I once met ... Joh Bjelke-Petersen

The long and sordid tradition of politicians telling lies ... Like PM Morrison, Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen was a master dissembler ... It was so innate to him that lies were the same as the truth ... Chris Snow remembers meeting the old lizard in 1975 

Sir Joh: "I did, I told them..."

Chris Snow, sometime journalist, public relations practitioner, social/market researcher, political sociologist and consumer advocate in justice/legal regulation, residential tenancies and participatory democracy was federal parliamentary correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald when ... 

A Premiers' Conference was scheduled for June 19, 1975 at Parliament House in Canberra - the real, politically leak-saturated and hence highly democratic old Parliament House.

During the argy-bargy of pre-conference days, Queensland Premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, became agitated about a particular, now forgotten, and probably irrelevant issue.

He stamped his foot and warned that he would raise the matter at the conference and berate other premiers and the Prime Minister about it. Much media.

The Queensland delegation's room for the conference was the National Country Party's Senate room, near the northern corridor doors to Kings Hall. 

It was there, after the conference, that I asked Joh whether he had raised  the issue.

"Yes, yes, yes ... I did, I did, I did ... and I told them and I told them, I told them ..." was, in effect, the Joh-style blustering reply.

A few more "facts" were obtained and I left. 

Entering Kings Hall, I was just starting to traverse the parquetry when ...

"Psst. Psst. Psst." 

The sound was coming from the landing inside the stairway entrance next to the Senate corridor doors. 

There stood a partly hidden figure.

I approached.

It was Joh's Deputy Premier and Treasurer, and Liberal Party leader, Sir Gordon Chalk, who quickly said, in effect:

"He didn't say anything of the sort. He didn't even raise it." 

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