Big Blue Sky

by Peter Garrett

  …

  Back in Sydney, I joined the Oils, who were by now ensconced at Megaphon Studios in St Peters, near the airport, to set about recording Earth and Sun and Moon, again with Nick Launay. The album took forever to make, but we didn’t get too bogged down and the mood was even. It helped that the studio, a laidback folksy affair, was run by mates and we could get home at night.

  What the record lacked in urgency it made up for in feel. But by this point the expansive songs that we were recording—like ‘Now or Never Land’ and ‘Outbreak of Love’—were at odds with the raw sounds of Seattle grunge that were the next big thing. In the absence of the kind of radio-friendly song that the overseas record company believed was essential if we were to capitalise on the exposure we got from ‘Beds Are Burning’ and a couple of the Blue Sky Mining tracks, our progress was stalling.

  This was always going to happen. The chart success we’d enjoyed in the past had been as much by accident as design. It wasn’t the raison d’être of Midnight Oil, even if sometimes we aimed for it. It was our ‘spiritual crisis’, as Jim called it, for we weren’t really a singles band by temperament, and yet it was individual ear-worm songs that propelled a career and marked you out from the pack. When we’d done the big European summer festivals sharing the bill with Bowie and Dylan, Bob remarked that a band could tour forever on ‘Beds Are Burning’. I wasn’t there to respond; I’d baulked on going backstage to say hello, as I didn’t want to break the spell Dylan songs had over me by meeting their creator, though I’m sure he would have been charming, enigmatic or maybe just Bob Dylan. In the end, roundabout discussions about which singles should go to radio and the size of film-clip budgets tested our relationships with one another and with senior record execs of the alpha-male persuasion, like Don Ienner, in the US.

  Gary Morris and our long-time Sony contact in North America, Mason Munoz, were increasingly locking horns with Ienner, the label boss—a career-limiting exercise for all concerned if it went on for too long. To its credit, Sony in Australia, with CEO Denis Handlin, senior execs Chris Moss and a host of others, remained loyal to the Oils, but the writing was on the wall—implacable artist meets immoveable corporation—and so we set about playing where it suited us, ignoring the stalemate that had arisen in New York, and pursued the things that interested us.

  We were still together, weren’t we? And we’d managed to get another album done and it wasn’t too bad either. I wasn’t going to lose any sleep over not getting into the top ten.

  …

  Meanwhile, Channel 7 had agreed to screen the Shoalwater film, but the program manager got cold feet and parried every suggestion that was made to maximise its promotion, citing concern about its ‘political’ quality.

  Bradbury was indefatigable; used to drumming up publicity from a standing start, he organised for leaflets to be handed out at Beach Boys concerts, then taking place in the big cities, and harassed Channel 7 past the point of usefulness. We planned a special phone-in and fundraising drive on Triple J radio and, wearing my ACF president’s hat, I sent a memo to all the national conservation groups asking for support—the only time I ever took that step.

  Retitled Shoalwater: Up for Grabs, the film rated well enough and delivered the publicity boost needed. Now was the time to try to rescue the situation. All we needed was an opportunity to persuade the government to revisit the decision. In a timely twist of fate, Prime Minister Paul Keating was due to visit Rockhampton after we’d concluded filming, and I’d suggested to his office and any minister I could reach that the prime minister’s VIP aircraft take a quick detour over Shoalwater Bay so he could see what all the fuss was about. If that happened, I was confident there would be a chance of a reprieve. If not, the last resort would be to take the matter into the courts, a messy and expensive exercise.

  Shoalwater: Up for Grabs had gone to air on 29 November 1992. In the first two weeks of December, National Party senator Ian Macdonald from Queensland peppered the government with questions in parliament about the documentary and whether the claims we’d made were true.

  In reply, Senator Bob Collins, representing the environment minister, pointed out: ‘The area includes habitat for a number of species that are listed as endangered or vulnerable . . . [including] the humpback whale and the loggerhead turtle . . . The area also includes habitat for the dugong, which is listed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature as vulnerable to extinction.’ No more needed to be said.

  On 21 December 1992, the Keating government’s environment statement announced that a commission of inquiry would undertake a full and proper assessment of the environmental and economic values of all the Commonwealth lands within the Shoalwater Bay area. Two years later the inquiry made its recommendations. They included that sand mining be prohibited at Shoalwater Bay and the area be listed for further protection. Now it was decision time . . .

  In the lead-up to the decision there were frantic rounds of lobbying, and John Faulkner, the next person responsible for the environment portfolio, was doing all he could to help. The omens, for once, were good. Keating, who’d famously said that if you weren’t living in Sydney you were camping out, and having now flown over the region, had later remarked to a Tourism Taskforce conference in Sydney, ‘. . . if you ever see it [Shoalwater Bay] it will never get off your list. It’s one of the most beautiful places on the coast.’

  His government accepted the inquiry recommendations. Sand mining was formally excluded and conservation given equal status to the training purposes of the area. Shoalwater Bay came off our watch list.

  In the ensuing years, the training area has increasingly been used, not only by the Australian Defence Force, but also by the US and other countries from the region, to conduct joint exercises. At one point, concerns were raised about the presence of depleted uranium in US weapons, but the defence department insisted this was not the case, and that the sensitive areas of the bay had not been significantly impacted.

  In the future, the original vision of the local community should be honoured by the defence department working in concert with the environment department. The area should not be allowed to become a de facto military base. Those whose job it is to protect the nation must also do their bit to protect one of the nation’s outstanding environmental assets.

  20

  AMSTERDAM AND BUST

  FOR THE PREVIOUS four years, I’d been doing two jobs, as musician and activist, and in my mind they’d been equally important. But I also had a growing family and I was anxious to spend more time with my wife and daughters: time we all were missing out on, time we could never get back.

  Like Phillip Toyne, who had finished up at the end of a packed five years, after the Shoalwater Bay campaign I was ready to move on from the ACF. I’d done all I could for the foundation, from council and executive get-togethers and public meetings to endless lobbying and fundraising.

  My old friend from the Jervis Bay campaign, Paul Gilding, had gone on to become the executive director of Greenpeace Australia, and he soon raised the organisation’s profile with a series of confronting actions aimed at chemical companies still discharging toxic waste into waterways. This led to his selection as head of Greenpeace International at a time when that body, after a period of rapid growth, was reviewing its operations and direction.

  It was a big leap to take and, knowing I was spending more time in the Northern Hemisphere as the Oils toured in Europe and North America, he asked me to join the board, both to provide a Southern Hemisphere perspective and to give his leadership some support.

  Looking back, I can’t believe I took on the position. I was fine with finishing up at the ACF. They had been fast and furious years, but a lot had been achieved and I felt the organisation was in pretty good shape. At this point I should have paused, as I’d intended, and given more time to Doris and our marriage, but I failed to appreciate how necessary this was at the time. She was the light of my life yet I wasn’t around enough to kindle the flame
. Some downtime to allow space for creative thinking to sputter back to life wouldn’t have gone astray either.

  But I was drawn to what I felt was a profoundly important cause. Greenpeace was a global force for the environment. Its reach was on par with the biggest multinational companies and it was flattering to be asked—I was sucked back into the vortex. To my way of thinking, the organisation had got stuck in recent times and I had a view about how it might regain its mojo. Maybe this was a chance to influence its direction. The clincher was the opportunity to work with a friend who found himself in different and difficult circumstances. I’ve always enjoyed teaming up with people I feel share the same take on the big questions, colleagues I feel are in it for the right reasons.

  My relationship with Gary Morris was a bit like this. I loved him like a brother, and we’d been through a lot together—getting the band out the door, keeping that intangible quality of ‘Oil’ intact. From the start Gary had an instinct about what was right for the band, and flashes of inventiveness that were breathtaking if we could make them work. But he was so headstrong that at times it was plain exhausting. The story of one of my daughters picking up a toy phone and saying, ‘No, Gary, no, Gary, no!’ wasn’t apocryphal as many people assumed, it was true.

  The result of saying yes to Paul (and to Gary) made for a manic journey in the years that followed. Coming from the back end of a tour, sleepwalking through Schiphol airport and into Greenpeace meetings in Amsterdam, then back to play, off to a Greenpeace office in some other country, then overnight to Australia, a few weeks of follow-up activity at home and then I’d be gone again.

  There was no pause button in view and so Doris and I decided to move the family to a tiny village in Germany, near the Dutch border, so we could see more of each other. Everswinkel, with its rows of near-identical houses that backed on to neatly tilled fields, was so quiet that whenever I spent a night there I couldn’t sleep for the sound of tinnitus—the muso’s curse—in my ears: the leftover hum from planes and trains and automobiles and loud rock music.

  In the small apartment we’d rented, Doris set up a makeshift classroom in the cellar where she could homeschool the girls. It was a good arrangement. She was closer to her family and old friends, and I was able to cut my travel time down by days. I wasn’t someone who took great pride in the number of flying hours I was racking up, but there wasn’t any alternative if I wanted to have a go at doing all my jobs properly.

  I identified with the Greenpeace ethos that was forged in opposition to nuclear testing when the first Greenpeace yacht sailed into the impact zone off the coast of Canada in the late 1960s. It was in the spirit of the Gandhian tradition, taken up by Martin Luther King during the civil rights struggles in America’s Deep South, continuing through to the peace movement that had re-emerged under the shadow of the nuclear arms race.

  Greenpeace had done brave work and, with a highly recognisable name, was capable of turning an issue around very quickly. At the same time, the organisation was effectively controlled by a handful of affluent European member states that dominated the politics of the central organisation, which in turn licensed the right to operate as Greenpeace to groups in other countries. It was a long way from the membership-based ACF, with its constitution and genuine community representation.

  The potential of the organisation to be a potent global force was obvious and new Greenpeace offices were springing up in a number of developing countries, where environmental campaigning was still something of an anomaly. I visited Brazil briefly to look in on their work and see whether it would be possible to organise a joint concert with Sting at the Manaus Opera House in the middle of the Amazon rainforest—the lungs of the earth. At that time, the Amazon was an epicentre of global environmental concern, with thousands of hectares of rainforest being clear-felled each day. Cattle barons had taken control of the lands and were forcing the local Indigenous tribes to retreat—this battle is still raging.

  The concert never got off the ground, but the enthusiasm of the Brazilian activists, working with very limited resources and often up against entrenched hostility, corruption and physical threats, was phenomenal. No matter how tough things seemed, they never lost their joyful approach to life—dancing, singing and eating with abandon before charging back into the trenches.

  The Oils later toured Brazil and reconnected with some of the Greenpeace crew, including staging a silent protest—faces covered with gas masks—against air pollution at one of the busiest intersections in São Paulo. There was plenty of local media coverage, but the traffic didn’t pause for a second. I put that down to the exuberant Latin approach to life; slowing down was not an option.

  Back in Amsterdam I was a blow-in, the new executive director’s rep on a governing board that included some of the early Greenpeace principals, who were in constant conflict with the powerful European offices. Gilding and other newly recruited staff were intent on reforming the organisation, improving governance and financial management, and devolving power to offices in other countries campaigning on the ground.

  Despite some on the board agreeing this was a necessary path, there remained a sizeable rump, influenced from the wings by the former chairman David McTaggart, determined to resist. They were people who’d accomplished a great deal in a brief period when audacious direct action by Greenpeace broke the mould. But it was hard for them to let go of their baby, and although no one said it out loud, they didn’t fully trust newcomers to faithfully acquit the Greenpeace ideal. Relinquishing power is never easy—just think of the United Nations Security Council, or political leaders who stay on past their use-by date. Uncertain about the merits of the changes in the wind, the chair scheduled a board meeting in Washington DC ‘to discuss the executive director’s plans’.

  The writing was on the wall and everyone followed the script to its logical conclusion—stasis. After nearly two years with the organisation I departed, and Paul finished a couple of months later.

  The environment was coming in from the margins, and was increasingly seen as a mainstream issue, and with politicians and business wanting in, the opportunities to make gains were great if you got the strategies right. At a time when there was a growing sense of urgency around the issue of global warming, and with the rapid growth in newly developing countries placing immense stress on their environments, Greenpeace International struggled to evolve and accommodate the new world order. It lost much of the following decade trying to do so.

  Whether it would have managed better with the continued involvement of the Australians and the new guard I can’t say. Nor can I say whether it would have made a difference to its effectiveness. Perhaps the conflict was an inevitable part of an activist group struggling to adjust to its issues gaining mainstream acceptance. Still, despite this failure on Paul’s and my part, give me a Greenpeace any day. Some twenty years later, they continue to run some great campaigns with some of the world’s most creative campaigners. The world needs all the help it can get. The stakes are getting higher and the clock is ticking.

  …

  I’d come to value working with conservation leaders like Paul Gilding and Phillip Toyne, and with groups like the ACF council. There was always a serious focus around this work. No one did it for the money and people could be wrung dry and burn out badly, but if you succeeded, the legacy was immense.

  Being on stage night after night, trying to keep each other’s musical psyche joined up, sorting and sifting through the decisions that bands need to make and then jumping across into activism, which sometimes involved working with people who didn’t share the same cultural assumptions or political values, had reinforced for me the power of collaboration. It was similarly the collective nature of Midnight Oil that gave the band its strength and purpose. We were rarely more effective than when we were rowing together in the same direction.

  I knew my extracurricular activities were at times frustrating for the band. But it had been like that for a long while, and we’d got through. T
hey constructed the musical bed and I took our subject matter out into the political domain. We had become a powerful partnership and my musical instincts were anchored in one place only.

  When Rob announced in 1990 that he was going to make a solo record and sing his own songs, we reached a turning point. I could understand why he wanted to do it. Artists are restless creatures, compelled to follow their guiding light wherever it leads, and he fancied himself a chance, having penned some of the Oils’ biggest songs. We would survive the breach, for a while at least. But I had the feeling that the five-against-the-world bond had been dented, and things would never be quite the same again.

  21

  WRONG MINE, WRONG PLACE

  MY STINT AT Greenpeace now over, two years later, to my surprise, the ACF approached me to consider a second term as president. We’d returned to Australia in 1994 and I was looking forward to spending more time based at home. Working with Don Henry, the new ACF executive director, would be a good use of energy, and Melbourne was a much easier commute than Europe, so I said yes.

  The election in 1996 of a conservative federal government led by John Howard saw new approaches evolving to respond to the environmental crisis. They included putting a value on natural assets, making protection of ecosystems a priority, and supporting low-carbon industries and renewable energy. But, other than an ill-fated attempt to get more water back into the Murray–Darling Basin, none of these measures would be actively promoted in the Howard government’s plans or policies.

  Plenty of Liberals saw active environmentalists as the ‘enemy’, part of a collectivist conspiracy that wanted nothing less than the end of the free-enterprise system. (Ironically, front-line environmental activists could just as easily be seen as true conservatives, given they are trying to preserve what is already in place and has served society well up to now.)