I Love The '80's: The Australian Edition

With John Howard now busy unpacking his bags after an 11-and-a-half-year stint as Australian Prime Minister (a down-under warm-up for our own political embarrassment who will be packing his bags around this time next year), newly sworn-in Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a not unexpected but still somewhat unusual cabinet appointment last week. Pete Garrett, former lead singer with Australian '80's rock band Midnight Oil, becomes environment, heritage and arts minister for the new center-left Australian Labor Party (ALP) government. In case you lived under a rock through the '80's, Midnight Oil was an incredibly popular yet more-or-less one-hit wonder here in the States with their song Beds Are Burning.


Beds are Burning was a powerful political song about giving native Australian lands back to Aboriginal communities. The band famously performed this song in front of a world audience of billions (including former Prime Minister John Howard) at the closing ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympics. The band was dressed in black, with the words "Sorry" printed conspicuously on their clothes––a reference to the Prime Minister's refusal to apologize, on behalf of Australia, to Aboriginal Australians for over 200 years of land grabs and marginalization.

While it looked as if Garrett would also add a cabinet position on climate change to his portfolio, loose lips and strategic errors on his part during the campaign resulted in that post being handed to another politician. Garrett was repudiated by Mr. Rudd over his suggestion that Labor would sign up to a post-2012 agreement that did not require developing countries to immediately reduce greenhouse gas emissions and "joked" to Australian broadcaster Steve Price that ALP policies would change if the party was elected to government. He was also criticized for giving support to plans to build a paper mill in the environmentally sensitive Tamar Valley of Tasmania.

Word of Colin Hay, former lead singer of Men At Work, holding any remaining cabinet posts has not yet been confirmed, although it has been suggested that Kylie Minogue will be in top-level discussions next week at The Lodge in Canberra.