Joh did not believe in moderation, the conventions or the idea that politics was some sort of game, played by rules, over a set period with breaks in the middle, with voters and the courts playing referee. When fighting for everything you believed in, against people who might take it away, playing by rules was ridiculous. Politics was war by other means; power and incumbency could and should be used, at least by the righteous, to discredit, destroy and entrench power. Joh once told backbenchers they made the mistake of thinking his Labor opponents gentlemen. "I am not working on that assumption," he said. "We are dealing with hard, tough, unscrupulous men." (In those days, of course, they were all men.)

Labor often underestimated Bjelke-Petersen, frequently thought (wrongly) that it could outsmart him, and that any proposition that seemed reasonable in Canberra would sound right, proper and just in Brisbane. For Joh, reasonability did not come into it. If it came from Labor or the south, it was probably a letter bomb. Hardness, toughness or lack of scruple were essential weapons.

In mid-1975, the Whitlam government was convulsed by the unravelling of efforts to raise $4 billion in overseas petro-dollar loans from suddenly oil-rich sheikhs. Touching them up was a decidedly amateur effort, using strange carpetbaggers, con-men and even dentists. Moreover, a senior Treasury official, later to be greatly rewarded for his treachery, was leaking details to the Opposition, which, as a result, was often better informed about what ministers were doing than Whitlam himself.

Increasingly, the innuendo of obvious incompetence and stupidity led to suggestions of actual corruption and kickbacks – not to mention lying to, or misleading parliament. A federal Treasurer, Jim Cairns was sacked, another minister, Rex Connor was forced in resign. Four ministers, including Whitlam himself were being accused of a criminal conspiracy in the Queanbeyan magistrates court.

It was not like Joh to simply hope for the best from sleuthing by the federal coalition (almost as hopeless as that Whitlam lot, in his estimation). Queensland employed its own private investigator to dig up dirt. There were regular doses of publicity about how the inquiry was determined to get to the bottom of unspecified allegations of criminality. The premier believed he had a clear constitutional right to involve his state. Queensland was a party to the Financial Agreement and the Loans Council. Irregular (or, as he believed it, illegal) loan raising could defeat the agreement, and affect Queensland's credit rating.

His foray never came to much, as an investigation that is. But it did its political work.

Shortly before the election brought on by the dismissal of Whitlam on November 11, 1975, Bjelke-Petersen announced he was sending detectives to Geneva to provide physical protection for the Queensland British Agent General, Wally Rae, who, the premier said, had been threatened while making investigations. There had been, he said, "sensational developments" and he was calling parliament to meet to consider them next week, a few days before the federal poll.

But there was never a show-and-tell. On the appointed day, the premier, speaking with parliamentary privilege, announced that he had evidence that two unnamed Whitlam ministers had stood to make staggering sums of money in secret commissions and kickbacks. But he would not reveal names, or the evidence just yet, in the hope that the new Federal Government would announce a Royal Commission into the whole affair. He did not, he declared piously, want to prejudice the proper working of such a commission or comment further in an excited election context.

It was mere smear. If he had any evidence, it was never produced and has not been seen since.

Labor was demolished at the election, and in Queensland won only a single seat. It would be unfair to take the credit for this away from Whitlam and his own ministers. But if the body in the library were not a suicide, Bjelke-Petersen and his iron pipe would have been front runner for chief suspect. On many counts, not only this.

About this time, Clive Palmer was a young man impressed and inspired by the righteous and driven premier. He had just joined the National Party. It was to be nearly a decade before he became an person of influence in its councils, at the side of the premier as he took his fight against the rascals in Canberra to John Howard and the Liberal Party. He had ample opportunity to see how the powers of one body politic could be used to undermine the powers of another, and how it was perfectly all right, ethically, to do it, provided that (one believed) the cause was just.

He could see too how, to the righteous, allegations of impropriety, conflict of interest, corruption of purpose, hypocrisy, abuse of power, inconsistency or unintelligibility are but glancing wounds to be expected on the path to victory. A Joh could lose a battle, but never a war while there was breath within him. And one could call him anything – even a "Bible-bashing bastard", as Whitlam did – but never "impolite" or "discourteous."

He could be killed only by planting a wooden stake through his heart on a crossroads at midnight. Certainly not by mere media or party-political denunciation.

This week saw coalition talk of breach of convention when the Senate leader of Clive Palmer's personal political party, Glen Lazarus successfully moved a motion by which a senate committee investigate alleged shenanigans by the Queensland government under Campbell Newman.

Labor and the Greens, each with a certain finger to the nose, let the motion go through. No doubt it figured that such an inquiry could, at worst, probably discredit only Clive Palmer, but at best, might provide entertaining material embarrassing to Newman, the Liberal National Party in Queensland, Queensland ministers, federal ministers from Queensland, and Tony Abbott. If there was a casual risk of further damage to the reputation of the last Queensland Labor government, it was already a political corpses: further dancing on its graves could hardly further injure it.

No doubt Palmer, long an insider in, life member of, and player in Queensland conservative politics, knows the location of odd bits of its dirty laundry. He has made any number of allegations about particular ministers, from the premier down. One of his central allegations, of impropriety and treachery in relation to the selection and location of a railway line to a port, closely involves his own business interests and appears to involve, at the least, anger and revenge as much as any zeal to root out bribery, corruption or abuse of power.

Whether Palmer has much in the way of actual evidence may not be to the point, any more than it ever was with Bjelke-Petersen. Palmer repeatedly makes bizarre allegations against others, but has always been extremely vague with detail, proof, or even further and better particulars. Some allegations are not later repeated or further pursued, or take on a different form at their next outing.

It sometimes seems that he will say anything that comes to mind. But there is a certain method, if not consistency, in his avuncular stream-of-consciousness statements. They give cover for avoiding answering a question, distracting away from some embarrassment or alleged embarrassment involving himself, or, often (and with some skill) keeping himself in the headlines. And they cultivate an image of a somewhat lovable, if embarrassing uncle, rather than an old rogue.

One does not have to think him dishonest to suggest one ought not go into business with him, rely on his word, or trust him. He seems to have quite a reputation for falling out with his business partners, and claims, including of scholarship and international reputation, hardly stand up to analysis. His dismissal of suggestions of obvious conflict of interest – that he is not, presently, actively running companies he owns – is ludicrous. But he has access to considerable cash, seems not to have to publicly account for how he spends it, and actually has power – at least as long as he has effective control over some or all of the senators elected as representatives of the party which bears his name. And because he has power – and exercises it in so bizarre a manner – even his political opponents are wary of attacking him directly, lest they have to make a deal with him the next day. Uncle Clive has a long memory.

Politicians in mainstream parties are often frustrated by the methods of independents, mavericks and members of minor parties, including the Greens, or, earlier, the Democrats. They point out such people are angling only for a single Senate seat, or the support of one eighth of the voters, rather than for 50 per cent plus one vote. They can be all things to all people, without any accountability or great need for constituency. They can be in favour of all of the popular things and against anything which is unpopular. In being so, they can often seem principled and idealistic, while mainstream politicians seem grubby, and prepared to make bad compromises. Such politicians, in short, are only casually involved in the essential political process of rationing scarce resources, setting priorities, and having to say no. Or, if they are, as often as not, they represent special minority interests claiming a priority place at the table. And all without much in the way of accountability, provided they are assiduous about getting publicity.

But even by such standards, Clive Palmer and his gang would seem like a Hindenburg airship waiting to explode all over Capital Hill. Only the thickness of its skin can prevent it. The very structure of the party, and the members relationship with it, scream for explanation. Conflict of interest problems, and, in the circumstances, of the senators as much as Palmer, demand some independent examination, including of a constitutional sort. The utter silliness of Jacqui Lambie is a separate question, unlikely (as with the case of Pauline Hanson) to be resolved merely by sneering from the more sophisticated.

Palmer, like Bjelke-Petersen, plays by different rules. And because he is impervious to the ordinary rules, direct attacks on him, designed to hold him to account by testing his propositions, checking the records against his claims or subjecting his syllogisms simply do not work, least of all in the court of public opinion. One does not wing Sarah Palin or Tony Blair or Clive Palmer by proving that they are mere puffs of smoke, fanaticists or frauds.

Still less by showing their actions to be in breach of some old rule or principle. Many presently pretending to be outraged by his lack of restraint in his own interests are not famous for their own moderation.

Tony Abbott, for example, used Bjelke-Petersen techniques of total opposition to successfully destroy Labor and to fight his way into the Lodge. Having got there, he's been finding it difficult to get everyone to listen to his appeals for a bipartisan approach to good government. Perhaps he deserves the Palmer PUP.