Text and Photography by Vitek Skonieczny / Magnesium

The Hon. Peter Garrett, Australian Federal Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, taken at a recent ‘Earth Hour’ event.

The spotlight on Peter Garrett began in 1973 when he became the singer of the Australian rock band, ‘Midnight Oil’. The band, and in particular Garrett, were a thorn in the sides of all the governments during the bands lifetime between 1973 and 2002. Known for his activism on environmental issues and the rights of indigenous Australians, Garrett’s most famous and wide-reaching stunt took place during the closing ceremony of the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. Garrett, and the rest of the band, came on stage wearing tracksuits bearing the words ‘sorry’. This statement referred to the Howard Government’s refusal to apologise to Australian Aborigines, known as the ‘Stolen Generation’, who as children were removed from their families by Government agencies.

In 2007, Peter Garrett was appointed by new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, as the Minister of the Environment, Heritage and the Arts. In 2009, Peter Garrett, along with Penny Wong, the Federal Minister for Climate Change and Water, attended the Copenhagen Climate Conference. The duo became quite the celebrities at the conference, thanks to Peter Garrett’s radical past and Penny Wong’s status as the first openly gay minister in an Australian Commonwealth cabinet, and as being the first Asian-born minister as well.

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