christopher kremmer
 | |  | |  | |  | |  |
| All rights reserved. |
|
IT'S TIME FOR A CHANGE
October 15, 2007
Australians are going to the polls, and for the next six weeks our
newspapers and broadcast media will be full of blow-by-blow
accounts of the campaign.
But not this blog! Sure, I watched the news, was mildly interested
at first, and then found myself tuning out as our political leaders
trotted out their well-rehearsed lines.
Retreating to the lounge room (a TV-free zone at our place) I
gravitated towards the stack of old LP records that sits at the foot
of the bookcase and rarely, if ever, gets attention. Lurking there
was a musical IED (Improvised Explosive Device) that could well turn
this election for anyone classed as a late-to-the-party Baby Boomer.
And there it was, a stark black and gold cover image of a writhing,
muscular young man, head draped in a bandana letting go a mouth-
wide-open scream of something between excitement and rage. It
was Peter Garrett, and the recording by the legendary Midnight Oil
was Head Injuries, recorded at Trafalgar Studios in Sydney in
July/August of 1979.
Well! Let's just say the record was more exciting than the news--a
shattering, sonic assault on the senses that has never been topped
before or since. From crunching, metallic anthems like Cold Cold
Change and No Reaction, to racy, surf-music influenced chasers like
Back on the Borderline, the record hurled me back to my sweaty,
decibel-dominated youth at dives like Sydney's Bondi Lifesaver. But,
unexpectedly, it threw me back into the political maelstrom of today.
Why? Well, because I realised that it's kind of cool that among all
those grey men of the government and opposition benches, all
those doctors, lawyers, and former trades unionists, and political
apparatchiks, are some real people.
Peter Garrett, a former head of the Australian Conservation
Foundation, has taken a lot of heat in recent months for "selling
out" by backing controversial projects like a big, polluting pulp mill in
the island state of Tasmania. But right or wrong, Garrett was part
of my youth. If he's had to compromise, who hasn't? Show me
someone "pure", and I'll show you a bore or a hypocrite. Give me
real every time.
This time around, along with all their unionist mates, the Labor
Party is fielding a bunch of so-called celebrity candidates. Some of
them are well known media figures—a television journalist and even
a weatherman. But others include a former army commando, and of
course, that gangly ex-pop star.
The Howard Cabinet looks a little--how can I put it?—dull by
comparison: Downer and Costello, Abbott and Ruddock, Nelson and
Howard himself, most of them having lived high on the hog
courtesy of our taxes for more than a decade. Frankly, there's not
a lot of colour between them.
Whatever their record, whatever their policies, I find myself asking,
has any of them ever provided even a moment of inspiration—
intellectual, emotional or moral? What could a person like Kevin
Andrews ever do for me?
Maybe it's time they all went out and got real jobs. And maybe it's
someone else's turn run the country.
I would not be foolish enough to suggest that a Rudd Labor
government is going to be the acme of excitement or progressive
policies. Australian politics has become way too narrowly based and
corporatised for that.
But somewhere deep down, that scrawny kid that was me, standing
too close to those booming speakers in that dive in Bondi,
recognises that he has more in common with that big bald guy than
he could ever have with Howard's Old Boys.
And that could just be enough to make me turn out on polling day.
*
COMMENTARY |
Click on the latest
commentary.....
commentary.....