[1] He worked as a solicitor and then with the Aboriginal Legal Service before setting up his own practice, but did not become a member of the Australian Labor Party until the dismissal of Gough Whitlam's government in November 1975.

The Queensland Nationals were still reeling from revelations of the rampant corruption of longtime premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen, and polls showed Labor had its best chance of winning power in years.

[citation needed] Labor had been in opposition since 1957, and last made a serious bid for government in 1972. Cooper had toppled Bjelke-Petersen's immediate successor, Mike Ahern, in a September party-room coup, two months before the writ was dropped.

[citation needed] Goss seized on National ads[4] that argued his plans to decriminalise homosexuality would result in gays flooding into Queensland.

The Goss Government introduced several electoral and public sector reforms,[3] the most notable being the elimination of the "Bjelkemander" malapportionment that had helped keep the Queensland Nationals in power.

Before the 1995 election, the Goss Government announced a plan to clear sensitive bushland for an alternative to one of south-east Queensland's major roadways.

Nine days after the by-election, Cunningham announced that she was going to support the Coalition on the floor of Parliament, leaving Goss with no alternative but to resign as Premier on 19 February 1996.

Goss later said that Queensland voters had turned so violently on then-Prime Minister Paul Keating that they had been "sitting on their verandas with baseball bats" waiting for the writs to drop,[12] a phrase that has since entered the Australian political lexicon.

Despite support from both sides of Parliament—evidenced when the House gave him a standing ovation on his return from surgery[17]—Goss retired from politics at the 1998 Queensland state election.

[22] From 2003 to 2007, Goss was on the board of Ingeus Limited, the company founded by Thérèse Rein, the wife of former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, his former chief-of-staff.

[24] Goss was also an Ambassador of the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation,[25] and a member of a business task force dealing with the aftermath of the 2010-11 Queensland floods.

[37] Goss' wife Roisin shared recollections about his life as a private citizen and his favourite saying at family gatherings or just lounging outside on a sunny day: "This Is Good".

[38] A central building at the Griffith University Logan City campus is named after Goss in recognition of his work as an “education visionary”.