Here we Joh again? The spectre of Bjelke-Petersen still looms large over Queensland

At least one senior Liberal privately describes Joh Bjelke-Petersen as the ‘best premier Queensland ever had’, but such a comment is rarely made publicly. Composite: Fairfax Media/Getty Images/Guardian design View image in fullscreen At least one senior Liberal privately describes Joh Bjelke-Petersen as the ‘best premier Queensland ever had’, but such a comment is rarely made publicly. Composite: Fairfax Media/Getty Images/Guardian design Analysis Here we Joh again? The spectre of Bjelke-Petersen still looms large over Queensland Ben Smee The LNP’s unapologetic moves on crime, transgender healthcare and police-led suppression of protests are a throwback to days many thought had come and gone Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast A sign stopped Aunty Sandra King in her tracks. The elder of the Yagara, Quandamooka and Bundjalung people, now in her 70s, spoke at a protest last month against plans to build an Olympic stadium in the heart of Brisbane’s Victoria Park. In the crowd a man held aloft a homemade placard with the words “I Preferred Joh”. In Queensland , regressive government decisions are often compared to the repressive decades led by the “hillbilly dictator”, the former premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. For those who lived through those years, like Aunty Sandra, such comparisons are never made lightly. Trouble in the ‘kingdom of Maranoa’: could a Nationals stronghold turn to One Nation? Read more “At first I got a bit shocked by seeing [the sign],” she told the rally. But she says the LNP’s unapologetic moves to remove Indigenous people and programs from government are a throwback to the sorts of days many thought had come and gone. “That is going back to Joh Bjelke-Petersen, who we did not like,” she says. “Who was just against us. “No, Joh was not better, I can say. None of them, no Liberal party’s better for us.” This month the prominent Indigenous barrister Joshua Creamer told ABC Radio he had heard the government’s quiet purge of First Nations people, policies and programs described by a public servant as “project invisibility”. This has included the defunding of programs like Murri Watch – which provides services to Indigenous children in watch houses – as well as plans to contest all native title claims . “There’s an organised strategy and that is to ultimately eliminate, remove, reduce the Indigenous affairs, Indigenous initiatives, Indigenous voices,” Creamer said. A simple calculation In her 2008 essay, Disruptive Influences, the academic and author Julianne Schultz writes about a cohort of Queenslanders, shaped by tumultuous times, who had emerged at the forefront of national public life. They were “a product of a time and place that was uniquely volatile”. Almost two decades on, many of those now in positions of influence are from subsequent generations. There are fewer institutional memories; fewer voices to warn about the slippery slope. Schultz says First Nations people were an early target of the Bjel