Well, there was the incident where he joked with a radio broadcaster that as soon as Labor got in, they’d ditch their policies and do whatever the hell they liked…
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,22697983-5013650,00.html
If you want to know more about his music and his enviromentalism, I highly recommend Midnight Oil’s album “Blue Sky Mining.” I’ve worn out three cassette tapes and 2 CDs of that album in the last sixteen years or so.
Who knows if he’ll do any good in his new capacity, but there can be little doubt, at least, of his sincerity. He *did *what so many people have snarkily demanded that people like Bono or Sean Penn do - he quit the entertainment biz to spend less time talking and more time doing.
Isn’t that basically what happens in every so-called democracy? His only blunder was to be honest about it.
In any case, I expect he’ll perform with as much ballet like grace in his portfolio as in his former career when he danced and bawled out songs on stage with Midnight Oil.
He and many others in the Rudd government typify exactly what is wrong with modern political machines. I recently heard them described as “machines that devour good men and women at one end and just pump out shit at the other” and that seems pretty fair for Garrett and many of the former unionists now working toward their political pension.
Garrett has forgone many of his beliefs for the sake of politics and I don’t think it will be long before people catch on that Rudd and his ex-unionist mates are no more worker friendly than the Liberals were. How a bunch of former union leaders can condone an IR policy that makes virtually all strikes illegal and almost impossible to organise (due to the requirement for supervised secret ballots), convinces me that they are different creatures now.
I lost a lot of respect for Peter Garret during the last State Government elections (last year) in Victoria, where he put his name to a letter to all the folks in my electorate telling us not to vote for the Greens because they were in bed with the Liberal Party.
a) Not actually true (the Greens had simply refused to preference Labor above the Libs - a “your both as bad as each other” situation)
b) Way to sell out your former colleagues, and
c) None of your frikkin business ANYWAY, as a federal politician
Ha! Yeah, that’s true, but it’s part of the unspoken deal that they pretend they’re going to do what they promise and we pretend to believe them. Then we pretend to be all shocked and dismayed when they renege, and they pretend that they really did intend to do it until circumstances changed, and it’s all the previous government’s fault, and it wasn’t important to the voters anyway. And people whinge and grumble that they’ll remember this come election time and then keep voting them back in anyway.
I’ll wait and see what he’s like, but as a Labor supporter I think his credibility has been tarnished by his eagerness to be in government.
He now has the job which he has always wanted, and one which is extremely important to the Labor party’s chances of being re-elected at the next election. He’d better not stuff it up.
I don’t know why you’d think that there is a single Minister, or for that matter MP, who isn’t as eager to be in government as a dog near a bitch on heat.
Garrett just isn’t as polished as most modern politicians. They’ve learned to be cool, competent and bland, and to mouth the party line and the talking points de jour ad nauseum. And those talking points tend to be either meaningless motherhood statements or statements chosen carefully by spin doctors to have maximum appeal to that holy grail of politicians, the only people who count: swinging voters.
IMHO the only sensible way to vote is by choosing the party or politician whose basic long term values appear to align most closely with your own. There is no reason to believe any specific thing that they say or do in order to get elected. All you can do is hope that if the people you vote for get in, long term their underlying world view will come through for you.
Garrett’s deep and long term schtick has been anti-big business, pro-environment, Christian, and anti-US. Whether that is a good or a bad thing is up to any given voter to decide. But he’s revealed way, way more about his long term values through singing for Midnight Oil than we will ever learn about most modern politicians, who are either lying or demurring 99% of the time they open their mouths.
Despite being a lefty with evironmental sympathies, I’m very cautious about Garrett. But one thing I refuse to do is mark him down because the other “gray” women and men we have the option of voting for as leader play the political game better.
Probably been beaten, but oh well: Wrong band! That’s Men At Work. Midnight Oil did songs like The Dead Heart, Bed Are Burning, and Dreamworld.
He’s a man in a difficult position. He is an outspoken man of strong conviction who has been slow to learn that while he joined politics to speak out, politicians arent successful because they speak out but because they shut up, speak often but say nothing. The opposition has delighted in challenging him to speak honestly on issues like the US alliance on which his position is well known (and in contradiction to Labor party policy). If he is honest they portray him as being disloyal and a loose cannon incapable of toeing the party line and if he swallows his pride and toes the party line they portray him as insincere and a man who has abandoned his convictions for political power. There is no possible win for him. Its a shame because the only way he can be successful is to become just another weasel like his critics in which case they have still won.
Eolbo, could you elaborate on this “US alliance” you mention?
Sure. Australia is a US ally under the ANZUS treaty and hosts US bases on our soil. The old Garrett was an outspoken and articulate opponent of the US alliance, and sought to close the US bases and deny US nuclear-armed warships access to Australian harbours. He co-founded a political party People for Nuclear Disarmament with these as its goals.
The new Garrett says he fully supports the US alliance and the presence of US bases in Australia.
Thanks for that. I think you’re right.
As an Oils fan, I’m pleased he’s in a position of some authority. I guess now it’s about how well he keeps the faith.
^^pretty much took my post.
It seems like he has done jack shit expect smoke weed with Daniel Johns from silver chair. & some tossa from u2.
I think it’s fair to say that his performance so far has been below his supporters’ expectations.
I’m not sure what his supporters would have expected him to do to date. He hasn’t had any power to date to do anything. As far as his statements as a member of the opposition are concerned, I think he’s said as much as he can (and in some cases more than was wise if his goal was to get into power so he could meaningfully perform).
What more do you think his supporters expected of him? If the answer is: he hasn’t been outspoken about his true views on the environment etc as they would have liked, then what you are saying is that they expected him to commit political suicide. That they wanted him to be a brief shining star (in their view) before crashing to the bedrock of political pragmatics. A romantic gesture. OK, I can see that might have some merit. Some.
Yes, I think that’s exactly what some of his supporters (the more starry-eyed ones) were expecting him to do. “Peter Garrett’s in politics now - he’ll really shake things up”. Several friends of mine expressed such sentiments when he was first elected, completely ignoring the day to day realities of politics in general and ALP politics specifically.
Hopefully he can help reduce Australia’s dependency on midnight oil.