Tuesday, 12 December, 2006

by Misha Schubert and Michelle Grattan
The Age

In the eyes of many fans, Peter Garrett will always be the rock star - not the politician. That much was clear as he cut a swathe through Bundaberg yesterday, eclipsing his new political leader on the campaign trail.

The Oils played this Queensland sugar town many years ago, but this time Garrett was back in a new and much more testing guise - as Labor's new shadow minister for climate change and the environment. To locals such as Marie Carkeet, who declared she'd been a fan since she was a teenager, his appeal came down to his towering public image as a straight-shooter. "What you say is what you get with you - you've always been an upfront person, you've always been like that," she told him when they met on the street.

"You've always been outspoken and what you've said, you've tried to do anyway."

He, in turn, welcomed the praise with a modest echo: "Just say it as we see it."

Such adulation is normal in the rock world from which he hails. But the question for Garrett, as he makes the big leap into a front-line role making Labor's case on environmental issues, is whether he can live up to the idealised version of himself in the public mind. Politics, after all, requires compromises - sometimes very big ones.

As the activist once dubbed "a walking icon of outrage", settles in to the epicentre of mainstream institutional politics, he'll likely be called on to recant past views and defend policy with which he disagrees.

But as Wilderness Society national campaigns manager Alec Marr warned yesterday, Labor may have to compromise too if it is to realise its asset in Garrett.

"There's not much point putting someone with a strong environmental history into this portfolio and then giving him totally non-credible messages to sell - that will simply destroy his credibility," Marr argued. Peter Garrett carries his role as celebrity politician modestly. Appearing with Kevin Rudd yesterday, his tall frame towered over his leader and his strong voice boomed out against Rudd's lighter tones.

But the leader was protective of his tyro frontbencher. When, during a joint Bundaberg radio interview, Garrett appeared uncertain over the controversial Traveston Dam, which the Queensland Government is proposing, Rudd jumped in quickly to take the question. Garrett has become used to being quizzed about how he reconciles some of his previously hardline stances with the pragmatism demanded by politics. There is plenty of distance between some of his past language on key issues and Labor policy, particularly on the thorny issues of forests and, most likely (after next year's Labor national conference), on expanding uranium mining, to which he is staunchly opposed.

At an anti-logging rally in Tasmania in 1986, for instance, he was reported to have declared the issue was not a question of jobs but of whether a government and an industry that did not have the support of a majority of Australians should be allowed to destroy areas of universal signifi cance and beauty.

But Peter Garrett the politician is unlikely to speak in such extremes. As for how he will deal with the need for compromise, he does it in two ways. On some things, he maintains his views, fights for them within the party and then accepts the majority decision. On others, he accepts that things and views change.

"I have a very, very strong view that I will carry my passions and commitments to environment issues into whatever role I play in the party and particularly into this role, but I come into the party as a team player," he said. "I will argue out those issues in the caucus and with my colleagues on the shadow front bench. I am about trying to get the best possible solutions to the environment problems we face, so I don't see that as compromise at all. "But I do accept that being in the Labor Party in this senior position (means) I'm necessarily and properly bound by cabinet solidarity and by the rules of the caucus and of the leader."

As evidence of his ability to work with a wide range of interests, Garrett points to his time as ACF president, especially his second term when he worked closely with business.

"We go through phases of our working life and we bring to new positions that we have some of the experiences we've had in the past. But we also want to bring to the new position the experiences that we have as a sitting member."

Garrett is well-rehearsed about the inevitable questions about uranium mining. Despite his opposition, the signs are that the party will liberalise its "no new mines policy".

"I've always said that this will be a vigorous debate within the party," he said.

"All that I can do is express my own views in a party debate in the appropriate forums - and that's what I will do up to the conference."

In this regard, he is in a similar position to the man he has replaced in the environmental portfolio, Anthony Albanese, who is strong opponent of new mines. Garrett makes it clear that if the policy is liberalised, he will accept the decision and advocate it as best he can. He recalls that in a speech some time ago he recognised that for some countries' "nukes" might be considered as a transition technology to get themselves to a low carbon and renewablebased fuel structure. But timing, expense and the problem of waste ruled this out for Australia.

Garrett talks of the urgency of tackling climate change with the fluency and commitment of a believer who is also knowledgeable.

It's vital that action be taken now, he says. He foreshadows further information will come in the next 18 months, backing up the Stern report, that will show the "scale of risk is of the order of major world wars and depressions". "That's the prism we have to address this issue through," he said, adding that the way we address it "will be one of the defining issues of this Government and future governments". But "I don't think this is necessarily an issue about ideological politics, it's an issue about generational change".

"And when the public is alert and aware and informed about that issue, it becomes a very potent force for change."

Garrett says he is as enthusiastic about politics and being in the Labor Party as when he entered parliament. There had been some "unpredictable" developments during his time there. "I certainly didn't expect events to transpire in the way that they have" he said. He had wanted to "look, listen and learn - and I've had an opportunity to do that for two years."

Stepping into this major role, Garrett will play a crucial public role for Labor as it counts down to the next election. But much of what he is asked to sell will be decided by Kevin Rudd, with the prerogatives of leadership to put his stamp on major issues.

Yet Marr, whose group advocates a tough line on locking up more old-growth forests from loggers, celebrated when Rudd moved Labor's former resources spokesman Martin Ferguson out of that role this week. Yet the tension between Labor's blue-collar timber union base, with which Ferguson is close, will not evaporate on this question. And Labor's electoral strategy will be mindful of the disastrous outcry against former Labor leader Mark Latham's ambitious forests policy at the 2004 election, which alienated the battler communities the party was trying to woo back from John Howard.

"One of the biggest obstacles (to a good forests policy) was Martin Ferguson - the removal of him from that role is a massive step forward," Marr said.

"Martin Ferguson was an outright enemy of the environment. (CFMEU official) Michael O'Connor is another barrier - the question is can Kevin Rudd take these people on and win, that's not up to Peter Garrett, it's down to Kevin Rudd."

For his part, Garrett seems fired up for the task at hand, relishing the idea of getting out and campaigning and tapping into the "energy on the street" in Bundaberg. When he entered parliament he took a "concentric circle view". The immediate circle was his electorate of Kingsford Smith; the next circle was the parliament; then came the campaigning in the country.

In Bundaberg yesterday, it was clear Garrett is now very much operating around the wide circle.