In the 1974 Queensland state election, the Bjelke-Petersen Country-Liberal coalition was re-elected in a landslide off the back of Gough Whitlam’s massive unpopularity north of the Tweed, reducing Labor to a cricket team in parliament – a result not eclipsed until Campbell Newman’s landslide in 2012 reduced it to a netball team. (Labor returned the favour with its own counter-landslide three years later, but that’s another story.)

Liberal leader Sussan Ley and David Littleproud of the Nationals.Credit: Marija Ercegovac

Little noticed at the time was the result in the electorate of Wynnum, a bayside suburb of Brisbane. Labor was defeated in one of its safest seats – not by the Liberal candidate but, in a three-cornered contest – by the Country Party. It was the first time the Country Party won a capital city seat and heralded years of struggle between the two parties, culminating in the Liberal Party terminating the coalition in 1983.

Like current Nationals’ leader David Littleproud, the then-Liberal leader Terry White said it was a principled decision. (In White’s case, this was true: the immediate catalyst of the split was Liberal demands for a parliamentary public accounts committee – thinly coded language for the need for a mechanism to expose the blatant corruption of ministers such as the storied Russ Hinze.) But the public saw only political chaos, for which they blamed the Liberals – White had theatrically torn up the coalition agreement at a press conference – who were decimated at the election the crisis precipitated.

After two terms, Labor won a landslide........

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