Leisha Harvey

Leisha Teresa Harvey (born 4 April 1947) is an Australian politician. She was a National Party of Australia member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly from 1983 to 1989, representing the electorate of Greenslopes. She served as Minister for Health in the Ahern government from 1987 until her sacking in January 1989. She lost her seat at the election that December, and was not long out of parliament when she was charged with numerous counts of misappropriation of public funds concerning her usage of her official credit card. After a high-profile trial in 1990 and subsequent conviction, she spent five months in prison and a further seven months in home detention.

Background

Harvey was born in 1947 to displaced Polish parents in Münsingen, West Germany. The family immigrated to Queensland when she was three, and she was raised in Brisbane thereafter, attending St Mary Immaculate Convent, Annerley, Buranda State School, St Ursula's College and Coorparoo High School. She studied education at Griffith University and was a teacher in the special skills program at Springwood High School for most of her career. A devout Roman Catholic, Harvey attended the evangelical Garden City Christian Church in Brisbane's southern suburbs. Harvey married in 1965 and had one son and one daughter, but divorced in 1975. She remarried in 1983. [Waterson, D.B. (1993). "Biographical register of the Queensland Parliament". Sydney: Casket.]

Harvey contested and won National Party preselection for the seat of Greenslopes at the 1983 election. At the time, the seat was considered safe for the Liberal Party of Australia, the National Party's former junior coalition partner. However, in the wake of the breakdown of the coalition in the early 1980s, the National Party poured resources into Liberal-held seats in an attempt to destroy their former partners. On election day, Harvey achieved a large swing, easily defeating incumbent Liberal and former minister Bill Hewitt and taking Greenslopes for the National Party for the first time in its history. [ [http://www.pollbludger.com/qld2006/greenslopes.htm "Queensland 2006: Greenslopes"] . pollbludger.com.]

As a backbencher, Harvey's speeches reflected her strong support of small business (having spent a period in small business herself), the rights of the aged and the need for consumer protection. She was staunchly opposed to sex discrimination, but equally opposed to affirmative action. An ardent opponent of homosexuality, she often stated that homosexuality would "never be legalised in Queensland." [McCulloch, John. (1994). "Women members of the Queensland Parliament 1929-1994". Brisbane: Qld Parliamentary Library.] She faced a minor scandal before the 1986 election concerning use of her electorate printing allowances to aid her re-election, but was easily re-elected, and for a time was seen as something of a rising star in the party. [Roberts, Greg. "Bold steps, but Premier avoids treading on too many toes". "Sydney Morning Herald", 9 December 1987.] [McCulloch, John. (1994). "Women members of the Qld Parliament 1929-1994". Brisbane: Qld Parliamentary Library.]

Health Minister

In late 1987, amid mounting criticism from within the party, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Premier of Queensland for nearly twenty years, resigned, and was succeeded by the more moderate Mike Ahern. Ahern immediately instituted a ministerial reshuffle, removing the heavily criticized Yvonne Chapman, the state's first woman Cabinet minister, but promoting Harvey to the high-profile position of Minister for Health. Harvey thus became the only woman in the Ahern Cabinet and the second woman in Queensland history to serve as a Cabinet minister. [Roberts, Greg. "All change as Queensland government is reshaped". "Sydney Morning Herald", 9 December 1987.] [McCulloch, John. (1994). "Women members of the Queensland Parliament 1929-1994". Brisbane: Qld Parliamentary Library.]

Harvey's time as Health Minister, however, was plagued with difficulties from the beginning. She was forced to deal with a major health crisis which had sparked threats by hospital doctors to resign en masse, the Ward 10B scandal surrounding abuse of psychiatric patients at Townsville Hospital, and recurrent issues over the storage of toxic medical waste. She also came under attack for appointing her daughter and sister-in-law to her paid staff, as well as a woman previously convicted on fraud charges, and using government funds to pay her hairdressing bills, leading the opposition to dub her "Minister for Goldilocks". [Roberts, Greg. "Harvey warns of poll after sacking". "Sydney Morning Herald", 20 January 1989.] [McCulloch, John. (1994). "Women members of the Queensland Parliament 1929-1994". Brisbane: Qld Parliamentary Library.] She had a difficult relationship with many in the medical profession; David Lindsay, former head of medicine at the Gold Coast Hospital, recounted in 2005 that Harvey "treated us like schoolchildren" and "told us how about how precious her time was and how we were wasting her time". [Gleeson, Peter. "Physician: Crisis is chronic". "The Gold Coast Bulletin", 4 August 2005.] Harvey's caucus colleague Di McCauley, herself later a minister, remarked in her 2004 memoir "Diving Off The Ironing Board" that Harvey "seemed unable to cope from the beginning in what was the enormous and difficult portfolio of Health." [Koch, Tony. "Former minister irons out old colleagues in tell-all memoir". "The Courier-Mail", 12 March 2004.]

One of Harvey's major tasks as Health Minister was to deal with the government's response to the growing AIDS crisis. The issue had been essentially ignored under Bjelke-Petersen, but under the more moderate Ahern, Harvey was tasked with taking steps to begin to address the disease. To this extent, she oversaw the legalisation of condom vending machines and needle exchanges, and instituted a program of AIDS education in schools. [Roberts, Greg. "Queensland set to reform its AIDS strategy". "Sydney Morning Herald", January 2 1988.] These steps were seen by some as inadequate, and her role was undermined by her poor relationship with the homosexual community. [McCulloch, John. (1994). "Women members of the Queensland Parliament 1929-1994". Brisbane: Qld Parliamentary Library.] These issues came to a head in March 1988 when Harvey put out a departmental memo insisting that she be given unrestricted access to the medical records of AIDS patients, sparking a bitter battle over patient confidentiality, and repeated Opposition calls for her to be removed from the portfolio. [Roberts, Greg. "AIDS experts to defy memo". "Sydney Morning Herald", 26 March 1988.] [Roberts, Greg. "Calls for end to Queensland crackdown on gays". "Sydney Morning Herald", 28 March 1988.]

Downfall

Rumors had been mounting throughout late 1988 that Harvey was likely to be either demoted or fired, and in January 1989, Ahern announced that Harvey would be demoted to the position of Minister for Family Services, ostensibly on the basis of having failed to seek his approval for employing a woman who had previously been jailed for fraud. An angry Harvey responded by threatening to quit parliament and spark a by-election, which the government almost certainly would have lost. This was not taken well by many of her National Party colleagues, and after an internal outcry, Ahern retracted his prior decision and removed her from Cabinet altogether before she could be sworn in. ["Harvey departs Queensland Cabinet". "Australian Financial Review", 20 January 1989.] Though she did not resign from parliament as previously threatened, she became an ardent backbench opponent of Ahern, and strongly supported his more conservative rival, Russell Cooper, who toppled Ahern later that year. ["Premier's days look numbered". "Sydney Morning Herald", 29 August 1989.]

Harvey received a major defeat in the 1989 state election, losing her seat to Labor candidate Gary Fenlon with a 30% swing and finishing third behind both the Labor and Liberal candidates with only 11% of the vote. [Roberts, Greg. "Courthouse packed for former ministers". "Sydney Morning Herald", 13 December 1989.] Three days later, as part of an investigation resulting from the findings of the Fitzgerald Inquiry into public corruption, she was one of five former National Party ministers to receive criminal summons by special prosecutor Doug Drummond QC on charges of misappropriating public funds. [Roberts, Greg. "Former ministers to face charges". "Sydney Morning Herald", 6 December 1989.] The charges concerned her use of her official credit card for AU$42,364 in personal expenses, some of which it was alleged included taking her husband on a birthday trip to the Adelaide Grand Prix. [Massey, Murray. "Yet another cause of embarrassment for Queensland Nationals". "Australian Financial Review", 13 December 1989.] [Massey, Murray. "Four ex-ministers of the Crown come down to earth with a thud". "Australian Financial Review", 13 December 1989.] She was subsequently convicted of misappropriation on 13 of the original 124 charges, concerning a total of $7,900, and sentenced to twelve months in prison in November 1990. The Court of Criminal Appeal later reduced the convictions to nine counts but did not reduce the sentence. In April 1991, the judge struck down a further 20 charges and released Harvey to serve the last seven months of her sentence in home detention. ["Key figures from the Fitzgerald Inquiry." "Australian Associated Press", 2 July 1999.] Harvey was due to face a retrial on the remaining 71 charges, but these charges were dropped in July 1991 by the Director of Public Prosecutions. [Mitchell, Alex. "Joh's last hurrah". "The Sun-Herald", 28 April 1991.] She was released from prison in early 1991, and has largely remained outside of public life in the years since.

References

Persondata
NAME= Leisha Teresa Harvey
ALTERNATIVE NAMES= Leisha Harvey
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Queensland, Australia Politician
DATE OF BIRTH= 4 April 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH=Munsingen, West Germany
DATE OF DEATH=
PLACE OF DEATH=