Rob Borbidge

Robert Edward Borbidge (born 12 August 1954) is a former Australian politician who served as the 35th Premier of Queensland from 1996 to 1998.

He was the leader of the Queensland branch of the National Party, and was the last member of that party to serve as premier.

His term as premier was contemporaneous with the rise of the One Nation Party of Pauline Hanson, which would see him lose office within two years.

Borbidge was born in the town of Ararat, Victoria in 1954.

His parents owned a sheep property and were attracted to Queensland by Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen's abolition of death duties, moving to the Gold Coast.

He worked in his family motel business.

At this time, the Gold Coast was the home of the property development boom that the Bjelke-Petersen government actively fostered, working in close co-operation with a group of developers known as the "white-shoe brigade".

The area had been a National stronghold until the 1960s, but growing urbanisation resulted in the Liberals taking most of the seats there.

This was part of the Nationals' broader strategy of contesting seats in urbanised areas outside of its rural heartland.

Also in the mid-1970s, it began a concerted effort to retake seats in the Gold Coast.

In an attempt to broaden its electoral base and reduce the influence of its coalition partner, the Liberal Party, the Country Party renamed itself as the National Party in 1974.

As a sign of this, in 1980 Borbidge contested and won the seat of Surfers Paradise from sitting Liberal member Bruce Bishop, who had alleged corruption in property development by the Bjelke-Petersen government.

By the late 1980s, the scandal of the extreme corruption revealed by the Fitzgerald Inquiry had engulfed Bjelke-Petersen, who was replaced as Premier and National Party leader in 1987 by Mike Ahern.

Borbidge, as a member of the new generation of Nationals untouched by political scandal, was promoted by Ahern to Cabinet as Minister for Small Business, Communications and Technology.

He received the important portfolio of Tourism in 1989 and was briefly made Minister for Police, Emergency Services and Tourism by Ahern's successor Russell Cooper before he lost office at the hands of the Labor Party's Wayne Goss in the 1989 election.

In the post-election party room ballot, Borbidge was elected deputy leader of the party, and hence Deputy Leader of the Opposition.

He was also made Shadow Minister for Small Business, Manufacturing and Regional Development.

The shell-shocked Nationals worked at rebuilding the Coalition with the Liberals, which had been torn apart seven years earlier, and adjusting to opposition after 32 years in office.

In December 1991 an inquiry by the Criminal Justice Commission was announced to investigate irregularities in the travel allowances of members of Parliament.

Cooper announced that he was one of the individuals under investigation and resigned as National Party leader in favour of Borbidge.

In the lead-up to the 1992 election Borbidge attempted to make overtures to the Liberals about reforming the coalition, but was rebuffed by the Liberals, who were aiming to finally achieve long-awaited senior coalition party status in Queensland after having been the junior partner since 1925.

This did not eventuate; Goss remained in office, and the chastened parties discussed merging before agreeing to sign a new coalition agreement.

Borbidge and Liberal leader Joan Sheldon initially failed to make much headway against the Goss government, with some disgruntled Nationals comparing Borbidge unfavourably to Bjelke-Petersen.

In response to speculation about the leadership, Borbidge called a spill for the leadership in June 1994.

He was re-elected unopposed.

The Goss government's fortunes suffered a sharp reversal when it announced plans to construct a bypass through areas of bushland that comprised significant reserves of koala habitats.

Borbidge harnessed the ground swell of opposition arising from this and other controversial decisions to encourage a large protest vote.

Combined with the cynical mood engendered by the unpopular Keating Labor federal government, this protest vote nearly destroyed the Goss government's majority in the July 1995 election.

While the Coalition won the popular vote, most of that vote was wasted on large margins in the Nationals' heartland.

As a result, while it managed an eight-seat swing, it won only nine seats (out of 40) in Brisbane, allowing Goss to rely on a majority of one vote in the Legislative Assembly.

The Court of Disputed Returns ordered a reballot after alleged irregularities in the narrowly Labor held electorate of Mundingburra, which the Coalition had lost by only 12 votes.

In February 1996 the Liberal candidate, Frank Tanti, won the subsequent by-election.

This resulted in a hung parliament with 44 Coalition seats and 44 Labor seats with one Independent, Liz Cunningham, the newly elected member for Gladstone.

Cunningham announced that she would support the Coalition, and Borbidge became Premier.

Borbidge's government imitated that of Goss when it initiated sweeping changes in the public service when it won office.

In some cases, figures who had been demoted or dismissed when Goss had come to power were reinstated to their former positions.

Borbidge was criticised for attempting to stack the public service, but he counter-alleged that the public service was already subject to severe Labor bias.

The Borbidge government also initiated changes to the industrial relations system by introducing Queensland Workplace Agreements (QWA's), similar to the Australian Workplace Agreements later created under the Federal Liberal government of John Howard.

Borbidge also supported Howard in his efforts to reform Australian gun ownership laws after the Port Arthur massacre, a move that brought him unpopularity in some traditional National Party quarters.

When in 1997 the High Court of Australia expanded the recently introduced concept of Native title in bringing down the Wik decision (for which Borbidge criticised the bench as "historical dills"), Borbidge argued that Howard's proposed changes to the Native Title Act did not go far enough in abolishing native title from pastoral leases.