how do we sleep while our beds are burning?
Sunday, December 21st, 2008
Peter Garrett
Yeah. You’ve got the song in your head now, don’t you? Midnight Oil’s anthem to the Stolen Generation is one of those songs that stays with you. Midnight Oil. Remember them? They were a force. A strong bunch of politically motivated men. Anti-uranium, pro-environment, on the side of the aboriginies. There was everything about them that I liked in real Aussie men – they weren’t afraid of the authority. They weren’t afraid to kick arse and to make you feel like a bit of a loser if you didn’t care.
So then, last year, there was an election and Peter Garrett put his money where his mouth was and became a politician. His party got in and wow. Peter Garrett. Minister for the Environment. Man, I have to tell you, I was excited. I was damned excited. We had Peter Garrett on our side. All the possums and wallabies and gum trees and whales and degraded land and insects and spiders and water tables and crocodiles and everyone. We all had him on our side and things were going to go good.
Minister for the Environment, Peter Garrett, is NOT a rock star.
And then he said it was okay to turn a pretty valley in Tasmania into a pulp mill. And thought that smiling and being nice to the Japanese would stop them from sending whaling ships into Australian Antarctic waters. And gave the nod to a uranium mine to use a process that will involve radioactive water leaching back into the water table.
Now this blog is not about how Peter Garrett gives me the shits. It’s about how all politicians give me the shits and they do it because they think they are rock stars.
They’re not.
They’re public servants.
Now I want you to repeat that phrase
public servants
PUBLIC SERVANTS
PUBLIC SERVANTS
Yeah. Getting that second bit?
SERVANTS
Because we are the boss of them. They are NOT rock stars. They are NOT media gurus. They are NOT in charge of it all, they are our servants. We pay them to do what we want.
Somehow this fact got a little lost in the translation and there seems to be some sort of belief that either they are media celebrities who we all want to know, or that they are actually the tools of very rich people, and are there to help said very rich people get even richer.
We need to spend a lot more of our time kicking the pollies off their arses and reminding them that we each get one vote and that our vote carries exactly the same weight as the vote of someone with squillions of dollars.
GetUp. This will take you to their website.
GetUp is a great arse-kicking tool. They are not in love with any political party and they stick up for the rights of everyone. Basically, (for those who remember the Democrats, aren’t they defunct now?) GetUp is there to keep the bastards honest. Worth a look to keep up with the good work they’re doing.
And of course the other site where you can make yourself heard is this
click here for a link to the federal pollie of your choice
one. *Because nothing feels quite as good as shooting an email off to a pollie and telling them how bad they are. Or how good they are (makes a nice change). These people are our servants and we need to remind them of that. We really do.
*Actually, that’s a complete lie. Heaps of things feel better than emailing politicians. I mean even cleaning the kitchen bench feels better than that, but you know what I mean. Contact a pollie. Give them a bit of encouragement. Give them a bit of constructive criticism. You’ll get a warm fuzzy out of it.
Anyway, that’s my contribution for today. Next time I’m going to have a bit of a rant about ex-Federal Treasurer, Peter Costello, who clearly lives in fairyland.
what's your excuse?
Thought for the day:
politicians are public servants. We are the boss of them. They have no excuses. Neither do we.