbane in May, 2019 and expanding Women's rugby league and rugby league in PNG, Fiji and the Pacific Nations.
On 1 January 2001, Beattie was awarded theCentenary Medal for his contribution to Queensland.[30] On 11 June 2012, Beattie was named a Companion of theOrder of Australia for "eminent service to the Parliament and community of Queensland, through initiatives in the area of education and training, economic development, particularly in biotechnology, information technology and aviation industries, and to the promotion of international trade.".[31] Beattie has been awarded five honorary doctorates, fromThe University of Queensland,Griffith University,QUT,Bond University and in the US an honorary Doctor of Laws from University of South Carolina. Beattie won the first Biotechnology Industry Organisation's inaugural "International Award for Leadership Excellence" in 2008.
Peter is married to Heather Beattie, a former professor of nursing. She was briefly involved inBrisbane City Council politics in her own capacity in 2012.[32] The Beatties have three adult children. Peter is anAnglican, and his wife is the daughter of an Anglican clergyman.
This Wikipedia article incorporatesCC BY 4.0licensed text from:"Peter Beattie: the inside story".John Oxley Library Blog.State Library of Queensland. 10 June 2020. Retrieved2 June 2021. This Wikipedia article incorporatesCC BY 4.0licensed text from:"The Hon. Peter Beattie in conversation with Peter Shooter".State Library of Queensland Catalogue.State Library of Queensland. Retrieved2 June 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Premier of Queensland 1998–2007 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Treasurer of Queensland 2005–2006 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Minister for Trade 2000–2005 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Minister for Trade 2006–2007 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Minister for State Development 2000 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Leader of the Opposition in Queensland 1996–1998 | Succeeded by |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Leader of theLabor Party in Queensland 1996–2007 | Succeeded by |
| Parliament of Queensland | ||
| Preceded by | Member forBrisbane Central 1989–2007 | Succeeded by |
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| International | |
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| National | |
| Other | |
