Governor
Campbell succeeded Sir James Ramsay as Governor of Queensland on 22 July 1985. There has been some conjecture that the Bjelke-Petersen government may have elevated Campbell to this position to remove him from the Chief Justiceship. All of the controversies surrounding Campbell appear to be merely projections of the very controversies affecting Joh Bjelke-Petersen and his government, with Campbell's inauguration as governor attracting complaint from the Queensland Trades and Labour Council that they had been ostracised from the swearing-in ceremony due to political manoeuvring by the State Government.
This tradition of controversy involving Campbell and the government came to crisis in 1987 when there was internal strife within the National Party between Bjelke-Petersen and his cabinet, which almost caused a constitutional crisis in Queensland governance. There had already been murmurs in early 1987 of a vice-regal intervention in Queensland politics when The Australian newspaper in March featured a front-page article detailing State Opposition leader Nev Warburton's call for Campbell to sack Bjelke-Petersen over allegations of illegal conduct by the government. These suggestions came to nothing. However, later in the year when Bjelke-Petersen lost the confidence of his cabinet, the question was again raised as to what role Campbell as governor would play in the event of a constitutional crisis.
On 23 November 1987, Bjelke-Petersen visited Campbell at Government House, Brisbane to discuss a restructuring of his ministry. It was Bjelke-Petersen's wish to dissolve his entire ministry and be recommissioned as premier with a new distribution of ministerial portfolios, however Campbell's advice was for the premier to seek the individual resignations of those ministers he wanted removed from the ministry. After having approached five ministers about resigning from their offices and being refused by each one, the premier returned to Campbell on 24 November and requested the termination of the commissions of three of the five ministers. He also advised Campbell to dissolve the legislature and call a fresh election. Campbell balked at calling a new election for a legislature barely a year old, but did agree to the removal of the three ministers.
Although the government's problems were already serious, the difficulty for Campbell really began on 26 November. That day, a spill motion carried in the National party room. Bjelke-Petersen had not anticipated this party-room coup and did not even attend the meeting. He thus did not nominate for the ensuing leadership ballot, which was won by one of the dismissed ministers, Mike Ahern. In accordance with normal convention, Ahern wrote to Campbell seeking to be commissioned as premier in place of Bjelke-Petersen. This should have been a pro forma request, because the Nationals had a majority in their own right. However, Bjelke-Petersen touched off a constitutional crisis when he refused to resign his commission. Campbell refused to use his reserve power to terminate it after receiving legal advice that he should only dismiss Bjelke-Petersen and commission Ahern if Bjelke-Petersen lost a vote of no confidence. There were also fears that Bjelke-Petersen might advise Campbell to dissolve parliament and call elections. Some sections of the press attacked Campbell for his apparent inactivity during the crisis, while other voices within the legal and political world supported his course of action. As the Sydney Morning Herald had described this tense situation, Queensland now had a "Premier who is not leader" and the National Party a "Leader who is not Premier". The crisis
ended only when Bjelke-Petersen retired from politics on 1 December. Campbell was later praised by many in the media for his handling of the situation.
In March 1988, Campbell gave a lecture on "The Role of a State Governor" to the Royal Australian Institute of Public Administration, Queensland Division, in which he described the various functions carried out by state governors, the legal and constitutional framework of the office and numerous historical accounts of different situations involving vice-regal figures in Queensland and other Commonwealth domains.
