Peter Beattie
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Peter Douglas Beattie (born November 18, 1952), Australian politician, is the Premier of the Australian state of Queensland and leader of the Australian Labor Party in that state. His sweeping victories in the 2001 and 2004 state election made him one of the most successful politicians in Australia.
Before parliament
Beattie was born in Sydney, the youngest of seven children, but was raised by his grandmother at Atherton, a small town in northern Queensland. At school, he met Heather Scott-Halliday, whom he later married. They have three teenaged children and live in Windsor, a suburb of Brisbane.After Beattie moved to Brisbane, he graduated with a law degree from the University of Queensland, earned a master of arts degree from Queensland University of Technology, and then entered the practice of law. In 1974 he joined the Labor Party, which had been in opposition for 17 years and had just suffered the worst defeat in its history at the hands of the dominant National Party Premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen.
Beattie became involved in the campaign led by Dr Denis Murphy to reform the Queensland branch of the party, which was dominated by elderly and conservative trade union leaders, called the 'Old Guard.' In 1981 the federal Labor Party leader, Bill Hayden, led a federal intervention in Queensland, and Beattie became Queensland State Secretary. The result of his reforms was eventual electoral success, with the election of Wayne Goss as Queensland's first Labor Premier since Vince Gair in 1957.
Early parliamentary career (1989-1996)
At the 1989 election Beattie was elected to the Queensland Parliament as MP for Brisbane Central. Something of a maverick within the parliamentary party during his early term, Beattie was mistrusted by faction leaders and kept out of the ministry. His main post was as chairman of the parliamentary committee overseeing the Criminal Justice Commission (now the Crime and Misconduct Commission), a role in which he frequently took the side of CJC Commissioner Sir Max Bingham against the Goss government, earning Goss's ire. Beattie also publicly criticised Goss for being out of touch. Goss did not appoint him to the ministry until Labor's near defeat at the 1995 election, where Beattie became Minister for Health. The following year, however, the Goss Government lost office following defeat in the Mundingburra by-election.ALP leadership in Opposition (1996-1998)
Goss then resigned as Labor Leader, and Beattie became Opposition Leader on February 19, 1996. He led the opposition to the National Party government of Rob Borbidge until the 1998 election.Premier (1998-present)
At the 1998 election Labor won 44 seats out of 89 and succeeded in forming a minority government with the support of an independent MP, Peter Wellington, this saw Beattie become Premier. Later following a by-election the Labor Party achieved a majority in its own right.In office, Beattie proved to be a shrewd populist leader. He travelled tirelessly to all parts of the large and diverse state, and despite his Brisbane base made the most of his regional background in Atherton, winning considerable popularity in regional areas. He was expected to be comfortably re-elected in 2001, but shortly before the election he faced a crisis when an inquiry revealed that a number of MPs and party activists (including the Deputy Premier, a former State Secretary and newly elected MP Mike Kaiser and a senior adviser to Wayne Goss) had been engaged in breaches of the Electoral Act by falsely enrolling people to boost their faction's strength in internal party ballots. Beattie acted swiftly, forcing the MPs to quit politics and others involved to resign from the ALP. He was rewarded with a crushing victory, winning 66 seats of 89.
Beattie’s key agenda has been to transform Queensland into Australia’s Smart State by restructuring the education system, skilling the workforce and encouraging research and development and high tech biotechnology, information technology and aviation industries to locate in Queensland. In 2003, the Premier was awarded an honorary doctorate of science from the University of Queensland “in recognition of his leadership and commitment to higher education through Smart State initiatives and his support for research in the fields of biotechnology and nanotechnology”.
2004 election
In February 2004 Beattie again went to the polls, and again a crisis blew up shortly before the election, with a highly critical report on the state of Queensland's system of child protection. Beattie accepted full personal responsibility for the issue, and paradoxically turned the issue into a positive for the government. At the February 7 elections Beattie won 63 seats, a net loss of only three, losing four seats to the National-Liberal Opposition but gaining one from them. This made him one of the most successful state politicians in Australian history.2005 Queensland Health crisis
In the latter part of 2005, Beattie faced potentially his most serious political crisis: the revelations and inquiries into Queensland Health and the Bundaberg public hospital after Jayant Patel, an Indian-born surgeon who was struck off the register in the United States for malpractice, performed several botched operations in the hospital, some of which resulted in death, and then fled the country to the US. Amid this controversy, the Speaker, Ray Hollis, resigned after controversy associated with his use of Parliamentary expenditure, and the Deputy Premier and Treasurer, Terry Mackenroth, retired, forcing by-elections in the safe Labor seats of Redcliffe and Chatsworth on 20 August. The ALP suffered major swings against it and both seats were lost to the Liberal Party, the first serious electoral setback for Beattie since becoming Premier.A Newspoll in late 2005 showed support for Labor in Queensland down six percentage points to 50 per cent, an all-time low since Beattie became Premier. The next Queensland state election is due in 2007. Following the retirement of the Premier of New South Wales, Bob Carr in 2005, Beattie became the longest-serving of the current state Premiers.
Other matters
Beattie's popularity has naturally led to speculation that he would leave Queensland and enter national politics, particularly after federal Labor's defeat at the 2001 federal election. But Beattie has resisted such suggestions, saying that he loved Queensland too much to leave, and anyway Canberra was too cold. Some southern commentators doubted that Beattie's parochial style of politics would succeed on the national stage.In May 2005 Beattie released his autobiography "Making A Difference", in which he described his upbringing, political life and his views on key issues, including health, education and social reform. The book is part memoir, part manifesto. Beattie says that the reason he released the book while he is in office, rather than when he is retired, is because no-one would want to read about him if he was not in the public arena. This is Beattie's third book after his earlier autobiographical piece "In the Arena" (1990) and the thriller "The Year of the Dangerous Ones".
Beattie's nominated self-interests include economics and trade development, health, local government, housing, criminal law reform, transport, heritage, urban planning and inner city development.
In The Media
Beattie's self-description as a "media tart" as well as his political successes have led to a love-hate relationhip with The Courier-Mail, Brisbane's daily newspaper. Columnist Peter Wear, for example, ran a long-running satire on Queensland politics in general with the major role played by "President for Life Mbeattie" (a name clearly designed to evoke memories of African leaders with similar-sized majorities).The controversy over the performance of the government-owned electricity supplier Energex during the severe 2003-2004 storm season in South East Queensland resulted in the characterisation of Beattie as "Power Point Pete" by Courier-Mail cartoonist Sean Leahy, with the location of the drawing's eyes and nose designed to replicate the holes of a power point.
External links
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