Qld: Captain Bligh no stranger to history
By Gabrielle Dunlevy and Paul Osborne23 Feb 2009 5:24 PM
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BRISBANE, Feb 23 AAP - Anna Bligh is no stranger to history.
She is, after all, the great-great-great-great-grand-daughter of Captain William Bligh whose crew mutinied against him on the Bounty.
Now, she is seeking to make another kind of history - as the first woman to be elected premier of an Australian state.
It's a mountain Victoria's Joan Kirner and Western Australia's Carmen Lawrence failed to climb.
But if the opinion polls and pundits are to be believed, the 48-year-old former social worker and public servant can do it.
Born in Warwick, in southern Queensland, on July 14, 1960, Ms Bligh grew up on the Gold Coast and remained with her mother Frances when her parents separated when she was 13, brought on by her father Bill's alcoholism and gambling.
She became interested in politics as a student at the University of Queensland in the 1970s, joining a left-wing, Marxist-feminist group.
After graduating with an arts degree in social sciences in 1980, her first job was working in a women's refuge.
She worked in various community organisations and as an industrial advocate for BHP and trade unions, and met her husband, public servant Greg Withers, in the 1980s in Sydney.
The couple, who married in 2005, have two sons, 22-year-old Joe and 16-year-old Oliver, whose surname is Frances, after Ms Bligh's mother.
Elected to parliament as the Member for South Brisbane in July 1995, in only 10 years she ascended to deputy premier.
Her first ministry was families, and her first act was to establish the Forde inquiry to examine abuse in institutions.
She also undertook the first complete overhaul of the Child Protection Act in 40 years.
In 2001, she became the state's first ever female education minister, introducing a full-time Prep Year and extending the school leaving age, bringing Queensland into line with the other states.
As deputy premier, treasurer and minister for state development, Ms Bligh delivered two state budgets and supervised construction of the southeast Queensland water grid, the $9 billion drought-saving showpiece of the Beattie-Bligh era.
Then-premier Peter Beattie became well aware of his deputy's talent and work ethic.
He was famously caught on tape telling then-NSW premier Morris Iemma at a Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting in 2006: "She's deputy premier and treasurer and every other piece of shit I didn't want".
Ultimately, Mr Beattie anointed Ms Bligh his successor, last year telling ABC's Australian Story more thoughtfully: "... When you sit around a cabinet table you can see who's got the brains and it became very clear to me that she had the ability, she had that fire in the belly".
Still, when Mr Beattie retired and Ms Bligh took over, she had some criticism for the Beattie government.
She told the ALP state conference in 2008: "... If I had a criticism of the previous government, it would be that we allowed ourselves to become far too reactive to challenges".
On becoming premier in September 2007, Ms Bligh told parliament she would keep Queensland "ahead of the pack".
"That means understanding the challenges ahead, seeing over the next horizon, anticipating and solving problems," she said.
Her next challenge will be to convince voters she has what it takes to achieve this, elected in her own right as premier.
