Joh for Canberra

The Joh for Canberra or Joh for PM campaign was an attempt by the Queensland branch of the National Party of Australia to install Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen as Prime Minister of Australia.

In 1986, the National Party won an outright majority in an election for the only time ever in a state election, and Bjelke-Petersen almost immediately set his sights on becoming Prime Minister. Running on a platform of flat taxes and family values, he portrayed himself as the only person who could save Australia from what he saw as a dangerous trend toward socialism under Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke. Soon afterward, "Joh for PM" bumper stickers appeared throughout Queensland.

The campaign was financed by a number of prominent Gold Coast property developers (commonly known as the "white shoe brigade"), many of whom had benefited from favourable treatment from the Bjelke-Petersen state government. Although many of the white shoe brigade had been successful in business, they were ignorant of the realities of Federal politics.

Joh's populist appeal did not reach into Sydney and Melbourne, Australia's two largest cities and home to close to half the Australian population, to any great extent. Bjelke-Petersen had no party base outside the Queensland National Party, and since Australia's Westminster system requires the Prime Minister to be capable of commanding a majority in the House of Representatives, in practice Bjelke-Petersen would have required the support of the Liberal Party and other state branches of the National Party, who were in any case in no position to do so without first winning the 1987 election. Although for a time Bjelke-Petersen looked to have the support of former Opposition Leader Andrew Peacock, and prominent National Farmers Federation President Ian McLachlan, this did not eventuate.

At one point, Bjelke-Petersen attracted 20 percent support in opinion polls. Even at this point, federal Liberal leader John Howard was not prepared to accommodate Bjelke-Petersen. However, Bjelke-Petersen, as leader of the Nationals' most powerful state branch, was able to persuade federal Nationals leader Ian Sinclair to tear up the Coalition agreement. Hawke saw this, and dropped the writ for the election a few months before it was due. Bjelke-Petersen was forced to shelve the campaign as he was overseas visiting Disneyland at the time. While Bjelke-Petersen did not run as a candidate in that election himself, a number of candidates ran as "Joh's Nationals", in some cases on separate tickets from the official National Party.

The campaign proved to be spectacularly misguided. Due to several three-cornered contests, Labor won a third term on a four-seat swing, in the process netting its largest seat count to date. The campaign weakened the conservative forces both nationally and within Queensland, and resulted in severe internal divisions within the Queensland branch of the National Party. Another reason often given for Labor's victory is that many of the practices that had served Bjelke-Petersen well over the last 19 years didn't play well with swing voters outside of Queensland. Many of these voters, uncomfortable with the possibility of Bjelke-Petersen becoming so much as a power broker in the event of a hung parliament, chose to stay with Labor instead of switching to Coalition candidates. Labor's federal electoral victory, reliant largely on gains of seats in Queensland, was attributed to the Joh for PM campaign. "We couldn't have done it without Joh," State Secretary of the Queensland ALP Peter Beattie remarked.

The drive proved to be the last hurrah for Bjelke-Petersen and the Queensland Nationals. Bjelke-Petersen was forced out of politics altogether in December 1987, and his party was thrown from office two years later.