Since you bring this up, I read an article on Crikey.com.au that I wanted to
share with the list but was foiled by it's untimely demise ;-)

 


Mungo: Garrett abandons utopia for results


Mungo MacCallum writes:

You have to feel sorry for Peter Garrett. He's had a pretty rough time since
he joined the Labor Party more that three years ago, and it all came to a
head last week.

When Garrett, on behalf of the ALP, signed off on the government's decision
to approve the Tamar Valley pulp mill, the Greens turned carnivorous. From
being a trusted environmental warrior, Garrett had become a sell out and a
cipher, the shadow minister who didn't cast a shadow. As everyone had
predicted, the Labor Party had chewed him up and spat him out. From being an
idealist and a man of principle, Garrett was now just another politician.

Well yes, he was, and this is precisely the point. After spending his youth
banging his impressive head against various brick walls in pursuit of noble
causes, Garrett has now grown up. In 2003 he became convinced that actually
achieving change for the better, imperfect though it might be, was more
useful than spending the rest of his life yearning for an unattainable green
utopia. Whether consciously or not he accepted the truth of Gough Whitlam's
dictum: the impotent are always pure. He may even have turned it around: the
pure are always impotent.