Do we like Peter Garrett?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Decades of climate and social-justice work and a Labor voting record to match, with a few real stumbles along the way.
Garrett is the towering Midnight Oil frontman who spent years as president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, then went into Parliament and became Labor's environment minister. Few rock stars have swapped the stage for the front bench, and he did it without ditching the causes that made his name. These days he is back as chair of Landcare Australia, talking about leaving the country in a better state than we found it.
The marriage story has a wobble in it. In 2006 he said on telly he didn't have a problem with it, but in 2010 his office said the minister supported the government's position, which then opposed same-sex marriage. By 2011 he was telling the ABC he couldn't see the major impediments. Fair to call that a minister toeing the party line before the party moved.
The insulation scheme is the big stain. Installers died under the home insulation program he was responsible for, and he told the royal commission he bore ultimate responsibility, while saying he hadn't been warned about risks in a similar New Zealand scheme. The commission found neither he nor Mark Arbib was specifically warned about installer risk before the first death, though it called one decision highly unsatisfactory. That is a failure of oversight, not malice, and he owned it.
Then there's the envelope. In 2015 Garrett told the ABC a Clubs NSW representative handed him an envelope of cash, and Clubs NSW rejected the claim as false. After checking with a former staffer he retracted it, saying it held a cheque for his electorate office, and asked for the comments to be pulled from a documentary and his memoir. Independent MP Andrew Wilkie said the retraction beggared belief. A sloppy memory on a serious claim, and a fair mark against him.
On stage he is still pointed. At Perth Festival in 2025 he told the crowd to pretend they were dancing on Gina Rinehart's grave, and her spokesperson called him an attention-seeking activist. It is crude, aimed at a billionaire rather than at any group of people, and it is classic Garrett. In 2022 he was just as blunt about Woodside's gas plans, calling them a crime.
The good stuff is long-running. He now leads an independent, crowd-funded AUKUS public inquiry with four fellow commissioners, which has toured the country, and he complained the decision was made with minimal public debate. Where you land on AUKUS depends on how you read the submarine deal, but he is putting his name and time behind public scrutiny of it.