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. Retirement After seven years as governor, Campbell retired in July 1992. He did not retire quietly, continuing to speak at various functions and publicly opposing Paul Keating's push for an Australian republic in 1993 by writing to the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph. He continued his advocacy for the monarchy later that year when launching the second volume of "Upholding the Australian Constitution", stating, "republicanism I think is being used by certain people as a pretext or as a blind or a screen to conceal a deeper purpose or purposes". Personal Campbell married Georgina Pearce in 1942, and fathered three children, Deborah, Peter and Wallace Campbell. He resided with his family in Clayfield, Brisbane while a member of the Supreme Court judiciary and