Global News: June 2022 Archives

Old Brisbane Album | Gateway Bridge and Queensland corruption | Facebook

A fascinating post and comments from April 12, 2022, in a Facebook group called Old Brisbane Album. The item is a magazine ad highlighting the opening of the Gateway Bridge in 1986, which spans the Brisbane River near its outlet in Moreton Bay and is high enough to allow large cruise ships to pass beneath to the cruise port at Hamilton. The bridge also allows through traffic to bypass Brisbane. The ad depicts Russ Hinze, Minister for Local Government, Main Roads, and Racing for the State of Queensland. The comments on this item, about Hinze, popularly known as "the Minister for Everything," and the political machine run by his boss, longtime Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen, are fascinating. Bribery, kickbacks, selective law enforcement, drugs, prostitution -- all from professed conservatives -- and yet some express nostalgia for a government that could "get things done." As with Oklahoma turnpikes, the toll bridge was promised to be free when the bonds were paid off, and there is still a toll today.

RELATED: ABC News interviews a woman who, as a prostitute in the early 1970s, helped uncover "The Joke" -- the massive, long-running system of illegal prostitution protected by corrupt policemen from the commissioner on down. It was 15 years later before the Fitzgerald Inquiry brought down Bjelke-Petersen and his government.