IA founder Dave Donovan explains why holding politicians like Joe Bjelke-Petersen and Pauline Hanson to account is paramount for Independent Australia, and has shaped its existence.
GORDON DONOVAN, my father, a grazier and long-serving Duaringa Shire Councillor, knew Joh Bjelke-Petersen reasonably well.
I was the youngest child of four and only saw Dad chat to the Kingaroy Peanut King on one occasion, at a rural event for the well-heeled pastoralists and it looked amicable. I shook Joh’s hand that day, as a seven-year-old and recall with slight disgust it was the softest hand I had ever touched. Softer than my Mum’s, by far, and as limp as a lettuce.
I recall he didn’t speak like the bumpkin he was portrayed to be when he was talking to Dad or the other locals, but with notable eloquence. Dad later told me Joh’s “feeding the chooks” bluster was simply an act. Dad said it made Joh appeal to ordinary, everyday folk.
I have met Pauline Hanson, the leader of One Nation, on a few occasions. This week, on Tuesday 17 June, Hanson spoke at the National Press Club. Hanson spoke haltingly, tortuously and torturously, and about immigrants not speaking our language. Many people in the media smirkingly pointed this out. I don’t think her appalling public speaking is an act, but I am sure she is very happy when people mock or chide her for her unvarnished erudition.
Like Joh, it makes Pauline Hanson more like ordinary folk, a giant gift in Australia’s most parochial and provincial state, Queensland, and increasingly elsewhere around Australia.
Back to Joh and my family, especially my darling Dad.
Our family, though thankfully before my time, could be relied upon to give mustering, branding and ringbarking a miss for at least one Saturday every three years, so as to needlessly drive 42 kilometres, mostly over jaw-rattling dirt roads, to dusty, dismal Dingo, 100 miles due west of Rockhampton in Central Queensland. There, the three kids and Dad (not Mum, who disdained this exercise) would hand out how-to-vote cards for Bob Katter Jr's far more normal father, Bob Katter Snr, in the vast electorate of Kennedy, which is still held by his enigmatic, eccentric son. I say needless, because only very precisely targeted ordnance might have even a remote chance of shifting the Katters from Kennedy, —also their Katchy slogan.
All that bullshit stopped before I can really remember, thank god, because Dad, with the help of Independent local MP Lindsay Hartwig, testified against Joh for putting in almost an exclusive bitumen road to his massive Duaringa property "Crystal Waters" and telling the other cow cockies to eat their bulldust. It was controversial, especially because his younger brother Bruce, another councillor, was one of only two families, apart from Joh’s son John, to benefit from “Joh’s Road”, as the rort became known.
Dad became a local icon and was encouraged by the Labor councillors in the coal-mining town of Blackwater to challenge perpetually unopposed Shire Chairman, Kerry Parks, for the top job. My somewhat shy but entirely honourable Dad reluctantly agreed to stand, but as an Independent who steadfastly refused to campaign. Despite this ambivalence, he lost by a tantalisingly slim margin.
I was about nine, in awe of my heroic, truth-telling Dad, who taught me about independent politics, the iniquity of strict party discipline and the importance of doing the right thing at his knee, in the ute checking the waters, or mustering our arid 22,000-acre farm, or perhaps fencing its craggy uplands. Gordon died in 1991, and still I grieve each day. But he lives on forever in me, in my values, and in what the Independent Australia publication stands for: equality, truth and democracy.
Everything Pauline Hanson and One Nation are not.
Some people say IA is a Labor Party front; others that it supports the Greens, or exists just to oppose the Liberal Party or One Nation. None of these things is true.
Independent Australia exists to oppose corruption and crime, and promote independence and honesty, especially through fearless politicians who represent their electorates, and are not cogs in an amoral corporate machine, or agents for vested interests, such as high-flying Western miners bearing gifts.
Beware politicians who accept eye-wateringly expensive inducements – such as private planes – from aforementioned iron ore oligarchs and others.
This editorial was originally published as part of the Independent Australia weekly newsletter. Subscribe to IA to access all our work from as little as $1.15 per week and help power our journalism in 2026.
David Donovan is the former vice chair of the Australian Republican Movement. Follow IA founder Dave Donovan on X/Twitter @davrosz and Bluesky @davrosz.bsky.social, and Independent Australia on Twitter at @independentaus, on Facebook HERE and on Instagram HERE.
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