THE CONFAB WITH MICHAEL G IN CONVERSATION WITH PETER GARRETT

As part of our 50th anniversary celebrations we have a special edition of the Confab focusing on a former volunteer with 2xxfm. 

Peter is an Australian musician, environmentalist, activist and former politician. In 1973, Peter became the lead singer of the Australian rock band Midnight Oil. As a performer he is known for his signature bald head, his eccentric dance style, and a "mesmerising onstage presence".  

Peter has also served as President of the Australian Conservation Foundation for ten years before being elected for the Labor Party as the Member of the House of Representatives for the seat of Kingsford Smith in the 2004 election.

 Join me on the Confab to gain an understanding of his life journey and passions.

Transcript

SPEAKER_08 0:00

Welcome to the Confab with Michael G on the people powered radio 2XFM 98.3. We're streaming online and on demand on 2xfm.org.au. Tonight our guest is Peter. Peter is an Australian musician, environmentalist, activist, and former politician. Back in the 1970s, Peter became the lead singer of the Australian rock band Midnight Oil. Now, tonight we are going to learn a little bit about his life story and passions. Welcome to the contract with Michael G. Peter, welcome to Two Double X. Good sir. How are you?

SPEAKER_05 3:51

Yeah, I'm good. Thanks, Michael.

SPEAKER_08 3:52

We played your first track that you selected for the program. Would you like to introduce the track? Who is the performer? And most importantly, why is why did you select that track as your first track?

SPEAKER_05 4:05

Oh, well, it was a bit self-indulgent because it's me uh with my second band, The Alter Egos, on the last record that I did called True North. And the track is Innocence. It's got a part one and a part two. We've just listened to part one. And the reason I chose it was that it represents uh distillation for me as best as I could make of how I feel about what's going on in the world, the things that are important to me, set within a musical context, but also on an issue which I think is pervading for us all. The issue of how do we live in balance with the planet, uh, the big pressures of the climate crisis that's coming our way. And I was really happy with the way it came out and ended up, and I thought that everybody that played on it, you know, did a pretty cracking job. So I thought, well, why not have it as one of the ones to listen to?

SPEAKER_08 4:57

Now, Peter, you said to me when before we uh recorded today's programme that you can remember a long way back in your in your as a young child. Tell me, your mum and dad, were they born here in Australia or did they come to Australia?

SPEAKER_05 5:10

Uh no, so both my parents were third and fourth generation Australians. They were born here. Uh, my mum grew up in the southern highlands of New South Wales. My dad was actually born in Papua New Guinea, but ended up living in Australia uh after World War II. And we grew up on the north shore of Sydney through the 50s and the 60s until I left um school and left home and then went to Canberra uh to study as an arts law student at the ANU.

SPEAKER_08 5:39

Well, we'll cover that journey that you took to get to that point shortly. But your mum and dad were did your mum and dad both work, or did your father work in in the you know, the old style of mum work mum stays at home, dad works?

SPEAKER_05 5:53

No, actually they both worked, and it was interesting to me because it was one of the first indications I got that the family was a bit different because particularly some of my better off friends, the mothers at that time weren't working, but my mum was amongst the first cohort of women who uh had been recruited into uh the armed forces during World War II, sort of early 1940s through to 1945 when the war ended. And when they were released from whether they were working in the Air Force or the Army or whatever, and most of it was in support uh sort of capacities and jobs in Australia, they were given the opportunity, if they had a reasonable graduation mark, to go to university. And so she was uh, along with some of her friends, amongst the first generation of women who actually studied. Uh, she went to the University of Sydney, she did a course called Armandry, which back in the day was more like uh a sort of a slightly sophisticated matron in a hospital type course, but it became the precursor to social work. And she became a social worker and worked professionally as a social worker uh up until the time she passed away. And my dad was a business manager. Uh he actually left home relatively early. He didn't uh study at uni at all. He started working as a salesman for various companies around Sydney and ended up working for um a big paints and chemical company, and he managed the Sydney office. So, yeah, they both worked. Uh, my mum a little less full-time than my dad from memory, but I certainly was used to coming home uh either to an empty house or going to my grandparents who lived around the corner from us in West Pimble, and you know, doing my homework and mucking around and playing outside, and then eventually uh mum would show up and uh you know, we'd have a bite to eat and the night would unfold.

SPEAKER_08 7:49

And what was your early memories of uh primary school in uh in in the North Shore?

SPEAKER_05 7:55

Uh I went to Gordon West uh primary, which is on the western side of the North Shore for people that know Sydney at all. It's the western side of the railway line, so uh it was a newer suburb, um, smaller blocks, and people who were looking to improve their lives, I guess, were living there. The school itself was uh really fantastic in as much as it had uh a lot of outside play areas, trees, little bits of bush down the back where the oval was. And because it was a very new school, the principal took it upon themselves to plant it out with trees, which if you drive past today, you can see how fantastic it is. And in the years that I were there, which is a very long time ago now, we were pressed into tree planting. So this was this was long before my subsequent experiences with forests and tree planting and the bush and so on. And it was a happy place. I mean, I think it was uh it's it's it was a really good suburb to grow up in. We walked to school, I rode our bikes. There were little bush blocks and bush valleys around about the place. I I know that's where I got uh my deep love for nature. And yeah, as far as I was concerned, the teachers were terrific and I was happy there.

SPEAKER_08 9:09

Were there any special teachers in that period in your life that influenced you or were memorable?

SPEAKER_05 9:16

Uh not really. Uh I think I can remember a couple of the names, and they were they were terrific teachers, but not in the sense I think that you mean the question. I think uh the the the stronger influences in my life at that point in time, apart from uh growing up at a family, my mum and dad, would have been my mother's father, my grandfather on my mum's side. And my grandparents had come down from the Highlands to live closer to my mum and they used to look after us a bit and do the you know, looking after a little people thing while mum was at work. And I really respected and liked the way that they conducted themselves. I realize now in retrospect, you know, I didn't really know at the time, you're just a kid, but it was just something about the quiet purpose of that household. Uh they were always doing something. He had a garage workshop out the back where he was busy making things. They grew um veggies, they cooked their own food, they were I mean, they'd lived through the depression, uh, people of that generation, which is such a long time ago now, but I I suppose in their own minds it was still a pretty fresh indentation. Plus, he'd served in World War One as well, he'd been wounded, but he was a very quiet, dignified, purposeful person, and I realized a bit of that rubbed off on me as some someone to be impressed by in later life.

SPEAKER_08 10:34

Was your grandfather Australian in the sense of born here in Australia or did he migrate to Australia?

SPEAKER_05 10:39

No, he was born here, he was born in Bondi, actually.

SPEAKER_08 10:42

And what was you saying that that a sense about their life and and the world around them? Was there anything special, any lessons that you learnt from your granddad in particular that has stayed with you?

SPEAKER_05 10:55

Well, I I I think they were very stoic people. You know, they'd uh I mean he was a dentist by training and wanted to be an engineer, and he was an intelligent man, but he was quiet and unassuming. He never sort of beat his chest the whole time. He'd been through a hell of a lot. He was very community-minded, but I never heard him whinge or complain. And I think they bore their infirmities, and there were plenty of them, with a considerable amount of um graciousness, and they were interested in others. And I mean, in a little you know, in a way you might say that they're a in quite a contraption of the modern era that we that we are in now where people are are are very upfront about themselves and you know, I'm being the true me and you know, sharing everything and all in sundry, which by the way, I think in some ways is quite healthy up to a point. But they weren't so much guarded as they just got on with it. And uh I think I probably carried that with me a little bit uh over my years.

SPEAKER_08 11:51

And in that part of the if Sydney, was it a pretty much a white s suburb or were there different cultures coming into the suburb in that period of your life?

SPEAKER_05 12:01

No, it was it was basically European. I mean, interestingly, when I when I got out of the federal parliament, which is much later on in the day, and I wrote uh I did my own autobiography, I went back and did a bit of research because I seem to remember as kids when we played down in the Lancove River Valley that I sort of just had a feeling that people had been around there or that there were, you know, there were footpaths, there were little paths through the bush that we followed, and it took me forever to, of course, work out the natural fact. Uh there were still some small bands of First Nations people, Aboriginal people, who were living in some of the more remote gullies. I mean, essentially what happened up there is it's the same story as in in much many parts of Australia. It's either a highway, a road, or a railway gets pushed through, and then the land gets released for housing. Uh the North Shore was quite an affluent part of Sydney back in the day, but to the on the verges it was less so because that's where the new housing developments were, and we we were in one of those, and it was mainly European, and a lot of people uh returned service people from the war. Yeah, apart from the the ghostly footsteps of Aboriginal people, the rest of it was um fairly straight up and down, white.

SPEAKER_08 13:13

And in your primary school period in your life, what were your outside engagement, entertainment? What kept you what kept you occupied outside of school in uh in that early years?

SPEAKER_05 13:25

Well, I was pretty active as a young kid. I used to love being outside, playing with my mates, playing with my brothers. We had bikes. There was a big quarry close by to where we lived, which uh was no longer being used, but it was a fantastic place to you know run around doing all sorts of getting up to all sorts of mischief. Uh lots of sport. And uh I joined the scouts early on. I think I was encouraged to probably by my parents who were well and truly over the hyperactivity in the house. And so I spent a great deal of my younger years uh in the outdoors. I loved testing myself, whether it was climbing or kayaking or uh surfing. After a while, I took up surfing, which I really loved, and that and uh getting into choirs. I got into choirs quite early on, first church choirs when I was still in primary school. Because I was looking for uh boy sopranos, and even then the church wasn't considered that much of a place to go to. But I think I I just you know I ended up up there and uh and I really loved loved singing. I loved all that music when the when the organs sort of kicked into gear and it was almost like a tuneful semi-trailer, really something to hear. So those two things pretty much kept me occupied uh through my childhood.

SPEAKER_08 14:40

Really going to the church was just purely the music drive or was it any religious uh part of your life at that point?

SPEAKER_05 14:48

The family wasn't specifically religious, although we had gone off to Sunday school and occasionally showed up at the local uh Anglican or Uniting Church in the suburb. But of course I was in church every Sunday, sometimes twice a Sunday. And I went through a period where I was probably more conventionally religious than what certainly than what I am now. Went to some youth camps and things of that sort, and was involved in youth groups, partly to meet girls, you know, but also to get to the deeper truths.

SPEAKER_08 15:19

And were your mum and dad thought of of your early engagement in music, or were they just interested that you were interested in an activity?

SPEAKER_05 15:27

I think they were just trying to get me out of the house, you know. I I think that and I've chatted to my brothers about it. I mean, I'm one of three boys, I'm the eldest. And we were all pretty energetic, and I'm not gonna say that we were hypermanic, although maybe we were. But we would have been a handful, you know, and and I think particularly in those ages from about maybe eight or nine through to about sixteen, when you've got a lot of pent-up energy and testosterone starting to flow through your body and so on, anything to to get us out and involved in something would have been probably the order of the day.

SPEAKER_08 16:02

Yeah, Pete, you've left primary school, you're now into high school. What was your uh first impressions of going to high school? Was it a mixed school or did you go to public or private?

SPEAKER_05 16:14

No, I went to a uh a boys-only private school in the north of Sydney and then the end of the northern suburbs called Barker College. I primarily went uh, well, I had no choice really. I I went where I was sent. But uh my dad had always wanted his boys to go to a school like that. He hadn't been to a school like that, but his parents and family had. So he felt like he was redressing the sort of the historical gap, I suppose, in seeing that kind of education as being worthwhile. And at that time, I think it is true that and it's still true today, but less so, people who go to those sorts of schools, and I have a number of colleagues that have, and I've got lots of friends that haven't, end up with a network of people that they can interact with later on when they leave school or when if they study. And for middle to upper middle class Australians, it's sort of it's a soft trampoline to potentially having a relatively successful life, even if you're a bit slack and lazy or not that bright. So, you know, it was I I wasn't a great fan of my private school education, but my dad wanted us to go there. I would have happily gone to the local high school, which is where most of my mates went. But nevertheless, uh that was his wish and and we honored it. Uh it's now a co-ed school, um, but it's it, you know, it's one of those very big, uh, very expensive private schools that can provide fantastic facilities and a good education for people, but are still out of the reach of many Australians.

SPEAKER_08 17:46

And from an academic perspective, what was interesting you from a study side in your uh high school period?

SPEAKER_05 17:53

Uh look, I wasn't much of a student, Michael, to be honest. I mean, I I I mean, look, I did okay, and uh, but I was always too easily distracted by what was going outside, you know, classroom. It could get very fidgety and you know, just pretty much want to be want to be running around or when I got a bit older, heading to the beach. I did uh very much enjoy geography and uh put in a bit of effort uh with geography towards the end and was rewarded with good marks and likewise English literature, no real scientific or mathematical events, and of course there was music as well. We had a really good music teacher there. Uh and I enjoyed that a lot. I mean I learned to read music in a kind of haphazard fashion. But I just got to be exposed to the great canon of of of music over the ages, you know, what we might think of sort of as classical music and you know, Mozart and Beethoven and so on. There's a lot there's a lot more to it than that. But I certainly got the opportunity to listen to that and also I sang in the in the Barker choir for many, many years and did a few theatrical productions and muck about a bit. But it wouldn't have been my happiest time. I mean, is adolescence happy for anybody? I I met very few people that had an unblemished adolescence. And I think I was conscientious enough or dutiful enough to to go and you know not get chucked out and try and make an effort, but uh I didn't consider it to be the best place on earth at the time and I still don't know.

SPEAKER_08 19:23

Now looking at a private school versus public schools and schools in general, that period of your life, two things I suppose. From an environmental perspective, were they forward thinking or not even mentioned mentioning the word environment in any of the studies that you're undertaking at high school?

SPEAKER_05 19:42

Uh no, they weren't necessarily particularly forward thinking, but I wouldn't blame them so much for that because uh I left school in 70, believe it or not, and it wasn't until 1972 that the first Earth summit was held internationally. That was at Rio de Janeiro, it was called the Rio Earth Summit, which is really the first time, apart from specialist bushwalking people or scientists or naturalists, that the word environment was heard much at all. I think yeah, look, the education at Barker was certainly comprehensive because they can afford good teachers and parents can afford the good books as it were in the day. We weren't learning from laptops. It wasn't, it was hierarchical and it was modeled somewhat on the English public school system from back in the day, and it was all a bit silly, you know. We w we wore these straw hats and you had to jump up and down and sing songs and uh about the house and everyone took that sort of side of things very seriously. But I'm not wanting to be too scathing about it, because at the same time it was a set of values that were imparted. They were they were Judeo-Christian to some extent, but the better part of it, you know, do unto others is you would have done them to yourself and you know think about uh what people are going through and be aware of the circumstances of others. That wasn't denied there by any stretch. But it was a it was a narrow band uh in terms of its gene pool because they were it was solely made up of people from middle and upper middle class backgrounds on the North Shore and across into the Hills district of Sydney.

SPEAKER_08 21:16

You mentioned, Peter, that the music teacher was someone who contributed a lot to your to your studies and the like. Why was that why was she so special? Or so in a way that you can remember her?

SPEAKER_05 21:29

Well, it's a he. Uh his name is Alan Tregaskis. He was a very accomplished organist. And I think just seeing him get completely taken up with the business of playing an organ, you know, when when when an organist plays one of those big organs, everything's going, you know, they're pulling out the stops, they're actually playing the keyboards itself, they've got their feet underneath going on the big um bass pedals. And the thing it's an it's an incredible sound, you know, it's it's it's utterly amazing. And he was so engrossed by it, you know. He I I think was such a lover of the music that he was making that he forgot he was a teacher, he just became a muser and uh that was it was good to be around.

SPEAKER_08 22:09

And going from school back home, there as you say, there was an expectation of your dad to do well at school. Around the table at home, were there any discussions around social issues? Your mum was well educated, your father was sort of in in a sense have it had achieved a lot in his in his life. Did you have chats about the world and the universe around you at home, or was it just basically come home, have lunch, go out or dinner or whatever it might be?

SPEAKER_05 22:37

No, we had a lively home environment, which I think was fantastic and really uh shaped me to some extent, particularly the idea of you know having really kind of healthy and sometimes you know pretty spirited discussions about all sorts of things, including sex, drugs, and religion, you know. And I think that my parents had diff different political persuasion. My mum was much more a labor person, and my dad's background was more on the conservative side of politics, and his social group and family background led that way. So they didn't they weren't sitting uh down at the table basically echoing one another's views. They were having some great Barnies about you know the issues of the day as well. And they had a circle of friends which was quite wide and made up of professional people, but some some artists, not many, but professional people um and others who who had had plenty to say about lots of stuff and it was a good place. Coming to our place was uh where you could do that, both around the dinner table with the family and then uh when people would would drop by for uh drink on the weekends. It was an open door house, which uh I actually really loved. Uh sometimes a bit inconvenient for you, but nevertheless, always good fun.

SPEAKER_08 23:51

Now you've you said that you went to university here in Canberra. Was it an expectation of your mum and dad for that to proceed that you would go from high school to uni?

SPEAKER_05 24:03

Yeah, look, I think it uh I'm not sure that it was a spoken expectation in the way that sometimes people have ringing in their ears when they head off to do whatever. But I think the understanding was that, you know, if you could, you should. And I finally sort of got a bit motivated towards the last year of the the then HSC and managed to drag my equivalent ATAR up. So I did get into um arts law at the universities in Sydney, but I decided to go to the ANU for a bunch of different reasons. I quite like the idea of getting out of town, and they originally had an admissions program where you didn't have to do that well in your final exams if you could show that you were community-minded or you know a contributor, then they'd consider you. And so I'd gone down uh to have a look at the uni. I really loved it. I loved Canberra straight away as soon as I got there. So I decided to go there, and uh, which is where I actually did uh most of my arts degree and about three-quarters of my law degree, and then subsequently, after I met the other guys who were forming what was then a bank or farm, but it became Midnight All, I then moved to Sydney and finished my law degree in Sydney.

SPEAKER_08 25:11

Your mum and dad, were they still actively engaged in your studies, or you know, what was that continuing relationship with you now going into a different sphere of learning and your narrative back at home? Was there a change in direction of of of of your of your conversations with your mum and dad or not?

SPEAKER_05 25:28

No, I don't think so. And I they were pretty hands-off in terms of of my study. I mean, the only family involvement I really had that I can remember in my entire learning years was my middle brother, my younger brother, gave me a hand in in trying to get through the lowest level of maths in the HSC, you know, because it certainly was my weak point and he was pretty good at it. But no, they were very hands-off. And I think I mean parents, and I'm probably my wife and I probably fall into scattering much more hands-on in the modern era, but there's something refreshing about them saying, Well, you know, off you go. We'll see you in six months, see how you go.

SPEAKER_08 26:09

And Peter, before we go into part two of our chat today, in your time at the ANU, was there any experience, any knowledge that may have changed your thinking about the world and the universe and perhaps influence the way you headed post-university?

SPEAKER_05 26:28

Well, it's such a uh an incisive question, Michael, and I but I think the answer's not in a in a in a really like, you know, someone got up on a Monday and said such and such, and then I got up on Tuesday and said, I'm going that way. But I did definitely benefit from the education that I received there in many ways. On the arts humanities side of it, they had a course that was called, well, in the day it was called Man and the Environment, but it would be called humans properly, humans in the environment now. It was essentially a cross between uh well, it was social geography, really. And it was uh it opened my eyes up to the interconnection between human culture, uh history, and how people inhabit spaces and what they do with them. And there's obviously some environmentalism in that. And on the law side, I mean, uh, and I think it's still the case, but certainly then the ANU had some of the country's finest uh legal minds and academics. You know, I've often often joked with friends because I have a lot to do with the law lawyers in my in my later life, uh, and I often joke with people that I'm working with who are QCs or judges or whatever. I wish I'd paid a bit more attention. I didn't realise how how wonderful these teachers were, but uh they're they're names that won't probably mean that much to people listening to our interviews, but you know, Australia's leading constitutional law professor, or one of them, uh Leslie Zions was teaching there. I mean, there were just there were many people, they were very eminent. And uh e even for students like me that tended to be out and about a bit, you know, I was going down trying to find a decent surf on the south coast or sitting around singing songs in someone's house somewhere when I should have been at the lecture series, some of it still did stick. And I think it ultimately anything that you learn, uh, w whether it's how to do something, whether it's how something works, whether it's understanding history, or whether it's um the expression of ideas, philosophy, whatever it might be, it it it it's all it's all useful, you know. You're never really quite sure where you're going to apply it later on. Sometimes you find it popping up in the in the most unusual and unexpected places, but everything I learned there was worthwhile. I just wish I'd learned a bit more.

SPEAKER_08 28:52

On that note, Peter, could you introduce your second track? Uh and um and I know the for I know who the performer is, but it could be your good self. And uh why did you select it?

SPEAKER_05 29:04

Well, I went for another I went for an oil song simply because obviously that's a huge part of my life, and you know, it's been an incredible experience for me to be a part of this band. Unfortunately, we've we've lost both Bonesley Hillman and now Rob Hurst, our drummer, over the last couple of years, and we missed them terribly. They're real brothers, but we were able to get through a lot of music making over time, and it it really uh was a big, you know, it had a lot of gravity, uh the oils. But the reason I picked the song, it's not very well known at all, is that I was trying to think, was it was did I ever mention Canberra in a song? And I realised I did in this particular song. So I think it's off Redneck Wonderland from memory, maybe the record before that. But we did a we did a remix because one of those things that that that comes with bands where you have two or three songwriters or people with strong ideas about what should happen. Sometimes you end up with stuff that's as good as you can get, and other times you know, you end up designing a camel. And I didn't think we really did a great job of the original symmetry in my mind, so we went back and had another crack at it and just thought we'd make it a loose instrumental, and then I just sort of throw in sort of a spoken narrative uh of someone who was drifting across up and down the east coast in a hot air balloon. And so on that basis, uh, of course, I thought about Canberra, uh, because I'd spent a lot of time there, and I and then uh the rest of the song just unfolds, and by the time you get to the end, and of course it's it's loud and we don't oil.

SPEAKER_02 30:36

I have only what I have to give. We have everything to do.

SPEAKER_08 34:27

Now you mentioned before we went into part two the band Midnight Oil. I'm not always going to be writing my history lessons and my history, but did the Midnight Oil band start from another band post-university?

SPEAKER_05 34:43

Uh yes, it did. So when I was still at ANU, I had started to play in bands, and we had a little band operating out of Bergman inertia college called Rock Island, and we used to chew around on the weekends and play, you know, on the uni and you know, play out in the suburbs and the burbs and the pubs and you know go to Cooper and Golburn and wherever. Um when I went back to Sydney to to visit my mum uh over the holidays, and I needed I needed some money really to to keep living down there. So uh I was looking in the Sydney Morning Herald back in the day, they used to have the ads in the paper itself, like C. And uh I thought I'd do some labouring, but I saw an ad for the band wants, singer wanted for band. So anyway, I rang up at Rob Hurst answered the phone. They were just finishing school, they'd they'd been playing together already for a couple of years. The band was called Farm. They were going to do a little tour up and down the coast of New South Wales, basically playing in surf clubs and sonic halls and the like. And um, they needed a singer and it helped that I actually happened to have a PA at the time, the small public address system, you know, the PA system that gives you the sound when you're up on stage. So I went and saw them, I auditioned. There were no other applicants, so luckily I've got the job and I did that tour with them, and then I came back to Canberra for another year to continue studying um a law degree. And when I returned to to Sydney uh in the holiday period, I just got in touch, said, How are you going? Because they'd gone off to get another singer. They couldn't find someone, so I said, Well, it looks like you stuck with me. I'm gonna move back up and uh I'll be your singer again.

SPEAKER_08 36:28

And Peter, when did you start writing were you the writer or were there a group group within the band who wrote the music?

SPEAKER_05 36:34

No, I wasn't the writer, at least not to begin with. Rob Rob Hurst and Jimmy Jeanie had started writing songs when they were 14 and 15, and they'd had a couple of other sort of schoolboy bands, and so they were they were well on the way. And it was actually one of the reasons why I wanted to join them, they were then called Farm and sort of really get stuck into it because was because I could I could hear that they had talent. Uh, I mean, apart from being really strong players, they're also starting to write original songs. And one of the things that I think defines the way I look at the work that I've done and and the country that I'm in, and particularly around the areas of sort of art and and effort, is I'm a cultural patriot, you know. I'm it's not like I'm disinterested in in the histories of other places, but I'm primarily utterly focused on better understanding the place that I've grown up in. And I think that explains partly why in later times we spent such a lot of time with First Nations people. But at the stage I didn't want to be in a band that was singing a bunch of songs which were written by people in London or or or LA or you know, doing doors covers, you know. Uh at Deacon, you know, on a on Friday night at 10 o'clock, that that wasn't sort of where my head was at particularly. So I could see with Robin Jib in particular that there was something else going on there that was special. And I started writing as well, and we co-contributed, we co-wrote a lot of material over time. And you know, I think the best of the songs, most of the best of the songs that we did, we we probably did together. But sometimes people still bring in songs and you'd sort of go, gee, there's not much, not much to be done here. Rob is a very gifted chorus writer for a drummer, he was a great singer too. Jim was also very accomplished and could sort of make a song out of nothing, really. And Martin would find a place where whatever he added sort of made the difference. So it there's a potency in that which you're very, very lucky uh if you happen upon it, and even luckier if you've if you're not so stupid or short-sighted to to do anything other than treat it with a great deal of respect. And because we're very different, and I was a little bit older, it it's not necessarily the easiest of times that you have. And I mean the odds to it in the States when we were a very political band, playing to audiences that were I mean, you know, nowadays they probably would kill us, but back in the day they were just throwing things at us and you know, saying, go back home, Aussie, or whatever. So you've got to be pretty committed to what you're doing in your craft. And I just felt with these people that that level of commitment was there.

SPEAKER_08 39:17

And Peter, when did the band turn uh change its name from that previous name to Midnight Or?

SPEAKER_05 39:25

So that would have been probably uh 77, maybe 78. Uh, we'd had a bunch of oh we would we'd played as far, but we had a couple of other different names that we thought might work anyway. Eventually uh we just pulled the name out of the hat and went with it.

SPEAKER_08 39:41

You're in a in a sense, uh the lot of music you've written has a lot of social under undertones to them. Was that the intent of the band from being just a pop band that displays stuff that's interesting versus a band that has a message with the songs?

SPEAKER_05 39:56

Well, the oars were never going to be a pop band, although there's was plenty of melody. That the the playing was and always has been and still is a bit harder than that. But I think the boys were a bit younger, they probably didn't have as much world experience as what I'd had up to that point in time, although they were certainly not closed off to writing songs which had political meaning. And even a song like Powderworks on the first record, which is I think it's Rob and or maybe Robin Jim, you know, it's it's it's a it's sort of a political song in a way, but I don't think there's any doubt that I am very much an activist and a political creature by by nature and habitat. And I really wanted us to essentially be saying things that made sense to me and that I felt needed to be heard by others. Not in not in the way of sitting down to deliberately write a message song, i.e., okay, we are gonna write a song about, you know, the deserts and you know, whatever, and okay, here it goes, you know, line one. You won't end up with good songs if you think about it that way. You have to do it the other way around. You you have to ground your music making in the inspirations and the and the innovation and the explorer exploration of of an idea or a theme. But what happened over time, of course, is that we were very connected to that other part of the world. We didn't choose anything like, I suppose, the normal sort of showbiz route. Um, we weren't that interested in the success side of it, to be honest, particularly in the beginning. It didn't mean anything to us. We just really wanted to try and get the songs to work as well as they could, and we were starting to see things when we travelled. We were on the road, we were charging up and down the Hume Highway in, you know, old vans and little mini buses and you know, sleepy in scunchy motels and just trying to make a go of it, and writing what we saw and what we felt. And whether people took it on board, Michael, was totally up to them, and I I feel that equally strongly to this very day. There's no presumption that uh what I or anybody else gets up uh and sings and says on a stage is a presumption that you have to listen, accept it, chew on it, and then say, Oh, you're right. It's not like that at all. I mean, it's great if it happens, but that's a byproduct. It's it's the doing of it and and the intensity and the integrity, the authenticity, if you like, the realness of what you do, that I think is most important. And we were able to articulate political issues in songs, maybe in a way that other people either didn't feel comfortable with or didn't feel that they had um sufficient education or uh confidence to do. But you can call us a lot of things, you can call me a few things as well. Lacking in confidence is not one of them.

SPEAKER_08 42:41

Now, Peter, given the nature of the music style and the genre you had and the music industry and getting on onto the radio, was your did you have much success on the commercial side in in the radio forums, or was it purely performing live on stage uh to audiences?

SPEAKER_05 43:01

I think for the first third of our career, we were kept alive literally by our audience, and we just kept on playing and playing and showing up. And I mean we came back to Canberra and played the Udivar and various other places, and that was because we weren't aiming to try and get something necessarily heard or played on radio. Uh as it happened, the first song of ours that got much radio airplay was an instrumental. So you know um that's uh it's sort of in the focal now, I guess, but but that was an indication that we weren't heard of as being particularly palatable. And it wasn't until we were into sort of record three and four, maybe even record five, that uh we started to get some of that airplay. That was partly a consequence, even if community radio in stations like Double X, and then of course the ABC stations, double J, and then FM radio, FM Rock Radio over time also picked up on bands like ourselves. But we probably could have just kept on going and just ended. Up you know, having an audience that would come and see us play, as is the case for quite a lot of bands today. You know, they'll they'll show up year in and year out, and they've got their mates and their comrades, and they come along and it's a shared experience, and everyone goes back richer for it.

SPEAKER_08 44:14

Now, Peter, looking at your career post-university, there was a political part of your life, there is an environmental part of your life. Let's focus on the environmental side of your life and your career and aspirations. What was it, where did that take you in in a sense of your activities, your work, your desire to make people aware of the environment around us?

SPEAKER_05 44:38

Well, I think we just started to connect with uh environment organizations in the oils because they'd they'd ask us to come and ask us, would we be interested in you know doing a benefit concert or uh publicizing an issue for them, uh, which we did uh and got to know them. And I got to see a little bit about how uh the community organizations or the the environment groups were operating and got to know some of the people involved and eventually was asked to work with one of them, the Australian Conservation Foundation, as their president, uh, which I did for a couple of terms uh in the 80s. I mean, I was pretty young at the time, but I I had the appetite for it. And uh it was a really it's a good, it still is a good organization. And alongside doing that sort of work, uh, was spending a lot of time in the water, a lot of time surfing, and we were spending a lot of time traveling. So we could see firsthand, in a way that sometimes I think it's hard for people who aren't constantly out and about to see, the deterioration of parts of the natural environment. You know, you'd come back to somewhere six or eight months later and you think, gee, you know, what what's happened here? Or wow, you know, that that that that water's literally, you know, visibly dirty and someone keeps on polluting it. This is obviously not a good thing. And it operates in all sorts of different ways. And I think at the same time, internationally and nationally, there were campaigns to protect native forests, to protect the Amazon, the Great Barrier Reef. You know, we were starting to appreciate, I think, in a bigger way, society was starting to appreciate how important and irreplaceable these extraordinary natural ecosystems were. And we we were a part of that. We were a small part of it, and I was a small part of it, but it made more sense to me to be doing that kind of work than than doing other things. Certainly made more sense than you know being in a nightclub at two o'clock in the morning.

SPEAKER_08 46:31

Now, Peter, you said you took on a role as as as a president of that organization. When you took up that role, did you have any desire to achieve certain outcomes or or not?

SPEAKER_05 46:44

Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_08 46:45

And what were they?

SPEAKER_05 46:46

Well, uh they that that well they had a they had a pretty ambitious agenda, um, which included wanting to protect certain areas of important natural beauty or areas that had important cultural significance for first peoples. Say, for example, Kakadu in the Northern Territory or Uluru Katajuta. There were areas of tropical rainforest in North Queensland, temperate old growth forests down the coasts of New South Wales and Victoria, and obviously in Tasmania as well, where there were already big campaigns in place to try and have these areas better looked after, perhaps protected as national parks, perhaps to be given World Heritage designation on account of the fact that they were really irreplaceable and super special. And as well as that, identifying some of those areas where there were risks to things, or to areas where, say, for example, you know, a development uh proposal might be there and the wetlands might end up being the sacrificial lamb, you know. And then finally, I think, and for me very importantly, looking at bridging not the gaps so much, but building bridges across to other sectors of the Australian community, whether it would be the farming community or the business community, suburban community, coastal communities, to say, look, this is we all have an interest in looking after our country much better than we do at the moment. And we have an interest in it not only because we're here and we we can we can make some good changes, hopefully, but also because at some point we won't be here, but our kids or our grandkids will be. And uh, what are we gonna do? We're gonna we're gonna leave it better off or not. And I think on the list of things that we were able to do in the period of time uh when I was president, it's a it's a it's a reasonable list, but it was an easier time to achieve those sorts of campaign wins as well. Um partly because of the politics of the time under Prime Minister Hawke, and partly I think because there was a much stronger popular movement around the country of people who were prepared to get out and be directly involved in campaigns, and that made that sort of work much easier.

SPEAKER_08 48:55

And from a personal perspective, Peter, what lessons did you learn or gain during that period of time as president?

SPEAKER_05 49:02

Uh we haven't got long enough, Mike, on this interview.

SPEAKER_08 49:05

Or just a just one key one, I suppose, might be might be worthwhile covering off.

SPEAKER_05 49:10

Uh look, I I don't want to resort to a cliche about it, but I I think the one thing I did learn, and it's what I've learned in midnight all as well, and that is the very simple fact of the power of working with others, that when you work with others, you can uh really get some some considerable things done. And everybody brings their own skills and capacities to to the job, and being in a position to harness, help, encourage that, sometimes lead it, you know, sometimes bring up the rear and you know, put the chairs away at the end of the meeting. For me, it's not so important as actually having a very clear sense of what can be achieved, which is good, and how together we can all do that so that it can happen quickly.

SPEAKER_08 49:59

Well, Peter, on that sort of positive side of the world and of the universe, let's take you into politics, which could be an anathema to the all of that if people understand politics, it is in in Australia. What was your journey from being in Midnight Oil and into that role as president to take you into politics?

SPEAKER_05 50:20

The first thing to say is that it's not an anathema to me, in as much as I think it's a great privilege uh to serve people as an elected representative. And I was I really enjoyed that part of the job. You know, my electorate was in Sydney around Randwick Race Course, Botany Bay, the airport, uh, through Randwick, that whole area. And I I loved uh being the person that people came to and wanted to try and get things done, even if we didn't always have an answer for them or or a way of making things work for them. And I also ultimately ended up serving in the cabinet of both the Rudd and the Gillard governments, and that that's also an incredible privilege to be amongst a group of 14 people or 21 people who, at least in a political sense, are responsible for the country and for the well-being of the country. So, yes, it's it's a bruising business at times, and uh the expectations are very high from people, and sometimes I know people look at it and think, you know, what the hell? You know, uh surely we could do better and so on. But I never for one minute either regretted going into it, nor didn't relish, even maybe not always enjoy my time there. And I think it was inevitable that if the opportunity arose, I would take it. I'd run for the Senate in the mid-80s for the Nuclear Disarmament Party because I'm an anti-nuclear activist in terms of nuclear weapons and the like. And that had given me an opportunity to see and understand how it worked. I had a lot to do with Canberra when I was ACF president. And quite often, well, in social security areas, the Smith family wants to go and see the Social Security Minister and education. The schools want to see the education minister and the environment. People want to get in to see the environment minister and you know put things in front of them and and ask them to consider certain options and spending priorities or whatever it might be. So to actually take up that role for me was you know something really very, very special. And I mean, I didn't go there to do anything other than that, just to do the best that I could. And yeah, it's it went pretty quick. It was nearly just under 10 years, it went in about five minutes.

SPEAKER_08 52:38

Peter, did anybody explain to you why they had suggested you for the environment minister, the role of that job?

SPEAKER_05 52:47

Uh well, originally it was partly for background reasons, and I understood the portfolio. And in fact, that is one thing I will say, both about uh the time that I was there, but also now. One of the major barriers to us having better environment policy both at the state and at the federal level in Australia is that a lot of our parliamentarians haven't had much exposure to nature. They haven't spent much time in it, they maybe haven't thought that much about it, they don't have necessarily high degrees of ecological literacy, uh, which I think is a real pity. Uh, I mean, they may have, they, they, they, not may, they often have small business backgrounds or background in the unions or uh specialize in in in other certain areas, but there's not a lot of people on the hill, I don't think, who really get the environment. So I think one of the reasons was that I obviously was one of those people because I'd spent a lot of time in and around it, and I loved it. Uh, there was also the question of developing policy in opposition for dealing with the climate crisis, and I did have that responsibility in opposition. So I suppose they were some of the reasons. I mean, it's a it's a poison to Alice in a way, because everyone wants you, everyone thinks, oh, finally, someone who's been an environmentalist is now the environment minister, they can then fix the environment overnight, uh, which of course you can't, but on the other hand, you're in a much better position to make some changes for good because you understand it pretty well.

SPEAKER_08 54:22

Observing parliament from a distance, it was a pretty rough and ready exercise that you pace to be in at the time. What was the lesson that you might have learnt from that experience in Parliament?

SPEAKER_05 54:34

I still have a confidence and a faith in the democratic polity. When we when we won government, uh Malcolm Turnbull had been the former Minister for the Environment. I came, I came across into the office that he'd inhabited, it had been left, you know, perfectly tidily and reasonably. Uh, we turned on the computers and went to work. You know, in many places, people would, you know, put booby traps under the door and landmines in the filing cabinets and whatever. So the fact that at a very basic level there's a peaceful transition of power and sharing of power, political power, at the behest of the people, uh, I still think is incredibly invaluable, despite the imperfections and flaws of the system. Uh, the second thing I learned was that a lot of people who go in are go in for good reasons and they want to make a difference, but the short, the short-term nature of our political cycle and the very, very high levels of expectation and the too high level of influence by uh some of the business interests, in particular, in terms of lobbying on the hill, are frustrating the making of good political decisions. The final thing uh I learned was how much I love music and how much I missed it, because I had to completely, you know, really decompartmentalize my head to do that work, a work which I I don't mind doing. I in fact I relish doing it, but I I couldn't uh I couldn't do it and then play guitar at night. So it made me realize how much I missed the oils.

SPEAKER_08 56:10

And so just to finalise before we go into the last last um track that you selected, of all the music that you've played, what do you think is the song the Midnight Oars has has written and performed that has changed society the most?

SPEAKER_05 56:26

Uh look, Michael, I honestly have no idea which one has, although obviously it's probably one of the better-known songs, maybe Beds Are Burning. It's the song that's most notable in a way, uh both because of what it's about, which is first people's rights, their rights to land, to be consulted, to have a say over what goes on in the country that they were living in was theirs and is theirs. So it's probably beds. And the fact that we've been out we did it at the 2000 Olympics, for example, in our sorry suits. But again, it was never written essentially for that purpose. It was written as a reflection of experiences that we had had. And the fact that a song takes on a life of its own like that is uh something that you can only be very grateful for.

SPEAKER_08 57:12

And Peter, could you please introduce your last track, Who is the performer and why did you select it?

SPEAKER_05 57:18

Yeah, so Michael, I've picked an interesting one. I really struggled trying to pick this last one because I wanted to pick a song that I used to play on 2DX when I was a studio radio announcer on the station. And we used to bring our own record collections and the record collections of our friends along because the station didn't have any money, so we had to provide the music. And Kat Stevens, I think the album might have been called Tea for the Tilleman, but certainly uh this was one of the songs on that record, and I do remember playing it at about one o'clock on a very cold winter's morning from the old ANU Radio ANU 2X studios, somewhere just on the other side of the campus. And it stayed with me ever since.

SPEAKER_08 57:59

And Peter, thank you for being a guest on the Confab with Michael G.

SPEAKER_05 58:02

Hey, thanks, Michael, all the best. I really enjoyed a yarn.

SPEAKER_08 58:05

Thank you.