The Dead Can't Sue

HELP! We are doing a listener survey and we want to hear from you. It's your turn to tell us what you really think - click here and complete the short survey.Sharpen your knives and joins us as we dissect the recipe for Joh Bjelke-Petersen's political magic and figure out how he held onto the premiership for decades, despite his truly staggering corruption. Then we dine out on Joh’s downfall (could the Fitzgerald Inquiry report be the read of 1987?!), before asking whether Joh really deserves his reputation as Australia's number one political villain. Plus, Leigh comes for the fourth estate (hey, that's us!). SOURCES Bjelke-Petersen, Joh. The Joh Tapes on Leadership. Interviews produced by Richard Lancaster and Barry Martin. Seven-part video oral-history collection. Accession 720849. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane. Bjelke-Petersen, Joh. Don’t You Worry about That! The Joh Bjelke-Petersen Memoirs. North Ryde, NSW: Angus & Robertson, 1990. Queensland. Commission of Inquiry into Possible Illegal Activities and Associated Police Misconduct. Report of a Commission of Inquiry Pursuant to Orders in Council. Chaired by G. E. Fitzgerald. Brisbane: Queensland Government Printer, 1989.  Megarrity, Lyndon. “The Lion and the Fox: Whitlam, Bjelke-Petersen and the Queensland Electorate, 1961–1975.” ANU Historical Journal II, no. 3 (2022): 23–52 Robinson, Shirleene. “Homophobia as Party Politics: The Construction of the ‘Homosexual Deviant’ in Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s Queensland.” Queensland Review 17, no. 1 (2010): 29–45 Walter, James. “Johannes Bjelke-Petersen: ‘The Populist Autocrat.’” In The Premiers of Queensland, edited by Denis Murphy, Roger Joyce, Margaret Cribb, and Rae Wear, St Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press, 2003. Wear, Rae. “‘Never-Ending Story’: Public Accountability and Public Administration Reform in Queensland since 1989.” Queensland Review 18, no. 2 (2011): 175–89 Wear, Rae. Johannes Bjelke-Petersen: The Lord’s Premier. St Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press, 2002. Whitton, Evan. The Hillbilly Dictator: Australia’s Police State. Crows Nest, NSW: ABC Enterprises, 1989. Williams, Paul D. “Leaders and Political Culture: The Development of the Queensland Premiership, 1859–2009.” Queensland Review 16, no. 1 (2009): 15–34 Hosted by Alecia Simmonds and Leigh BoucherSupervising Producer: Hannah ReichProducer: Hannah JoseVideo producer: Christian HarimanowExecutive Producers: Clare Rawlinson and Eric GeorgeHead of ABC Audio on Demand: Jessica RadburnTheme: Martin PeraltaArtwork: Gabriel Virata-Alves

Queensland's longest-serving premier is basically the bogeyman of Australian politics, a police-loving proto-Trump 'hillbilly dictator' the Sunshine State is still recovering from. This week we retrace Joh’s rise from fail son to peanut farmer, and finally to the highest office in Queensland.  Plus... Joh marries a woman named Flo and then begins calling her ‘mum’ (not weird at all). Also, while you’re here, please do our listener survey.SOURCES Bjelke-Petersen, Joh. The Joh Tapes on Leadership. Interviews produced by Richard Lancaster and Barry Martin. Seven-part video oral-history collection. Accession 720849. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane. Bjelke-Petersen, Joh. Don’t You Worry about That! The Joh Bjelke-Petersen Memoirs. North Ryde, NSW: Angus & Robertson, 1990. Queensland. Commission of Inquiry into Possible Illegal Activities and Associated Police Misconduct. Report of a Commission of Inquiry Pursuant to Orders in Council. Chaired by G. E. Fitzgerald. Brisbane: Queensland Government Printer, 1989.  Megarrity, Lyndon. “The Lion and the Fox: Whitlam, Bjelke-Petersen and the Queensland Electorate, 1961–1975.” ANU Historical Journal II, no. 3 (2022): 23–52 Robinson, Shirleene. “Homophobia as Party Politics: The Construction of the ‘Homosexual Deviant’ in Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s Queensland.” Queensland Review 17, no. 1 (2010): 29–45 Walter, James. “Johannes Bjelke-Petersen: ‘The Populist Autocrat.’” In The Premiers of Queensland, edited by Denis Murphy, Roger Joyce, Margaret Cribb, and Rae Wear, St Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press, 2003. Wear, Rae. “‘Never-Ending Story’: Public Accountability and Public Administration Reform in Queensland since 1989.” Queensland Review 18, no. 2 (2011): 175–89 Wear, Rae. Johannes Bjelke-Petersen: The Lord’s Premier. St Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press, 2002. Whitton, Evan. The Hillbilly Dictator: Australia’s Police State. Crows Nest, NSW: ABC Enterprises, 1989. Williams, Paul D. “Leaders and Political Culture: The Development of the Queensland Premiership, 1859–2009.” Queensland Review 16, no. 1 (2009): 15–34 Hosted by Alecia Simmonds and Leigh BoucherSupervising Producer: Hannah ReichProducer: Hannah JoseVideo producer: Christian HarimanowExecutive Producers: Clare Rawlinson and Eric GeorgeHead of ABC Audio on Demand: Jessica RadburnTheme: Martin PeraltaArtwork: Gabriel Virata-Alves

Referendum won, tick. Next up, Faith has a new fight on her hands: one that includes exposing the sugar giants who profited from her father’s abduction and unpaid labour. Watch out. But first, she must return to the island paradise where her father grew up: Ambrym. What she finds there will spur her on for decades of fighting. Alecia and Leigh get fired up as they retrace Faith’s staggering journey for justice and connect Australia’s 1800s slave history to farming practices still in operation today. SOURCESMarilyn Lake, Faith Bandler, Gentle Activist, Allen and Unwin, 2002  Ryan Butta, Blackbirding, Black Inc, 2026 Tracey Banivanuar Mar, Stabilising violence in colonial rule: Settlement and the indentured labour trade in Queensland in the 1870s, Liverpool University Press, 2017 Tracey Banivanuar Mar, Decolonisation and the Pacific: Indigenous Globalisation and the Ends of Empire, Cambridge University Press, 2016   Faith Bandler and Len Fox, The Time was ripe: a history of the Aboriginal-Australian Fellowship (1956-69), 1983 Faith Bandler oral history interview by Carolyn Craig, MLOH 307, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales Ryan, M. D. J. (2024). ‘A great many of them die’: Sugar, race and cheapness in colonial Queensland. Journal of Agrarian Change, 24(2), e12574.Hosted by Alecia Simmonds and Leigh BoucherSupervising Producer: Hannah ReichProducer: Hannah JoseVideo producer: Christian HarimanowExecutive Producers: Clare Rawlinson and Eric GeorgeHead of ABC Audio on Demand: Jessica RadburnTheme: Martin PeraltaArtwork: Gabriel Virata-Alves

Faith Bandler was the daughter of a slave, who became the face of the 1967 referendum and a celebrity in the process. And she did it all while keeping house and raising kids. Few know her name now, yet Alecia argues that Faith is just as important to the fight for racial justice in Australia as Martin Luther King was to the USA. Despite many people’s assumptions, Faith was not a First Nations Australian. So how did a South Sea Islander woman, with Indian and Scottish heritage, become the face of one of Australia’s biggest Indigenous causes?   Special thanks to ABC's senior cultural advisor Miriam Corowa and Waskam Emelda Davis. SOURCESMarilyn Lake, Faith Bandler, Gentle Activist, Allen and Unwin, 2002  Ryan Butta, Blackbirding, Black Inc, 2026 Tracey Banivanuar Mar, Stabilising violence in colonial rule: Settlement and the indentured labour trade in Queensland in the 1870s, Liverpool University Press, 2017 Tracey Banivanuar Mar, Decolonisation and the Pacific: Indigenous Globalisation and the Ends of Empire, Cambridge University Press, 2016   Faith Bandler and Len Fox, The Time was ripe: a history of the Aboriginal-Australian Fellowship (1956-69), 1983 Faith Bandler oral history interview by Carolyn Craig, MLOH 307, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales Faith Bandler, ASIO file: Mitchell Library 3/55. FCAATSI Hosted by Alecia Simmonds and Leigh BoucherSupervising Producer: Hannah ReichProducer: Hannah JoseVideo producer: Christian HarimanowExecutive Producers: Clare Rawlinson and Eric GeorgeHead of ABC Audio on Demand: Jessica RadburnTheme: Martin PeraltaArtwork: Gabriel Virata-Alves

To rise to stardom, our OG diva needed a rebrand, so she trades her given name - Helen (not exactly giving superstar, no offence to all the Helens) - and takes on Nellie Melba.  In the second part of her story, Nellie becomes the Kylie Minogue of her time, charming the masses in London's best theatres and touring the world drumming up support for the war effort (with some suspicious accidents along the way). But beneath the glamour, Nellie is in a domestic war of her own. Leigh and Alecia try to make sense of how she faced her own battles, and then how she came to her own sudden, somewhat peculiar death. Warning: This episode discusses intimate partner violence.SOURCESMelba, Nellie. Melodies and Memories. London: Thornton Butterworth, 1925. “Melba Remembers—An Interview with Dame Nellie Melba.” The Home: An Australian Quarterly 3, no. 2 (June 1, 1922) “Coombe Cottage: Dame Nellie Melba’s Home—Third of a Series of Studies of Notable Australian Homes.” The Australian Home Beautiful: A Journal for the Home Builder 6, no. 6 (June 1, 1928) “In Dame Nellie Melba’s Paris Home.” The Home: An Australian Quarterly 11, no. 7 (July 1, 1930) Campbell, Rachel M. “Dame Nellie Melba: Celebrity and the Portrait.” Context: A Journal of Music Research, no. 40 (January 2015): 69–79. Modjeska, Drusilla, Susan Dermody, and John Docker, eds. Nellie Melba, Ginger Meggs and Friends: Essays in Australian Cultural History. Malmsbury: Kibble Books, 1982. Blainey, Ann. I Am Melba: A Biography. Melbourne: Black Inc., 2008. Wainwright, Robert. Nellie: The life and loves of Dame Nellie Melba. Allen and Unwin: Sydney, 2021 Davis, Richard. Nellie Melba: The legend lives. Mile End: Wakefield Press, 2025Hosted by Alecia Simmonds and Leigh BoucherSupervising Producer: Hannah ReichProducer: Hannah JoseVideo producer: Christian HarimanowExecutive Producers: Clare Rawlinson and Eric GeorgeHead of ABC Audio on Demand: Jessica RadburnTheme: Martin PeraltaArtwork: Gabriel Virata-Alves