Wayne Goss

 ( 1951 Births ) 

Along with others, Goss was a key figure in the 1970s–1980s civil liberties fight against the Bjelke-Petersen Government, pursuing legal and political strategies against Bjelke-Petersen. He was elected Leader of the Opposition in March 1988.

Goss seized on National ads that argued his plans to decriminalise homosexuality would result in gays flooding into Queensland.

His election win, which ended 32 years of Coalition/National Party rule, was seen as "the end of the Bjelke-Petersen era" and the beginning of a new era, with The Courier-Mail declaring "Goss the Boss". Once installed in office, he presided over the implementation of many of the reforms of the landmark Fitzgerald Inquiry into police corruption.

The Goss Government introduced several electoral and public sector reforms, the most notable being the elimination of the "Bjelkemander" malapportionment that had helped keep the Queensland Nationals in power. In addition to reforming the state's electoral laws and boundaries, the Goss Government "introduced merit-based appointments to the Queensland public service, created new National Parks and oversaw a new regime of economic and budgetary management" It also introduced social reforms such as decriminalising homosexuality, appointing Queensland's Leneen Forde, abolishing the Queensland Police Special Branch and Imperial honours, and made provision "to buy thousands of extra university places and hire thousands of new teachers". Goss' Chief of Staff as Premier was former diplomat Kevin Rudd, later leader of the federal Labor Party and Prime Minister of Australia, and Goss' 1989 campaign director was Wayne Swan, subsequently Deputy Prime Minister of Australia. Glyn Davis also worked in senior roles during the Goss governments.

Goss won a second term at the 1992 state election, maintaining the same 19-seat majority he won in 1989 over the National Party and the Liberal Party (the two non-Labor parties went out of coalition in 1983, but resumed the coalition after the 1992 election).

Before the 1995 election, the Goss Government announced a plan to clear sensitive bushland for an alternative to one of south-east Queensland's major roadways. This prompted the Greens Party to do something it had never done before: it recommended that its supporters not give their second preference, on voting ballots, to Labor. Partly as a result of this, as well as the increasing unpopularity of Goss's management style (widely thought to be authoritarian) and growing anger at the federal Labor government, Labor was severely punished at the polls. Notably, it lost several seats in Brisbane's Moreton Bay area, known as 'the koala seats' because of the passion stirred up by a belief that the new road would destroy the habitat of . While Labor lost the popular vote to the Rob Borbidge-led Coalition, Labor managed to win 31 out of 40 seats in Brisbane while most of the Coalition's majority was wasted on large majorities in National heartland. This seemingly allowed Labor to salvage a knife-edge majority of one seat.

After the 1995 election, Labor's majority hung on the Townsville seat of Mundingburra, which had been won by Labor's Ken Davies by only 12 votes over the Coalition's Frank Tanti. However, several irregularities were discovered, the most serious being that several servicemen serving in Rwanda did not have their votes counted. The Supreme Court of Queensland, sitting as a Court of Disputed Returns, ordered a by-election for February 1996, which Tanti won. This outcome brought about a hung Parliament, with both the Coalition and Labor on 44 seats. The balance of power was held by Gladstone's newly elected Independent member, Liz Cunningham. Nine days after the by-election, Cunningham announced that she was going to support the Coalition on the floor of Parliament, leaving Goss with no alternative but to resign as Premier on 19 February 1996.

Goss' defeat proved to be a harbinger of federal Labor's massive defeat in the federal election held a month later. Federal Labor suffered particularly heavy losses in Queensland at the subsequent federal election; it was cut down to only two seats there, its worst result in the state since being reduced to only one seat in 1975. Goss later said that Queensland voters had turned so violently on then-Prime Minister Paul Keating that they had been "sitting on their verandas with baseball bats" waiting for the writs to drop, a phrase that has since entered the Australian political lexicon.