qed’s blog

Peter Garrett made his living out of music. His band Midnight Oil,
often wrote material containing some rather extreme anti-
establishment sentiments. Songs such as US Forces, Redneck Wonderland
and Blue Sky Mine help to define the public image of the group and
they were equally outspoken in there non musical arena. It made the
band rich. Peter Garrett is now a millionaire and a member of the
federal parliament. He still shaves his head but that seems to be the
only resemblance with the old Garrett.

Now the only thing I can imagine that Pete has going for him is that
most voters expect politicians to lie. So when Pete says he will not
revoke the licence for the monster on the Tamar, secretly those of us
who abhor the development are thinking that Pete can’t possibly live
with himself if he does get into government and doesn’t do something
about stopping the tree munching monster. So we know he has to play
politics and toe the party line to avoid giving little johnny a wedge
to whack into the labor party, but we don’t believe he will actually
do what he says.

Sad isn’t it?

Meanwhile Bob Brown has no such qualms. Nor does it seem does Tim
Flannery who broke the news that CO2 is a www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/10/09/2054191.htm" onclick="javascript:urchinTracker('/outbound/br_/_www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/10/09/2054191.htm');">far bigger
problem than we thought. Which leads you to wonder why Pete
didn’t actually stand up for some higher principle and point out the
bleeding obvious, that is, the future of this planet is very
dependent on doing something big and fast about greenhouse gases and
building a poisonous tree destroying mill for the sake of a bit of
lucre isn’t going to help us one bit in the future. Not building
mills and actually doing something radical about the problem might be
politically very difficult but sitting on your arse and selling your
soul to people like Gunns is only making it more difficult to do
anything constructive about the threats that climate change brings.