As I said in #42 above, our side of politics has to start getting used to contemplating a Rudd government. On election night I’m pretty sure we’ll see a gracious John Howard concede not only the government but also his own seat with a great amount of dignity, in dramatic contrast to the abject behaviour of Malcolm Fraser on election night 1983.

From a personal perspective I wish Howard had retired last year, but that’s history.

I liked Kerry Packer’s famous quote “You only get one Alan Bond in a lifetime and I’ve had mine”. Similarly I reckon you only get one Hawke ALP government in a lifetime and we’ve had ours. History is often a series of three steps forward two steps back. We’ve had four great steps forward and we’re about to embark on ? steps back. Just imagine unprecedented Labor government in all States, Territories and federal, as well as probably an ALP dominated senate! There will be no rebel Barnaby Joyce, no rebel Petro Georgiou and friends in the Reps to balance things. The Unions will rule. One false step and you’re expelled.

The outlook really is depressing. Democrat President and Congress in the USA, left-wing “conservatives” in the UK, never-ending gloating from the likes of Parish, Gruen, Sheil, Bahnisch, Quiggin, Dunlop, Ramsay, Clive Hamilton, Ross Gittins, Jaspan and friends, Kerry O’Brien, Mike Carlton, SMH letter-writers, et al, et al.

Julie Bishop for opposition leader!!

Did too! Wish he would get the old band back together.

But I defer to James as the expert gumshoe and future author in the great case of how on earth can Peter Garrett possibly be a responsible ALP frontbencher now when his earlier life didn’t always comply with Labor policy and why this matters a fig. And kisses to you too Wotsiface.

Don’t see how the above fact or anything you said undermines my overarching point, however. Or how being a lead singer in a band automatically equates to political leadership smarts. I know what Peter Garrett said and did throughout his musical career (on stage and off) better than most defending him here, which is why I feel so confident in my analysis of his longer term political prospects.

Whyisitso has a point. Is that all ya got, Chris? Disappointing. No - pathetic.

Garrett has gone from being a singer/activist in a lefty rock & roll band to a responsible frontbench member of the ALP.

That’s mindboggling, apparently, just mindboggling. I think James should write the definitive Garrett biography which proves to the world that he really is a rotten cad, if only everyone would just realise it before it’s too late. He could read it to Whartootzi.

What is that?

Heaps of pollies have backflipped, many have been wrought through the ’sphere for it - but with such feeling?!

Turnbull on a Republic issue I imagine might get up there, close to this, but this connectivity to commitment is very interesting.

What is this?

Ok to ask these questions, given Garrett’s history? Do some songs resonate? Why do they resonate?

Times a changing? Oops, he’ll do it again?

…. and that we are so moved, what are we looking for, in our MP’s, at least?

Not that he ever would’ve, but imagine if the late, great Milton Friedman became a big-government neo-conservative and went to work for the Foundation for Defence of Democracies think-tank.

I wonder if we’d see Chris Sheil defending the fictional (and unrealistically stupefied) Friedman’s right to a pluralistic identity, or maybe Ken Parish justifying the about-face on the grounds of organisational solidarity.

Ha. My arse they would. They’d be pointing at all the things he said in his past, noting his current contradictory position and laughing at him.

What’s sauce for the goose, guys…

that it’s pretentious to presume to be able to judge the moral choices of others

To which I responded

You seem to forget that Garrett is an elected member of the Australian federal parliament, so his “moral choices” (moreso his political stance on any number of issues) are actually rather relevant to voters

And in turn, Ken Parish responded

The problem with this argument is that it ignores the fact that research consistently shows that only about 2% of voters (or at most 3) ever vote for an individual candidate.

That’s not relevant at all to the point I was making, Ken. You’ve taken what I said out of context - or do you believe that citizens have no right to judge their elected MPs on their “moral choices”, or as I put it, their political stances?

Besides, that was only one tiny element of my position. What about the rest? If the argument that whysitso and I are presenting is such “cynical bullshit”, I find it interesting that some of the (alleged) finest minds of the left wing blogosphere are having such an awfully hard time refuting it.

Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see how the Peter Garrett experiment goes. Give it a few years.

What utter rubbish. People vote for personalities and what they perceive those individuals supposedly stand for. Who the hell knows what Labor Party policy is besides what Kevin Rudd (and some important front benchers) say it is. That the ALP’s stocks are sky-high right now is entirely due to this man’s personality. The voters are smitten by him. The times suit him. In 1996 the times suited John Howard but the world has moved on. People have become accustomed to our amazing prosperity and take it as a given. They don’t see Rudd et al as threatening it (if they think in those terms at all) and are looking at non-economic issues.

Having said that, Garrett’s betrayal of his formerly strongly voiced principles is a negative but that is dwarfed in the love affair with Rudd. I don’t think Rudd will falter before the election, but if he does the cynicism of Garrett will only worsen things for the principle-devoid ALP.

James is right. Garrett’s made a complete fool of himself. He was brought into the ALP by Beazley on the strength of his “passion” and if they’re going to back out of that the ALP may as well go back to appointing trade union apparatchiks to safe seats, gag them all and restrict all public interaction to the leader.

The problem with this argument is that it ignores the fact that research consistently shows that only about 2% of voters (or at most 3) ever vote for an individual candidate. The vast majority vote solely for the Party and its policies. Thus, it is (barely) conceivable that 2% of voters voted for Garrett because they imagined he would present exactly the same policies that he had espoused with Midnight Oil, the NDP or the ACF, and would somehow exercise Svengali-like influence on the ALP and hypnotise it into changing its policies to reflect those of the Greens or NDP. For the other 97% of voters living in the real world, they voted for Garrett as a representative of the Australian Labor Party and expected him to represent that party’s policies. Those policies have always been just about as supportive of the US alliance, US bases etc as the Coalition. Even among the 2-3% who ever vote for the individual rather than the party, it’s hard to imagine more than a handful of deluded individuals would in fact have imagined that Garrett could ever have more than marginal behind the scenes influence on Labor policy (valuable though that may well be, and it would certainly have assisted my decision to vote for him had I lived in Kingsford Smith).

Moreover, since voters likely to vote for either Garrett or the ALP on either of these bases would never have included James Waterton or whyisitso any time before hell froze over, we can afford to treat their professed opinions as the cynical bullshit they are.

The Australian public — the most ultra pragmatic mob going round — knows exactly why Garrett joined the ALP and they completely agree with him, otherwise independents and minor parties would get much bigger votes in this country. The confected dudgeon from the right is laughable and the indignation from the left will only make the slightest difference at the very marginal edge of the margins in the election.

And its old news anyway, most of the heat in the issue played out when his candiacy was first announced.

Folks might roll their eyes, crack a joke about his dancing and then get back to the real world of completely not giving a shit until the weekend before polling day. The people who grew up with the Oils and have the most emotionally invested in him for that reason are also finding themselves in middle age and will more than likely sympathise with the issues of how you deal day to day with your history and “the travellin’ hands of time.” He will be cut a lot of slack by most people.

The backroom just needs to come up with some lines on it to feed the chooks with and .. end of story.

As for the rest, you may well be right. Still, as you noted in the earlier post, the door remains open for future troublemaking around this issue and I do think the sheer volume of comment on this topic here and elsewhere suggests his signal wasn’t clear to all that many.

Anyway, it’s of no great moment. My desire to see someone challenge the prevailing idiocies is in all likelihood overriding what commonsense I have.

I thought Ken made a neat point.

It’s a vacuous point Ken made, Chris. Garrett’s built a reputation around his uncompromising opinions and moral certainty as the frontman and leading songwriter of Midnight Oil. This came in handy when he signed up to the ALP - just the sort of celebrity candidate any party would embrace in an effort to disguise the grubby business of politics with some integrity. However, this puts Garrett in an extremely awkward position, because he either has to:

*break party discipline, which will promptly see him out on his ear

*explain why he’s changed his mind on things like US bases and logging - though this is probably not an option because if it were he would have done it already

OR

*look like he’s selling out his principles to get ahead in the ALP.

The latter would be the kiss of death for someone like Garrett - voters expect their politicians to at least display the outward appearance of moral certainty. And someone like Garrett, who built a reputation for integrity on the back of a loud, unwavering moral certainty, would be an absolute laughing stock - and rightly so.

I think that it’s ridiculous to imagine anyone has a singular identity

This isn’t a case of me criticising Garrett because on one day he might pick the chicken and on another he has a hankering for pork. We’re talking about his long term (spanning over two decades), unwavering public criticism of the Australian political establishment. Then, in an apparent Road to Damascus conversion (Paul would be a much more suitable name for Mr Garrett), he suddenly joins the establishment he so stridently and consistently opposed not particularly long ago, and starts toeing the party line in a way that no one would have expected from such a seemingly uncompromising individual. I don’t care that he’s doing it “strategically” - it’s still a marked departure from the Garrett of old. He’s vulnerable because he hasn’t at all explained this departure to those who will ultimately be responsible for his political advancement - the Australian public.

that it’s pretentious to presume to be able to judge the moral choices of others

Yeah, well only a complete dolt would suggest that it’s not proper to expect a politician to justify his or her stance on an issue relevant to their position as an MP and/or member of cabinet. You seem to forget that Garrett is an elected member of the Australian federal parliament, so his “moral choices” (moreso his political stance on any number of issues) are actually rather relevant to voters and those opposing him politically. He should expect to have his current views tested by the public. Unfortunately for him, his past means they’re going to be tested a lot harder than most. Garrett’s reluctance to reconcile the views of his prior public persona, which blatantly contradicts those of his present, makes him extremely vulnerable to the ‘hypocrite’ tag. ‘Sell out’ also springs to mind. Surely even you can concede that, Chris.

that anyone who imagines belonging to a political party doesn’t permanently involve compromises is a moron

Strawman, Chris. No one suggested that - well, I certainly didn’t. My point is that Garrett built a political persona around not making compromises on issues like logging and US bases. In light of his failure to explain his change of opinion or change of strategy, you can’t blame people for thinking he’s sold out - it certainly looks that way. And you should expect his political opponents to exploit such an open goal to maximum effect. If a man with a reputation for uncompromising moral certainty wants to keep that reputation, taking a prominent position within a large, catch-all establishment party where there’s no room for such types looks untenable in the longer term. Keeping up, Chris?

Now Geoff, that’s a little bit glib, if I may say so. I don’t hold a strong view against what Ken and you are saying but PG was not the kind of performer Donna Summer and Tina Turner are. His political activism lay at the heart of his music and his music is a clear indication of what his politics was/is.

I don’t have a problem with PG stepping up and taking part in the big game and I don’t wish to see him pilloried for cabinet solidarity but it is problematic.

You see this is the problem I have with activist art and activist artists. They should stick to art and art is above petty things like war, apocaplypse and injustice. OK there is Guernica but there is truckloads of shit too and the Dead Heart is now what it always was - a cool riff and it needn’t have tried to be anything else.

Still, I can’t quite escape the sense that this kind of viewpoint may be too bleak, that it builds on a particular view of human nature without allowing much room for grace or the better instincts. Naive as it may be, I believe that at the very least a significant minority are truly hungry for plain speaking, for someone to defy the tiresome conventions of our self-referential, constipated polity.

Nicholas, I think you’re absolutely right that Garrett’s “status” should have given him leverage on these matters unavailable to the average MP and that his failure to use it casts doubt not only on his judgement but also his ultimate usefulness as a politician who might have shifted the dynamic a little. In a way, it’s a great shame but I guess a man can be no more than he is.

I’m still unconvinced, though, by the view that he has already done what I think he should. In insider code, certainly, but doesn’t this simply ensure, as you say, that the material exists for later inflation into a drama du jour while doing nothing to clarify the confusion — and disappointment — that so clearly exists in the community? Strikes me as a lose, lose.

I think I’d distance myself somewhat from the darkness of Ken’s observations and his quote. I think you do have more of a choice than that - at least if you have talent that the party will wish to draw on. (I’m not sure Garrett does have mainstream political talent by the way, that’s why I find the whole thing so strange). I think Garrett could have told the party that he was not going to bag the Greens. That he did says quite a bit about his confused state I think.

However I also think that he has done exactly what you say he should do. He’s made it clear that his views have not changed and that he’s not prepared to respond like a parrot whenever asked exactly the same question again. He’s done it clearly but in such a way that it’s under the radar.

Well at least for now that is. Of course the farce of it all is that at some stage the PM can get up in question time and refer to his comment that his views haven’t changed and then say that this shows that Rudd is gutless and the party is hopelessly divided etc etc etc. Then it is a matter of whether the media pick it up as the bubble du jour. If they do within a few days a ‘crisis’ develops. “Will Garrett continue to defy the party” or will he clear the air with some clarification.

All of this will be manufactured out of nothing - out of what we know now.

Precisely this sort of thing happened to Stephen Conroy a few years ago when he admitted something along the lines that you couldn’t spend more and have a larger budget surplus without taxing more - or some such bromide - and within a few days a ‘crisis’ had developed because somehow this statement of simple arithmetic made his parties lies of the time seem a little thinner than normal.