Russell Cooper

Infobox Officeholder


honorific-prefix =
name = Russell Cooper
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order = 33rd
office = Premier of Queensland
term_start = 25 September 1989
term_end = 7 December 1989
predecessor = Michael Ahern
successor = Wayne Goss
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birth_date = Birth date and age|1941|2|4
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nationality = flagicon|Australia Australian
party = National Party of Australia
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Theo Russell Cooper (born 4 February 1941) is a former Australian National Party politician. He was Premier of Queensland for a period of just six weeks, from 25 September 1989 to 7 December 1989. His loss at the state elections of 1989 ended 32 years of continuous National Party rule over Queensland.

Cooper, a cattle breeder, followed the customary path to politics in the National Party, becoming involved in the Bendemere Shire Council before being elected for the seat of Roma in 1983, the least populous electorate in a state notorious for its gerrymandered system of rural electorate weighting. At the time of Cooper's election, Queensland was under the reign of long-serving Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen.

By the late 1980s, the once impregnable Bjelke-Petersen government had begun to falter amid the failure of Bjelke-Petersen's ill-fated foray into national politics, and the establishment of the Fitzgerald Inquiry into police corruption, which implicated a great many senior governmental and police figures in widespread official corruption. By 1987, the National Party had turned against Bjelke-Petersen, replacing him in December as leader and Premier with Mike Ahern. Ahern appointed Cooper to cabinet as part of an influx of younger National parliamentarians who had not been associated with the previous Cabinet. Cooper was given the difficult portfolio of Corrective Services.

Ahern was a very different leader from Bjelke-Petersen. His moderation and focus on consensus leadership was to many Nationals a rude shock after the legendarily strong-willed approach of his predecessor. An embittered Bjelke-Petersen worked publicly to undermine and destabilise the National Party leadership, and still held the allegiance of many Nationals supporters.

In the beginning of 1989, Cooper was promoted to Minister for Police, another challenging portfolio that had been at the heart of the turmoil associated with the Fitzgerald Inquiry. The promotion was seen as an attempt by Ahern to remove the stigma of Fitzgerald from the area. The effect, however, was to raise Cooper's personal profile among Nationals supporters disaffected with Ahern.

As Ahern's leadership became increasingly beleaguered, Cooper began to be promoted as an alternate leader, particularly to shore up the National Party's vote in its conservative rural heartland. Portraying himself as a strong leader who was closer to the Bjelke-Petersen mould, Cooper launched a leadership challenge and in 25 September was chosen by the Nationals as the new Premier.

All three political parties in Queensland had changed their leaders by 1989, which was both an election year and the year Fitzgerald handed down his report including a blueprint for wide ranging electoral and administrative reforms. The Liberals had changed to Angus Innes and the Labor Party had changed to Wayne Goss. Cooper had a dimmer view of the proposed Fitzgerald reforms than Ahern and put off their implementation. Although the legislation establishing the Criminal Justice Commission (CJC) was passed under Cooper, he would later have an adversarial relationship with the Commission itself. Although Cooper's elevation did have some effect within rural electorates, the overall decline of the National's fortunes continued.

Cooper led the National Party into the 1989 election with traditional National focuses: law and order, social conservatism, and attacks on the federal Labor government. The Nationals produced a number of controversial advertisements, one of which alleged that the Labor Opposition's plan to decriminalise homosexuality would lead to a flood of gays from southern states moving to Queensland. These advertisements were satirised by Labor ads depicting Cooper as a wild-eyed reactionary. Goss won the election by a large margin and Cooper became Leader of the Opposition.

Cooper's term as Leader of the Opposition was brought to an end in 1991, when allegations were made in the Courier-Mail that a large number of Queensland parliamentarians from all parties had abused their travel entitlements (the "travel rorts affair"). The CJC began an investigation, and although the names of those under investigation were suppressed, it became obvious through indirect published hints that one of them was Cooper. On 9 December Cooper announced that he was under investigation for the funding of a trip to Hamilton Island with his wife, refunded the cost of the trip, and stood down as National Party leader. This was widely seen as a tactical move aimed at shaming senior members of the government such as Terry Mackenroth. Cooper was succeeded as Leader by Rob Borbidge. The CJC subsequently cleared Cooper of impropriety.

Following Goss' electoral reform legislation, Cooper became member for Crows Nest under the redrawn boundaries in 1992. He returned to the Nationals' front bench in November of that year as Shadow Minister for Police. In February 1996, when Borbidge formed a minority government after winning a closely-fought by-election in Mundingburra Cooper was named Minister for Police, Corrective Services, and Racing.

Soon afterwards Cooper was named in what would become the central scandal of the Borbidge government, when it was revealed that during the Mundingburra by-election campaign, Borbidge and Cooper had signed a secret Memorandum of Understanding with the Queensland Police Union guaranteeing the QPU the repeal of unpopular Goss government measures, the power of veto over senior police appointments, and increased police funding in return for a donation of $20,000 to the by-election campaign. This close relationship evoked many memories of the Bjelke-Petersen era, where relations between the executive and the police service were (sometimes improperly) close. When the matter came under investigation by the CJC (the Carruthers Inquiry), Cooper led strident attacks on the body and its independence. Cooper ignored repeated Opposition calls for him to resign.

In 1998, the Borbidge government lost office and Labor's Peter Beattie became Premier. Cooper became Shadow Minister for Primary Industries but stepped down from the frontbench in December 1999. He retired from Parliament in the state elections of 2001.