Legal Eagle has an interesting post on Peter Garrett.
I confess that I’ve never really held much brief for celebrity politicians. Of course, I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, so I try to cast my prejudice aside. But I can’t help thinking that if you’re a performer or an actor or a musician, you might not have had much experience actually running things. You don’t have to implement your ideas or make them work.
Another thing about celebrity politicians is that you inevitably end up feeling very disappointed in them. It’s easy to admire someone when they just have to put in a good performance, and they don’t have to make difficult decisions or let you down. However, the nature of being a politician is that you have to compromise, and make hard decisions which may end up hurting people in one way or another. You can’t be popular with everyone in politics.
So I feel disappointed about Peter Garrett (Labor Environment Minister and former lead singer of Midnight Oil, for non-Aussie readers). For one thing, I liked his music. But it’s hard to listen to it now without thinking of his political persona, and of his various shortcomings and the ways in which I believe he has betrayed his own ideals.
The AFR made a similar point this morning, saying that he had traded-off his credibility for policy relevance.
I think people have given him too little credit. Yes he was a rock star, but another way to look at that is being an entrepreneur. There is a business side to being a successful rock star. Yes, he was an activist and now he is a minister. Some people say that he has sold-out his principles. But politics is the art of the possible. A lot of people miss this point. Garrett has worked very hard to manage the tension between being an activist and being a member of the leadership team of a mainstream political party. Unlike other high profile activists he hasn’t (that I can recall) had any public dummy-spits; rather he has put up with a lot of what some might consider public humiliation – picking up the dregs of the environment portfolio for example. So I think people have underestimated him on that score. Of course, that doesn’t condone what has happened in his portfolio but, to be fair, the whole idea of just spending money willy nilly was poor and the rest of the cabinet (and some senior bureaucrats) must share the blame.
I can’t say I liked all his music, but I did like Diesel and Dust and especially Beds are burning. That album came out in the late 1980s when South Africa was in turmoil. The SABC had a music station called Radio 5 (much like JJJ, I imagine). One of the DJs – Alex Jay – was a bit of a rebel and he started playing Beds are burning a lot. It became very popular and did very well in record sales going to number one on the hit parade. Now this just goes to show that many people sing along to songs without actually listening to the words or thinking about their meaning. One fine day some apartheid apparatchik must have listened to song and it got dropped from the playlist. Did this song play any role in ending apartheid? No; probably not. But it did give me great amusement and satisfaction at the time.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDkwUlaJhs0[/youtube]
So I like Garrett and I think he doesn’t get enough credit for trying to use the appropriate institutions to further his ideals. I don’t agree with his ideals, but any hippy can be an activist.
To be sure he can’t survive in his current position but that has little to do with his celebrity status but rather to do with poor government planning and irresponsible spending.
Update: DavidJ draws or attention to this photo. I’m not condoning it nor condemning it. The police have a very difficult role balancing the need for law and order versus the right to protest.
I also love Beds are Burning. It still raises hairs on the back of my neck.
Legal Eagle
12 Feb 10 at 7:28 pm
I can’t stand him. I hated his pretentious music and wish he just left the political stage and never saw him again.
He’s been a destructive influence since the 80′s and that hasn’t stopped even now:
http://blog.libertarian.org.au/2009/12/30/peter-spencer/
…In addition to the fact that he’s proven totally ineffective in an executive position he’s either lied of doesn’t know the facts about important parts of his portfolio. Recently he said that 20,000 people died as a result of Chernobyl, which is an egregious lie meant to turn people against the nuclear option. He also conveniently forgets that the reactor was a soviet made one: a totally different system to western plants.
The fact that he was a small businessman, which is true, is neither here or there. Placed in that context I despised what he was selling.
I hope he just goes quickly and stops causing so much damage.
JC
12 Feb 10 at 7:44 pm
Let’s not forget his “change everything” comment from 2007. He is not noble or honest, but just a common bullshit artist like the rest of his political ilk.
As for dummy spits, Tim Blair on occasion shows a photo of Garrett yelling straight into policeman’s face. Sure he wasn’t a politician at the time, but that shows he has always been a prat.
DavidJ
12 Feb 10 at 8:08 pm
I just love 10-thru-1. Couldn’t get enough of it at the time. Especially “US Forces”. When I was in the infantry, I used to sing it to myself as I was chopping down trees on live shoots with the M-60. I’d go, “US Forces give the nod” and then fire a burst. “It’s a set back for your country”. Another burst. And so on.
I guess you had to be there.
boy on a bike
12 Feb 10 at 8:50 pm
“He’s been a destructive influence since the 80’s and that hasn’t stopped even now:”
Unlike cambria who has been like a breath of fresh air..
rog
12 Feb 10 at 9:14 pm
Couldn’t stand his singing or dancing and can’t stand him as a pollie either. The bass player in midnight oil at least has gone on to make the world a skimpier and thus better place.
Greego
12 Feb 10 at 9:17 pm
“Recently he said that 20,000 people died as a result of Chernobyl, which is an egregious lie”
So you know better?
Hint: thyroid cancer
rog
12 Feb 10 at 9:20 pm
“Richard Carlton stood 100m outside the plant with a geiger counter and said that after 5-6 hours he would have been exposed to the same amount of radiation as an x-ray. He did go inside, into the control room.”
Rog scoffing at Chernobyl exaggeration, April 26, 2006.
C.L.
12 Feb 10 at 10:09 pm
JC, do you have a prejudice against the “follicly challenged”?? First Hives, now Garrett!
(kidding)
Legal Eagle
12 Feb 10 at 10:09 pm
LE:
Yea it looks like that, hey. Bald guys with bad attitudes really get my goat.
If you must shave your bald head, don’t give attitude is my rule
JC
12 Feb 10 at 10:18 pm
Rog.
something like 11 people died as a direct result attributable to the nuclear accident. Baldy told people it was 20,000. Lurch is a lying bald douchebag.
JC
12 Feb 10 at 10:19 pm
. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2009 Nov;1181:192-216.
7. Mortality after the Chernobyl catastrophe.
Yablokov AV.
Russian Academy of Sciences, Leninsky Prospect 33, Office 319, 119071 Moscow,
Russia. Yablokov@ecopolicy.ru
A detailed study reveals that 3.8-4.0% of all deaths in the contaminated
territories of Ukraine and Russia from 1990 to 2004 were caused by the Chernobyl
catastrophe. The lack of evidence of increased mortality in other affected
countries is not proof of the absence of effects from the radioactive fallout.
Since 1990, mortality among liquidators has exceeded the mortality rate in
corresponding population groups. From 112,000 to 125,000 liquidators died before
2005–that is, some 15% of the 830,000 members of the Chernobyl cleanup teams.
The calculations suggest that the Chernobyl catastrophe has already killed
several hundred thousand human beings in a population of several hundred million
that was unfortunate enough to live in territories affected by the fallout. The
number of Chernobyl victims will continue to grow over many future generations.
PMID: 20002047 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
1. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2009 Nov;1181:161-91.
6. Oncological diseases after the Chernobyl catastrophe.
Yablokov AV.
Russian Academy of Sciences, Leninsky Prospect 33, Office 319, 119071 Moscow,
Russia. Yablokov@ecopolicy.ru
The most recent forecast by international agencies predicted there would be
between 9,000 and 28,000 fatal cancers between 1986 and 2056, obviously
underestimating the risk factors and the collective doses. On the basis of I-131
and Cs-137 radioisotope doses to which populations were exposed and a comparison
of cancer mortality in the heavily and the less contaminated territories and pre-
and post-Chernobyl cancer levels, a more realistic figure is 212,000 to 245,000
deaths in Europe and 19,000 in the rest of the world. High levels of Te-132,
Ru-103, Ru-106, and Cs-134 persisted months after the Chernobyl catastrophe and
the continuing radiation from Cs-137, Sr-90, Pu, and Am will generate new
neoplasms for hundreds of years.
PMID: 20002046 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
John H.
12 Feb 10 at 10:30 pm
JC – you’ve never commented on my hairstyle.
Sinclair Davidson
12 Feb 10 at 10:34 pm
11 people? So Garrett’s insulation scheme has done better than a third of that so far.
C.L.
12 Feb 10 at 10:36 pm
Furthermore it was his portfolio that made Peter Spencer’s life a misery. So much so that he forced the poor guy to go starve himself to bring attention the harm the dirt-bag had caused him in removing Spencer’s property rights and not compensating him for it.
He never showed one ounce of remorse for the plight he’d put Spencer in. Not one bit.
Here’s another reason why he has to go. In a period of around 8 months his policy has resulted in the deaths of 4 people.
RIO has around 50,000 people that work for the firm. How many of you would be supporting the RIO CEO if they experienced a death toll of around 130 people in the same period because that’s what it would have meant on a proportional basis. How many of leftie clowns would be braying for the guys blood if they had that many deaths in their mines. I distinctly recall the mining incident in Tasmania where all sorts of demands and accusations were being made against the owners of the mine such as being irresponsible without the slightest bit of evidence that was the case. And yet you’re prepared to excuse this douche bag at the drop of a hat.
This isn’t directed at LE in any anyway.
JC
12 Feb 10 at 10:41 pm
Sinc:
I love your hairstyle. I love it man. In fact I love you like a brother and you can have any damn hairstyle you want
JC
12 Feb 10 at 10:42 pm
JohnH
It bullshit. The people that died were those that were sent in ill-equipped to clean up the accident immediately after it happened. The lastest number I saw recently was 11.
JC
12 Feb 10 at 10:46 pm
Personally I reckon the oils went downhill around the time they released 10 to 1. Before then they were not so blatantly into politics and anti-yank shit.
I preferred them as a surfer pub band late 70s early eighties. In fact the very first rock concert this country boy ever went to was the oils at the UQ refectory.
Amusing fact about myself: once when traveling down the gold coast, I queued the cassette to play the oils’ ‘back on the border line’ on the car stereo as I went past twin towns (bowls club on the NSW/QLd border). I was so busy cranking it up I ran up the arse of a highway patrol car.
PS John H, those figures must have been published in Lancet. Seems like similar methodology.
entropy
12 Feb 10 at 10:49 pm
Don’t care what you saw JC. Where do you see, on a cereal pack? Look at the dates of those studies. The idea that only 11 people died is just propaganda worthy of the Soviets.
John H.
12 Feb 10 at 10:51 pm
Not that I believe JC’s number either
entropy
12 Feb 10 at 10:51 pm
Here’s my rule, which I call the Lamberting rule. Once you start getting disputes charges of over-reaction and fudging you know it starts to be bullshit as the following excerpt suggests.
In 1989, the World Health Organization (WHO) first raised concerns that local medical scientists had incorrectly attributed various biological and health effects to radiation exposureg. Following this, the Government of the USSR requested the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to coordinate an international experts’ assessment of accident’s radiological, environmental and health consequences in selected towns of the most heavily contaminated areas in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. Between March 1990 and June 1991, a total of 50 field missions were conducted by 200 experts from 25 countries (including the USSR), seven organisations, and 11 laboratories2. In the absence of pre-1986 data, it compared a control population with those exposed to radiation. Significant health disorders were evident in both control and exposed groups, but, at that stage, none was radiation related.
Subsequent studies in the Ukraine, Russia and Belarus were based on national registers of over one million people possibly affected by radiation. By 2000, about 4000 cases of thyroid cancer had been diagnosed in exposed children. However, the rapid increase in thyroid cancers detected suggests that some of it at least is an artefact of the screening process. Thyroid cancer is usually not fatal if diagnosed and treated early.
Some exaggerated figures have been published regarding the death toll attributable to the Chernobyl disaster. A publication by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)3 lent support to these. However, the Chairman of UNSCEAR made it clear that “this report is full of unsubstantiated statements that have no support in scientific assessments”k, and the Chernobyl Forum report also repudiates them.
JC
12 Feb 10 at 10:54 pm
Read this carefully, Johnh
By 2000, about 4000 cases of thyroid cancer had been diagnosed in exposed children. However, the rapid increase in thyroid cancers detected suggests that some of it at least is an artefact of the screening process.
The effect of a sudden screen will invariably push up the count.
Here’s my question…. Do you think Lurch’s number of 20,000 deaths is right?
Where the fuck did he get that number from as not even WHO is even coming close to those numbers.’
Where did it come from?
JC
12 Feb 10 at 10:57 pm
Chernobyl’s death toll was about 56.
The warmenist bio-fuels disaster has killed probably tens of thousands.
C.L.
12 Feb 10 at 11:01 pm
Lets take your figure CL and compare it to coal fired plants vs energy generated the safety of nuclear plants is beyond dispute.
Yet Lurch straight out lied to scare the shit out of the population. Straight out fucking pied.
He needs to be gone out of faces and never seen again as he’s done enough damage. The fucking egregious lying has to stop.
JC
12 Feb 10 at 11:06 pm
oops not pied… lied. LOl
JC
12 Feb 10 at 11:06 pm
20,000 is a lie of lunatic dimensions.
And these bozos laugh at Barnaby?
C.L.
12 Feb 10 at 11:13 pm
Exactly. Joyce’s only mistake is that tried to condense what would be a long string of thinking into 10 seconds, as it can’t be done. However Joyce is right in that if we continue in the present course of borrowing and adding to the deficit we’ll be in trouble. That is true.
On top of the fact that we’ve gone from a $80 billion accumulated surplus to a 40 billion deficit, add in a running deficit for the next several years, the NBN costing 43 billion and the trial balloon sent out by Rudd when he was on his big country shtick (before he went quiet when the focus groups suggested otherwise) that required much more infrastructure spending which was really no more than attempt to push more projects union labor’s way and Joyce would be right. However he shouldn’t gone there if he only had 10 seconds, as you need a lot longer to explain the dimensions of this policy.
Compare that to Lurch lying and telling everyone that the Russian nuclear accident, which was a reactor that never carried Western standards of safeguards. Compare that out right lie that effects peoples stand on future policy directions with real implications which way we go in terms of energy production.
Which is the bigger lunatic. Lurch is a menace to the country and has to go.
JC
12 Feb 10 at 11:31 pm
Here’s another story that demonstrates some very ugly things about the Australian left. First, CFMEU spokesdolt Dave Noonan follows the ABC’s lead on phony equivalency and says that if Garrett is sacked, Tony Abbott must also resign. Yes, you read that right. It’s also Abbott’s fault.
Second, despite the creepy preference for partisanship over properly directed outrage displayed by moron, Noonan, his union has at least demanded that Garrett’s killed scheme be shut down “until worker safety can be assured.”
But guess who disagrees with even that statement of the bleedingly obvious, the astoundingly vital?
This piece of filth actually wants the whole thing to roll on – regardless of the deaths that would inevitably mount up – because he hates carbon more than he loves humans.
C.L.
12 Feb 10 at 11:45 pm
Labor’s media wing attacks Joe Hockey over Peter Garrett by bringing up Barnaby Joyce and then castigates Hockey because a Liberal senator in an estimates committee dares to ask Ken Henry why he’s there when he can’t answer any questions about he nation’s debt position.
This is becoming a comedy routine.
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2010/s2817337.htm
I couldn’t believe I was actually seeing and hearing in this interview.
Labor’s media wing is going into attack mode because they’re starting to see this government could be in real serious trouble.
Watch this interview and try not to think you’re in some alternate universe with Tony (fatty) Jones as the pied piper. Unreal.
JC
13 Feb 10 at 12:01 am
Transcript:
Tony (fatty) Jones goes batting for Ken Henry now because of the sheer audacity that a senator suggests Henry can’t answer questions relating to his own department matters and is wasting everyone’s time.
Henry doesn’t even know the nations debt or is too afraid to tell us in case it hurts his party.
TONY JONES: OK. Let’s go back to those Senate Estimates hearings because there were some other torrid moments. At one point Senator McGauran said to Ken Henry, the treasury secretary, “If you’re not prepared for debt questions, why bother turning up?” Why bother turning up? Is it reasonable tactic to insult and to attack the treasury secretary?
JOE HOCKEY: Tony, if the treasury secretary can’t answer the most basic questions about debt, isn’t that a legitimate concern for a senator to raise?
TONY JONES: Are you saying he can’t, Ken Henry?
JOE HOCKEY: Well, there were a number of occasions – I saw part of the transcript, and there were a number of occasions where Dr Henry said, “Look, I’ll have to get – make some phone calls and get some answers,” and I thought, as secretary of the treasury he would have been able to answer those questions.
JC
13 Feb 10 at 12:06 am
PETER Garrett has admitted his troubled $2.5 billion insulation program has been linked to 86 house fires around the nation as the opposition stepped up calls for him to resign over his handling of the scheme.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/garretts-roofing-fire-admission/story-e6frg6n6-1225829880090
JC
13 Feb 10 at 12:56 am
F.M.
Four people dead 86 houses burned?
“I have absolute confidence in the minister,” the Prime Minister said.
This is surreal.
C.L.
13 Feb 10 at 1:24 am
The Rudd government is like a condensed version of UK labor. It took 10 years for the UK labor government to implode, over version is trying to do it in 3 years.
JOE HOCKEY: ………This week alone it’s emerged that there’s been an $850 million blowout on a $150 million environmental program.
Well, you know what people missed this week, and we will not let them miss it, is when Lindsay Tanner said that with these pink batt programs the Government couldn’t dot the i and cross the ts. You couldn’t expect that in multi-billion programs. That’s from a Finance Minister responsible for a budget each year in excess of $320 billion. So surely, now that it’s been proven that we have a Finance Minister that just dismisses the failure of a pink batt program as, “Well, you know, that’s the way it goes,” surely people will start to focus on the real game, which is the behaviour of the Government itself.
It’s all Barnaby’s fault.
How the hell do you have a blowout from $150 million to $850 million on just one program?
But it gets worse.
JOE HOCKEY: No, no, no. Well, I tell you what: if we had a Finance Minister who was passionately engaged, we wouldn’t have billion dollar blowouts on Medicare, on the PBS, we wouldn’t have a $5 billion increase in the interest alone on Government debt. We would not have billion dollar blowouts on computer-in-schools program, a $1.5 billion blowout …
It’s Barnaby’s fault.
No wonder Ken Henry has no freaking idea where our debt position is, as no one could possibly have a handle on this with all the blowouts.
JC
13 Feb 10 at 1:37 am
Herald Sun headline says it all:
4 deaths and 86 fires but Garrett’s safe.
C.L.
13 Feb 10 at 1:37 am
ENVIRONMENT Minister Peter Garrett insists his job is safe despite a soaring tally of disasters from his ceiling insulation program.
Demands for his dismissal continue mounting today, The Daily Telegraph newspaper reports.
“I’m not going anywhere at all except back to my office. I’ve got my sleeves rolled up. I intend to get on with work,” he said.
No, no no. Please don’t. Stop the fires and the death tolls by NOT rolling up your sleeves and going getting to work.
JC
13 Feb 10 at 1:40 am
Some places have 5 deaths (if anyone can nail this down I’d be grateful, I’m in the UK and not completely up with this story), attributing the last death to heat exhaustion. Once again, a sparky doing installations.
skepticlawyer
13 Feb 10 at 2:52 am
SL, the heat exhaustion case was a 19 year-old intellectually handicapped man. It was his first day of working after two weeks of “training.” He came out of the ceiling and died.
C.L.
13 Feb 10 at 3:10 am
Should it be attributed to this roofing business, CL, or was it just one of those things? I know that is a dreadful thing to say, but you know what I mean.
The first inkling I got over here that this was very bad was a batch family email from one of my brothers (who happens to be a sparky) assuring the rest of us that no, he ‘wasn’t doing any of those insulation jobs’.
I knew nothing of the history, or that there have been ongoing issues with it.
skepticlawyer
13 Feb 10 at 3:16 am
Just for the record (and especially seeing I said on another thread that I felt a little sorry for Garrett):
a. I never liked Midnight Oil. As a friend once said to me in the 1980′s “every song’s a whinge”.
b. JC is right. If Garrett is locked into a redundant anti nuclear position, he’s actually more of a problem for the planet than a help;
c. I can still feel a little sorry for him because I bet at every stage he had some public servant in his ear saying about the warnings “yeah, well they would say that wouldn’t they.”
steve from brisbane
13 Feb 10 at 8:30 am
This insulation thing is a can of worms; old houses with old cabling which has lost its protective insulation; improper wiring by sparkies; ditto by DIY sparkies; improper fitting of halogen downlights.
There are a lot of houses out there that should be rewired – anything built prior to around the 1950s with that old rubber cabling
rog
13 Feb 10 at 8:34 am
Gee Rog, you gave me (and others) grief about this all through the thread and now you’re posting that comment.
Dude you need to use the medications consistently or you end up in a really confused mental state
JC
13 Feb 10 at 10:33 am
New scandal now being reported:
Peter Garrett now faces tough new questions.
Andrew Bolt’s explanation for Rudd protecting Garrett rings true:
C.L.
13 Feb 10 at 11:47 am
CL, that’s shocking.
I’d agree that Bolt’s explanation is likely, too.
Legal Eagle
13 Feb 10 at 1:30 pm
Yeah Eagle, I’m beginning to think it’s possible Garrett was ordered to man up and recklessly continue the scheme by Rudd.
C.L.
13 Feb 10 at 1:42 pm
[...] This blog in danger of many other political blogs of being way too predictable. However, some of the authors of this blog fight against this expressing opinions that are against the expected right-wing view – such as a like of Peter Garrett. [...]
New Blogs Update 4 « Log My Blog BLOG!
17 Feb 10 at 3:37 pm
Life is full of ironies. Like comparing the pic of the radical Garrett from the past screaming in the face of a sorely tested Police Officer and the miserable sloppy chops pic of the same tyro from yesterday. Here’s another irony- as a bit of a player and devotee of Australian music, I play some Midnight Oils songs. This necessitates knowing the the lyrics as well as the music. The irony is that even in his rad rock star persona, he could still put out misinformation and spin; to wit, the song Blue Sky Mining. It’s about Asbestos mining. Does Garrett proudly blast out,’if the asbestos mining company won’t save me….’? No, he calls it a sugar refining company. This shows the soft core of a man of straw (hey I should take up rap, with a silent”c”) show- ponying around as some sort of angry social warrior with an escape clause in the back pocket. I detest such shenanigans.
Fabian
28 Feb 10 at 4:58 pm