Peter Beattie

Peter Douglas Beattie (born 18 November 1952) is an Australian former politician who served as the 36th Premier of Queensland, in office from 1998 to 2007.

Eight years later these reforms paved the way for the election of Wayne Goss when he became Queensland's first Labor Premier since Vince Gair in 1957.

In 1974, he joined the Australian 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.

In the 1980 federal election, Beattie was the Labor candidate for the federal Division of Ryan and was defeated by the Liberal incumbent John Moore, but achieving a 3 per cent two-party preferred swing in the process.

He only nominated for Ryan to give him the right to appeal to the National Executive of the ALP from a six-month suspension from the Queensland ALP for criticising the state parliamentary party for incompetence.

Beattie started a Reform Group within the ALP led by Dr Denis Murphy and himself to reform the Queensland branch of the party, which was dominated by elderly and conservative trade union leaders.

In 1981 the federal Labor Party leader, Bill Hayden (himself a Queenslander), led a federal intervention in Queensland, and Beattie became Queensland State Secretary.

Beattie was elected to the Queensland Legislative Assembly at the 1989 state election.

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 opposed by old guard faction leaders and kept out of the ministry for his role as Parliamentary Chair of the Criminal Justice Committee.

His main post was as chairman of the parliamentary committee overseeing the Criminal Justice Commission (now the Crime and Corruption Commission), a role in which he frequently took an independent stand against improper behaviour by supporting the CJC Commissioner Sir Max Bingham against the Goss government, earning Goss's ire.

Beattie also publicly criticised Goss for being out of touch.

He served as a Health Minister from 1995 to 1996 under Wayne Goss, and then replaced Goss as party leader following a change in government.

As a result, Goss did not appoint him to the ministry until Labor's near defeat at the 1995 election, where Beattie became Minister for Health.

He was only in office for six months before the Goss government lost office following defeat in the Mundingburra by-election.

Goss then stood down as ALP leader, and Beattie was elected in his stead unopposed, thus becoming Opposition Leader.

His first act as Opposition leader was a tactical one, moving a motion in Parliament preventing the new Coalition government under Rob Borbidge from calling an early election.

Labor was unpopular at the time and feared that an early election could give the Coalition an outright majority.

The motion carried.

He was the state leader of the Labor Party from 1996 to 2007.

Beattie was born in Sydney but grew up in Atherton, Queensland.

He worked as a lawyer, union secretary and ALP State Secretary before entering politics.

As leader of the opposition, Beattie led the Labor Party back to power at the 1998 election, and won further victories at the 2001, 2004 and 2006 elections.

At the 1998 state election, Labor won 44 seats out of 89, and was only denied a majority when One Nation won six seats that otherwise would have gone to Labor if not for leakage of Coalition preferences.

The balance of power rested with two independents, Peter Wellington and Liz Cunningham, and the 11 One Nation MPs.

Labor needed the support of only one crossbencher to make Beattie premier, while the Coalition needed them all for Borbidge to stay in office.

After negotiations with Beattie, Wellington announced his support for Labor, allowing Beattie to form a minority government.

Beattie said the ALP would govern as if it had a majority of ten.

He retired in 2007 and was succeeded by his deputy Anna Bligh.

After retiring as Premier, Beattie was appointed to a series of corporate government and academic boards and held numerous academic roles.

Beattie joined the board of the Medical Research Commercialisation Fund in July 2010 and became Chair in July 2019.

Beattie was born in Sydney as the youngest of seven children.

Following the death of his mother when he was four years old, he was raised by his grandmother at Atherton, a small town in North Queensland, and attended Atherton State High School where he was both Dux and School Captain.

He moved to Brisbane to attend the University of Queensland after winning a Commonwealth Scholarship, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Bachelor of Laws degree.

He was President of the Student Club at St John's College.

He completed a Master of Arts degree from Queensland University of Technology, and then began practising as a lawyer.

Prior to his election to parliament, Beattie was a solicitor of the Supreme Court of Queensland and secretary of the Railway Station Officers' Union.

He made an unsuccessful attempt to enter federal politics at the 2013 election, standing in the Division of Forde.

In 2016, Beattie was made chairman of the organising committee for the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast.

He was appointed a Commissioner of the Australian Rugby League Commission in July, 2017 and Chair in February 2018 and Deputy Chair of the Rugby League International Federation (RLIF) in November, 2018.