Peter Garrett takes political stage

Midnight Oil, more than any other rock outfit from Australia, prided itself on speaking truth to power.

The poetic lyrics of the punk-influenced band decried the abuse of Aborigines (“Beds Are Burning”), the stockpiling of nuclear arms (“Red Sails in the Sunset”) and the plight of asbestos miners (“Blue Sky Mine”).

The group’s most famous performance was likely the one that closed the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, when band members appeared onstage clad in black with the word “sorry” emblazoned on their tops and pants. They were making a provocative point - then-Prime Minister John Howard was in the audience, and his government had resisted calls to apologize for the policy that had led to the “lost generation,” the Aborigine children taken from their families in the last century.

Now, however, one of Australia’s most anti-establishment figures is part of the establishment - sort of.

Midnight Oil formed in the early 1970s and disbanded in 2002. Its outspoken lead singer, Peter Garrett, has become the Australian minister for the environment, heritage and the arts - in charge of policy on the issues he’s been singing and speaking about for decades.

So how does a rock star become a Cabinet minister?

“Well, it doesn’t happen overnight,” Mr. Garrett says with a chuckle. He was in Washington last week to open “Culture Warriors” at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, the largest display of Aboriginal art ever to leave Australia. A towering presence with a shaved head, the 6-foot-4-inch politician was hard to miss, which might be why he was almost constantly surrounded.

Mr. Garrett, 56, was elected member of Parliament representing Kingsford Smith, New South Wales, in October 2004. When the Labor Party took control of the government in 2007, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made the MP a Cabinet minister.

But, as the lyrics of his band attest, he’s always been interested in politics. He studied it at university - along with the law, a career track he started around the same time he became the frontman of Midnight Oil.

“We were always pretty interested in what was going on around us, including politics, and had gotten involved in lots of campaigns over time,” he recounts. He ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 1984 as a candidate for the Nuclear Disarmament Party and then became president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, serving two terms (1989-93 and 1998-2004) while continuing to tour the world with Midnight Oil.

“I got the sense that some important decisions were clearly being made by the government of the day,” he says. “I thought if the opportunity did arise to be able to take that step, I’d certainly take it if I could.”

He quickly became not just an MP, but the man in charge of some of the country’s most important policy areas. He scoffs at the notion he’s now part of the establishment he once took pride in shocking, though.

“I think that the former government were very out of touch on some issues. Reconciliation and the way we were treating our indigenous people and relating to them were very much one of them,” he says when reminded of his Olympics performance, going on to speak passionately about the art exhibit.

But he’s been labeled a “sellout” and a “turncoat” by former allies, including Green Party leader Bob Brown, who think that as a Cabinet minister, he’s abandoned some of his principles.

An Australian Associated Press writer quoted the anti-nuclear lyrics of “Maralinga” in announcing that Mr. Garrett had approved an expansion of the Beverley uranium mine. Another controversial move was approving the dredging of Port Phillip Bay in Melbourne to allow larger ships in the port.

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