The Minister who wouldn’t take no for an answer: The Joh era tale of development, hippies, a shotgun and a blowtorch
Richard Dinnen - Queensland Editor |
Pic: The view from the Rex Lookout on the Cook Highway north of Cairns (Richard Dinnen)
Could there be anything left to discover about the years Queensland was governed by Joh Bjelke-Petersen?
His 19-year reign ended with the Fitzgerald Inquiry, a two-year investigation of police and political corruption triggered by trailblazing journalism from The Courier Mail and the ABC.
Fitzgerald’s final report is an exhaustive catalogue of corruption that brought down the government, saw ministers and a police commissioner convicted, the Premier on trial.
But there is more to know. Not big questions. More like little mysteries.
Like who so hated one of Joh’s ministers as to take a blowtorch to his name on a public monument? And did “hippies” pepper his electorate office with shotgun pellet, as that minister later claimed?
Martin Tenni was an old-fashioned National Party man, a hardware salesman who went into local and then state politics, where he held several portfolios in the Bjelke-Petersen ministry.
One day, in August 1982, Mr Tenni went to the Rex Lookout, north of Cairns, to unveil a plaque in memory of the man for whom it was named, long-serving Douglas Shire councillor Raymond Rex.
Mr Rex championed completion of the Cook Highway despite strong opposition from Douglas Shire businesses who feared people would drive off to Cairns to spend their money.
The Cook Highway opened in 1933, becoming one of the world’s best scenic drives, 76 kilometres from Cairns to Port Douglas and Mossman, some of it thrillingly close to the vivid blue waters of the Coral Sea.
The Rex Lookout has become a popular place to stop for photos or to watch hang-gliders take off. But few have read the plaque unveiled by Mr Tenni there all those years ago.
Towards the bottom, the plaque reads “unveiled by the Member for Barron River”. His name has been removed. With a blowtorch.
It’s not clear why, but this was certainly a deliberate, premeditated act, neat and precise. No other words were scorched.
There’s just one reference to this online, by an English blogger, that dates the damage to somewhere before June 2016.
A ring-around of past and present politicians, historians, transport, and law enforcement circles found the damage is not widely known, but few were surprised by it.
It’s widely believed Mr Tenni had many enemies in the region. In retirement, he told one interviewer “hippies” once blasted his electorate office with shotgun pellets.
No injuries or charges ensued, and “hippies” may be a Tenni generic for people who saw things differently to him.
There were plenty of them in the far north by the 1980s. His passion for development did not sit well with those who preferred things not to change.
There were locals and blow-ins, farmers and counter-culture folk for whom the far north was perfect just the way it was, an end of the bitumen region where it was still possible to blend in, escape progress, leave one’s past behind.
All of Mr Tenni’s ministerial portfolios could have caused controversy, but one stands out as most likely to have attracted blowtorch or shotgun reprisals.
As Joh’s environment minister, Mr Tenni supported bulldozing a road through the then newly declared Cape Tribulation National Park.
A blockade began in 1983, protestors and police clashed regularly.
The road eventually went ahead, but the media attention put the Daintree on the world map, attracting international tourists and starting an industry that sustains the region to this day.
There was plenty of heat in the battle for the Daintree. Sometimes surprising alliances were forged, and there were some deep social fractures.
But did the blowtorching of Mr Tenni’s name, and the alleged shotgun attack on his office, have their origins in the steamy Daintree rainforest?
We can’t ask Mr Tenni. He died in 2019, his parliamentary condolence motion remembering a man determined to bring development to far north Queensland who “wouldn’t take no for an answer”.
Do you know more? Why did someone blowtorch his name at the Rex Lookout? Did someone really shoot up his electorate office? [email protected]
