Do we like them?

Do we like Martin Rotsey?

Our score: 6 out of 10. Nothing harmful found and a band with a long record of causes, but very little reporting on Rotsey himself to go on.

Martin Rotsey is the guitarist in Midnight Oil, the Sydney band that was big on pub-rock punch and louder on politics. He's the quiet one on the page: most coverage goes to Peter Garrett out the front, and Rotsey rarely gets a profile of his own.

That means there's no big scandal story to tell, and we won't invent one. Across our searches, nothing turned up of him being sued, charged or called out for anything, though that's partly because so little is written about him personally.

On the harm check, we found no comments from him about LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or vaccines, good or bad. The band's public record is environmental and community causes, and the company he keeps right now is Garrett and Spiderbait's Kram, hardly a worry.

The recent news is a sad one for the band. Drummer Rob Hirst died in January 2026, and the surviving members put out a tribute together. Rotsey has since signed on for a short run of pub gigs in November with Garrett's Alter Egos, playing some Oils classics.

On the good stuff, the band reunited in 2009 for the Sound Relief bushfire benefit at the MCG, with the Red Cross appeal as the aim. That's a band credit rather than a solo one, but he was part of that lineup, and it fits the way they've always used their gigs.

So the call: a pass on both tests, held back from the top end only because the record on him personally is thin. If new reporting turns up, we'd look again. For now, he's a safe fan favourite.