The premier of Queensland, Peter Beattie, supposedly a Labor candidate, is honoring Joh Bjelke-Peterson, the former longtime premier, with a state funeral. Bjelke-Peterson's long record of bigoted rule included banning any unauthorized congregation of three or more people. That was just one of his more benign pieces of legislation. He ruled for decades under a dispensation of juryrigged electoral boundaries, extremely heavily skewed in favor of country voters, and against the majority of Queenslanders, who live in the capital Brisbane. The setup earned the state the slogan "One Sheep, One Vote."

Mr Beattie

If you wish to let the old bigot go peacefully to his rest, perhaps you might consider letting him just be buried, as soon as possible, in the hope that his day will be forgotten and put behind us in all its ignominy. Instead, by lionizing him, now, you are continuing your own ambivalent record in racial matters - the stadium-name incident; your mealy-mouthed response to the killing of the aboriginal community member on the island that was a stronghold of Bjelke-Peterson-like persecution and abject racism - and you are kowtowing to the right that seems to be your odd bedfellow, and you are reminding us all of the very dark days of Joh's shameful reign, even as you seem now determined to whitewash his infamy and abet all the bigot's remaining kind. This man, as Mr. Laver so aptly says, "was an egomaniacal bigot and also a person who ran a ruthless police state orientated towards his capitalist cronies."