16 March 2009

SUBJECTS:  SoundRelief concert

FAINE:  Peter Garrett on Saturday night was performing a role other than his formal title of Minister for the Environment in the Federal Government. Peter Garrett, good morning.

GARRETT: Good morning Jon.

FAINE:  Which do you prefer?

GARRETT: Well I enjoy doing them both. I obviously don’t do the singing that often now but when the opportunity arose, I enjoyed the opportunity to do it. But I am doing my other job right now, as we speak.

FAINE: Yes, and you have to try and get back into a different mind space. For people who weren’t there on Saturday night here’s a little of what Peter Garrett was doing when he wasn’t doing his day job.

[excerpt from SoundRelief concert]

FAINE: Peter Garrett at the MCG on Saturday night. Does it, in some way – mixing with different people in a different circle for a night, just one night – put Canberra back into a different context for you, Peter Garrett?

GARRETT: No, not really Jon. As you know, and your listeners know, I was in the Oils for a very long period of time and it was great to see the guys again. And we were lucky we had an opportunity to do a couple of warm-ups here in Canberra on the Thursday and the Friday, so I could get myself in the right place to do credit to what we wanted to do on the Saturday night. But it was good to catch up with people, and to see some of the other bands as well – mates we have played with in the past who had come together for pretty much the same reason.

FAINE:  But I am wondering on a different level. Politics is a bubble. Parliament House is almost a sanctuary. You can spend almost your whole life as a minister in the Federal Government without meeting real people or talking about real issues. You walk the red carpet, yet get into the white car, people tug their forelock at you.

GARRETT: I don’t agree with that at all Jon. In fact, I usually make it a habit to go out on a Friday night or a Saturday morning and I just do the shopping. I go to shopping centres. I am very accessible to people at all times. I am a visible politician as you know, and I actually don’t buy that. I am being connected with, and contacting people about their issues, all the time. If anything, rock and roll is more of a bubble than being a pollie to be frank.

FAINE:  Good point, good point. But on the other hand you might meet people who talk to you in quite a different way when you are back on the rock and roll circuit than when you are a politician or a federal minister.

GARRETT: I don’t think so. What we were about on Saturday night was actually being part of the event. It was pretty quick for me to get the logistics of actually doing a couple of shows before we got to the G. We were focussed on the bread and butter, the nuts and bolts, of performance – and that was getting our crew back together, running down the songs, making sure what we’d do. We had a brass section that played with us so we wanted to rehearse them in. So it was very much getting the machine tooled up again and figuring out how to get from a to b.

FAINE: Does the impact of Saturday night stay with you, the good will that was at the G – I wasn’t there but everyone who was says it was fantastic. Gudinski spoke long and loud, and so he should, about how proud he was that people came together so quickly so seamlessly, and I wonder if some of that can flow through as well. Politics being a pretty oppositional  – as we just heard – kind of business.

GARRETT: I think it was an incredible night, no doubt about it. And the Sydney event was a very good event as well. Apart from anything else, it was a continuation of what we had already seen, Jon. We saw it in the parliament. And I am not pushing this too hard but remember that there has been a strong – across partisan divides, across community – response to what happened in Victoria. We listened to people like Fran Bailey talk about the impact that the fires had on her electorate. I know in my own local area – where we have got a Liberal mayor – they opened up one of the rooms in the council chambers at Randwick for people to bring in clothing and goods and things like that. It filled up within three days and that was from the floor to the ceiling. The fact is that this was an event that, in a sense, has garnered up Australians concerns and focus and empathy in a way that few others have and that is what Saturday night is about as well. Look, it was a really amazing event to find that people were in G, that many people, an incredible crowd, it rained earlier in the day –

FAINE: Dreadful weather.

GARRETT:  Shocking weather but that didn’t turn people off for a second. And I think once you get onstage as a band, it’s not about you. It’s about the fact that you are there with others. And I will certainly carry that with me. There is no question about it. It was an absolute landmark event and we were thrilled that we were able to be a part of it.

FAINE: Are you going to cop a ribbing at Question Time?

GARRETT: Who knows. I wouldn’t have thought so.

FAINE: Well it is almost without precedent. I can’t think of anybody who has held a position like the one you hold who has gone and done what you did on Saturday night. It’s like Arnie Schwarzenegger deciding to go and star in another movie

GARRETT: Yeah but you know what, I think that people recognise that it was a one-off . There was strong support around here for me to do it if we could. And I only said to the Oils “look let’s do it” because I thought we could. And I thought we’d be able to get ourselves to the point where we had spent that much time playing together as people, we know one another well.  We have played these songs in every possible, conceivable circumstance. And to be able to go and play it in this circumstance was something which I felt that we were able to do, and to do it well. And now I am back at work.

FAINE: Thank you for doing both. Midnight Oil frontman and Minister for the Environment, Peter Garrett, speaking to us back in the parliament office but this was his office last Saturday night.

[excerpt from SoundRelief concert]

ends