It should come as no surprise that Peter Garrett has burst onto the party political scene amid controversy. It’s not as if he’s lived his adult public life as a wallflower. The French historian and politician Alexis de Tocqueville may well have understood the drive behind Peter Garrett.
Garrett is a highly credentialled candidate, despite the messy details over his irregular voting record. In addition to both academically-earned and honorary degrees, and the negotiating skills needed to head up the Australian Conservation Foundation, Garrett earlier showed the discipline necessary to direct a rock band that aimed for commercial success and a credible social message. As he says, he’s ‘ready to come into the mainstream’.
I met Peter Garrett a few years ago when he was the President of the Australian Conservation Foundation. We had come together to discuss his involvement in environmental issues for a book I was researching. Over more than an hour his fixity of purpose never wavered.
For one raised as a carefree, suburban Sydney boy, Garrett is living an extraordinarily charged and committed life. He seems to radiate moral principle, yet you feel he’s fighting for our values. It takes a certain bravery to match Garrett’s forceful oratory.
Garrett grew up in West Pymble in the 1950s, his family living on a block of land abutting the Lane Cove National Park. He remembers playing around the river, building rafts and dams, climbing trees, and listening to the sounds of wildlife as he lay in bed at night.
‘I became aware that nature has a kind of presence, an atmosphere. I have no fear or loathing of lying on the ground, of getting down among the insects, and I know the terrific freedom I was lucky enough to experience as a kid growing up around the bush.’
Garrett’s next lessons in respect for nature came from surfing and the excitement of interacting with what he describes as ‘a primordial energy’.
For a radical, Garrett leads a stable personal life, most likely a result of his committed Christianity. He studied Arts Law at ANU in the early 1970s, completing the degree at UNSW, he married in 1985, and has three children. Garrett resists attempts to pry into his family life, drawing a clear line between the personal and the public. The public side of his life seems to have been fully integrated, with music and environmental protests dovetailing into campaigns such as those