In the memorable Bjelke-Petersen years, 1983 was a standout year for the bizarre June, 1983: Premier Joh Bjelke Petersen lands at Dalby after visiting Chinchilla aviation helicopter helicopters. EVEN by the sometimes bizarre and unpredictable standards of Queensland politics during the Joh Bjelke-Petersen years, 1983 was a standout. This was the year the National Party finally got to run the state in its own right after its partnership with the Liberal Party, which had ruled Queensland since 1957, collapsed acrimoniously. At the core of the split was the growing ideological gap between rural-based conservative Nationals and city-based "trendy" Liberals. The specific trigger was a decision by the Liberal MP and Brisbane pharmacist Terry White to cross the floor to vote with the Labor Opposition in August on a motion to debate the creation of a parliamentary accounts committee. April, 1983: Two-year-old John Annan, wrapped in a flag, gives flowers to Diana Princess of Wales at Brisbane Airport during the Royal couple's tour. Picture: News Limited White was welfare services minister at the time and would soon replace Llew Edwards as Liberal Party leader. Not only did Bjelke-Petersen oppose the idea but also saw White's action as a breach of Cabinet solidarity and refused to have him in his cabinet. White's fellow Liberal ministers had no choice but to step down in protest. Bjelke-Petersen was suddenly the leader of a determinedly conservative National Party government. October, 1983: Premier Joh Bjelke Petersen and wife Senator Flo share a cup of billy tea made by a group of scouts on the premier's Kingaroy property. At the next state election in November he won power in his own right, but only just. The Nationals fell just short of an absolute majority, a problem solved when two former Liberal ministers, Don Lane and Brian Austin, defected to the Nationals. But little of this extraordinarily divisive political period is reflected in the state Cabinet papers for 1983, officially released today. Even without the collapse of the coalition this was a significant year for Queensland, with Cabinet taking numerous decisions that would shape both the look of the southeast and the direction of the state's economy for many years to come. July, 1983: The larger-than-life Main Roads and Racing Minister Russ Hinze competes in a charity trots race for Boys Town. This was the year ministers approved Jupiter's Casino on the Gold Coast, the Toowong Railway station redevelopment and a $45 million Works Department building in George St, which, 30 years on, may soon be demolished as part of the Newman Government's Queen's Wharf redevelopment proposal. It was also a big year for the state's coalmining industry, soon to become the engine driving Queensland's economy for the next three decades. Ministers considered more than 20 submissions during the year mainly related to the infrastructure needed to support the new mines being developed to meet soaring Japanese demand for coal. Among the new works was the new Dalrymple Bay Coal terminal, near Mackay, predicted at the time to become "one of the largest coal terminals in the world" and still causing controversy 30 years on, thanks to its latest expansion plans. But not all the projects considered by ministers in 1983 made it to fruition. Cabinet spent time at several meetings considering the Bradfield Scheme, an idea floated nearly 50 years earlier by Sydney Harbour Bridge engineer John Bradfield to divert water from coastal flowing rivers in north Queensland to the inland Warrego and Thomson Rivers. It went so far as to commission a consultancy study, which determined that the scheme was "physically possible but only if high costs are acceptable." Three decades on the Bradfield scheme remains unbuilt. The Bjelke-Petersen cabinet of 1983 was definitely feeling threatened after Bob Hawke's landslide federal victory in February and a Labor win in Western Australia. Attorney-General Sam Doumany told ministers in March that Queensland would be against five state and federal Labor jurisdictions at ministerial council meetings, with only Tasmania and possibly the Northern Territory on its side. He predicted the new federal Labor Government would try to increase its reach into areas such as "conservation and the environment, aborigines, human rights, the export trade, mineral development, etc." But Doumany had a plan. "It will be necessary for all Queensland ministers and particularly all Queensland officials at official meetings to exercise considerable subtlety and sophistication in order to protect the interests of the state," he said. But it wasn't just the centralist tendencies of the Commonwealth or the massing of state Labor governments down south that had the Queensland Government worried. It was also the High Court. Doumany told ministers the Whitlam government years of 1972-75 had seen "a fundamental realignment in the philosophies expounded by the members of the High Court," which he claimed was "opposed to the long-term interests of the states." "Whilst every endeavour must, of course, be made to resist Commonwealth expansion into the areas of traditional state concern I must caution ministers that resorting to litigation in the High Court should only be a last resort as the judicial philosophy of the majority of the High Court now favours an expanded rather than a limited role for the Commonwealth," he warned. In July, cabinet did come up with what it thought might be a winning strategy to overcome what it saw as the High Court's pro big government bias. Ministers proposed an amendment to the Australian Constitution that would require all decisions by the High Court on Constitutional matters affecting federal/state relations to be unanimous decisions. But by October they were having second thoughts, once the full implications of such a change sank in. Under the proposed system, a state would have to convince all seven judges or it would lose its case. As Doumany explained, once the Commonwealth enacts a law, the High Court presumes the law to be valid unless it can be convinced otherwise by a party challenging the law in question. "Under the existing method of majority judgments, a state has only to convince four of the seven High Court judges that a Commonwealth law is invalid for it to be held to be invalid," Doumany said. And conversely, the Commonwealth would only have to convince one out of seven judges that its law was valid for it to remain.