 Bjelke-Petersen boycotted the meeting, and thus did not nominate for the ensuing leadership vote, which saw Ahern elected as the new leader and Gunn elected as deputy.Despite having helped do the numbers to topple Joh, in December 1987, Lane was dumped to the backbench after being named adversely in the inquiry.On 30 January 1989, Lane resigned from the house, and he was succeeded in his seat of Merthyr by The Liberal Party's Santo Santoro, who had previously only narrowly lost to him (by 31 votes) in the 1986 Queensland state election.