Australian Biography: Flo Bjelke-Petersen

1994, 26 Minutes.

Florence Bjelke-Petersen was born in Brisbane in 1920. She has been a National Party Senator for Queensland, and is also well known as the wife of former Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen.  

Flo has strong conservative values. Growing up during the Depression, she was sent to Brisbane Girls Grammar School. After school, she worked in the Queensland Main Roads Department, eventually becoming Private Secretary to the Commissioner, a position she held from 1949 to 1952. At 32 she met and married 40-year-old Johannes Bjelke-Petersen, a peanut farmer and member of the Queensland Parliament. As Joh’s career took off, she became first a minister’s then a premier’s wife.

But far from living in Joh’s shadow, she was herself a significant political presence. In 1981 she became a National Party Senator for Queensland. Flo was Deputy Leader of the National Party in the Senate from 1985  to 1990, and retired from politics in 1993.

A Film Australia National Interest Program. © 2011 National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.

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