"We Will Decide Which Cetaceans Enter This Country, And The Manner In Which They Come!"

By Darryl Mason

Peter Garrett strikes out on his own as federal Labor descends into a shambles, offering blue whales free air mattresses if they find their way onto land and don't wish to return to the sea :



Opposition leader Tony Abbott, reveling in his best poll numbers yet against prime minister Kevin Rudd, is expected to mount a furious campaign against what he has already described as the Rudd government's "failed policies to keep whales where they belong, in the sea."

"Peter Garrett wants whales to think that once he's saved them, they should feel free to come on up and make themselves at home. Well, sorry, but that's not an Australia I want to live in. Enough is enough, we need to turn those whales back."

Controversial Liberal backbencher Wilson Tuckey revealed a surprising knowledge of the breeding habits of marine life when he railed against Peter Garrett during a Canberra doorstop :

"It's time to turn back all Cetaceans who try to enter this country illegally. They're queue jumpers. It's bad enough so many water mammals want to flop up our beaches, but after them comes all the egg layers. Have you seen how many eggs those big turtles can lay? They'd fill a town in a few months!"

Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce said it boiled down to one question,, that most of the "politically correct media" are too afraid to ask :

"Do you want to live next door to a family of whales? All that whistling and chirping all night long? They've got songs that take 20 to 30 minutes to sing. Do you want to want to live next door to that?"

@RacistWallaby certainly doesn't :

"Why is it that every convenience store is run by a family of sperm whales?"

If Garrett gets nothing else out of this term of federal Labor, he clearly intends to be remembered for at least saving some whales from Japanese harpoons.

He must be relieved the incredibly sick jokes about his insulation program and him being responsible for houses catching fire have gone quiet at last. Jokes spread by so many politicians and journalists who know that Peter Garrett's mother died in a house fire, when he was in his early 20s, and that he burned himself trying to save her.

If I had to put up with that kind of demented shit from people passing themselves off as adults, I'd want to be be out watching the fucking whales, too.


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Give Generously To PeteAid

This says more about the shitty, petty state of Australian politics and some ranks of the political media than it does about Peter Garrett :

Mr Garrett has always struggled with the impossible task of melding mainstream political reality with the strong conservation and human rights views he espoused as lead singer of the Oils.

Glenn Milne is now doing fashion reviews :

A barefoot and dejected Peter Garrett yesterday insisted he would stay on in politics, despite being demoted for his role in the $2.5 billion home insulation fiasco.

The Environment Protection Minister was photographed outside his Randwick home in Sydney, looking miserable and dressed down in tracksuit pants and a grey T-shirt.

Unlike Mr Milne, who presumably, Frank Drebin-like, changes into a more comfortable business suit on a Saturday morning before taking the dog outside to drop a load.

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Peter Garrett Quits Politics, Rejoins Midnight Oil



Come back here in February 2011 and tell me I'm wrong.

At every gig, for years to come, there'll be at least one person in the audience shout-singing, "How can we sleep while our batts are burning!"

Miranda Devine will do it, at least once. With Tim Blair on her shoulders.

The Chaser said farewell to Peter Garrett's political career in 2008



(the above image was screengrabbed from a larger banner here)

UPDATE : Philip Coorey, in the Sydney Morning Herald, hoses down the rumours :

Mr Rudd has no intention of shifting Mr Garrett. Sources close to the Prime Minister say Mr Garrett has defended himself inside and outside the Parliament better than anybody anticipated.

Quality Death Exploiting Journalism

Glenn Milne, The Australian :

....more Australians have died as a result of the Rudd government's home insulation program, "administered" by Environment Minister Peter Garrett, than lost their lives in the Iraq war.

This is what years of alcohol abuse does to your brain, kids. So go easy.

Nothing from Milne, of course, about the dozens of young Australians who served in the Iraq War, witnessed the gruesome brutal reality of an illegal invasion that Milne fully backed and came home and killed themselves.

That Milne can even dare to mention Jake Kovco's name as he attempts to blame Peter Garrett for the deaths of four insulation installers shows just what a foul and odious Liberal Party hack he really is.

Oh, this is going to be a very, very bitter election campaign. Not so from much from Tony Abbott or Kevin Rudd necessarily, but it's already clear that aging, empathy-fucked Murdoch opinionists have convinced themselves they can ensure that the Rudd government only serves one term.

A politically historic event they no doubt intend to be an active part of.

It's going to be grim.


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Midnight Oil To Reunite For PeteAid

Four people had to die so the Sydney Morning Herald's Miranda Devine could deliver this joke :



Genius stuff.

I Stand By The Lyrics That I Don't Believe In Anymore

Last weekend, Peter Garrett went some way towards repairing the damage he wrought upon die-hard Midnight Oil fans, when he entered Parliament and gave the impression that he didn't stand by the songs he'd sung and recorded with the Oils, and that he saw himself in the band as just a performer, nothing more.

During a press conference before the Sound Relief gig, the Minister for the Environment announced this disclaimer :

“I think that you can look at lyrics out of any songs and clearly, there are going to be lines there that pertain to any human situation. But the songs stand in their own right and in their own time.”

Wait a minute, he's still saying he doesn't believe in the lyrics he put his voice and his name to. Not anymore, anyway.

The Sound Relief gigs held in Sydney and Melbourne, which also saw performances by Jet, Kylie Minogue, Hoodoo Gurus, The Presets and WolfMother, amongst the dozens of acts, raised more than $5 million for the victims of the Victorian Fires.

I Stand By The Lyrics That I Don't Believe In Anymore

Last weekend, Peter Garrett went some way towards repairing the damage he wrought upon die-hard Midnight Oil fans, when he entered Parliament and gave the impression that he didn't stand by the songs he'd sung and recorded with the Oils, and that he saw himself in the band as just a performer, nothing more.

During a press conference before the Sound Relief gig, the Minister for the Environment announced this disclaimer :

“I think that you can look at lyrics out of any songs and clearly, there are going to be lines there that pertain to any human situation. But the songs stand in their own right and in their own time.”

Wait a minute, he's still saying he doesn't believe in the lyrics he put his voice and his name to. Not anymore, anyway.

The Sound Relief gigs held in Sydney and Melbourne, which also saw performances by Jet, Kylie Minogue, Hoodoo Gurus, The Presets and WolfMother, amongst the dozens of acts, raised more than $5 million for the victims of the Victorian Fires.

Maybe He Could Mime The Words Instead?

Pundits and oppo-pols are having lots of fun imagining what songs are going to fill up the 20 minute set that Midnight Oil will play at the Bushfire Relief gig in March. Any Midnight Oil fan will know that there are dozens of songs, and some of their most famous, that the current Environment Minister won't want to be seen singing now he's a professional politician, and no longer apparently believes that nuclear energy, logging and the 'US' are evil incarnate.

Of course, The Chaser anticipated exactly this kind of quandry for Peter Garrett back in mid-2007.



But Midnight Oil will only be playing a 20 minute set, and the following Oils classic will cause Garrett no political headaches, plus it will fill a good chunk of the running time :



Even though Garrett's jerking-electric shock dance moves are seared into the national consciousness, it's still going to be a little strange to see a senior minister in the federal government rocking out onstage like that. It's a good cause, though, and it's pretty obvious Peter Garrett is hugely missing the addictive buzz of performing for an audience, in front of such a truly great band as the Oils.

My pick for the list, jokes about doing only instrumentals aside, will be some of the blasting, mostly politics-free songs off 1979's raucous Head Injuries album (Bus To Bondi for example), and the soaring anthem 'One Country', the lyrics of which follows :

Who'd like to change the world, who wants to shoot the curl
Who gets to work for bread, who wants to get ahead
Who hands out equal rights, who starts and ends that fight
And not not rant and rave, or end up a slave
Who can make hard won gains, fall like the summer rain
Now every man must be, what his life can be

So dont call, me, the tune, I will walk away

Who wants to please everyone, who says it all can be done
Still sit up on that fence, no-one Ive heard of yet
Dont call me baby, dont talk in maybes
Dont talk like has-beens, sing it like it should be
Who laughs at the nagging doubt, lying on a neon shroud
Just gotta touch someone, I want to be

Who wants to sit around, turn it up turn it down
Only a man can be, what his life can be
One vision, one people, one landmass, we are defenceless, we have a lifeline
One ocean, one policy, seabed lies, one passion, one movement, one instant
One difference, one lifetime, one understanding
Transgression, redemption, one island, our placemat, one firmament
One element, one moment, one fusion, yes and one time




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The Minister For Rock

By Darryl Mason

Peter Garrett did not have a good year. He spent far too much time looking weak and fear-grinning his way through interviews and rare press conferences, snapping haughtily at journalists when they reminded him that what he was doing is the just about the complete opposite of the belief system he lived and breathed and seethed when he was frontman for Midnight Oil. You know, when he was popular.

In 2008, Garrett seemed to only appear long enough to back down on yet another issue that once won him such a rabid and sometimes messiah-like rock political following amongst usually disinterested suburban youth, or to loom up in Question Time and shamelessly change his mind on something he said only a few months, weeks, or days, before.

Few in the media had much good to say about him, or whatever departments he is supposed to be in charge of. Does anybody really know Peter Garrett's full portfolio, or what the fuck he is supposed to be doing, without going a goog?

Garrett got frequently hammered in the media, on climate change and solar panels, and they were mere entrees. In short, the reviews were fucking abysmal. Maybe one star out of five.

But Garrett sees himself as a seasoned public performer, used to copping attack and flack. He's had full bottles of beer thrown at him onstage by people who loved him, back when Midnight Oil were regularly shredded by the music press, in their early days. He can take it. The media doesn't like something he's done? Right, whatever. Seriously, who really gives a shit what the media has to say? To Fight Club philosophise, Peter Garrett lets what does not truly matter, slide.

But a source tells The Orstrahyun that one chunk of anti-Garrett news really hit him, and hurt him.

This news, from October :

Rock band AC/DC has been named the most trusted Australian music brand, while former Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett is "a sell-out".

As AC/DC released its first album in eight years yesterday, a report by brand expert Simon Hammond found that the hard rockers still had the trust of the nation.

But the report found Mr Garrett, who for years sang about Aboriginal rights, land ownership and the environment before joining the Labor Party and entering Federal Parliament, was damaged goods.

"Peter Garrett himself is damaging the memory of Midnight Oil," Mr Hammond said.

"A lot of people think he has sold out. When you go from where he was, as an independent voice in a political environment outside of the inner sanctum, to all of a sudden join it, you have to sell out. He's had to shut up and do things the right way.

"I am sure he has got his reasons but, from a point of view of popular culture, people see him as a sell-out."

"People grew up with Midnight Oil and believed in their beliefs," he said.

"Those beliefs were very clearly articulated. Now he talks like a politician, so he is definitely a damaged brand now."

The source claims that this report troubled Garrett deeply. It's bad enough the public clearly despises him in ever greater numbers, but AC/DC more trusted than Midnight Oil? How the fuck did that happen?

Garrett knows he will never become prime minister, if that was ever his intention, but he is concerned about his life after politics. Who'll buy his book(s)? How might he one day be obituarised?

Garrett will not let himself be remembered as a "damaged brand", a "sell out" who is polluting "the memory of Midnight Oil".

For fuck's sake, AC/DC are 'more trusted' than his old band?

AC/DC made album after (usually excellent) album compromised almost entirely of songs about fucking. Midnight Oil changed the nation, and maybe a little bit of the world, too, through song. So that's gotta hurt. Real bad.

But it's far worse than just that. What Peter Garrett is doing, or not doing, is making millions of Australians question the legacy, the integrity, of Midnight Oil.

Look around you, there are still Midnight Oil t-shirts to be seen, but how many are there with Garrett's huge, great stretched dome leering out at you? None.

Peter Garrett is successfully garroting his musical legacy, let alone his political legacy. And he knows it.

There was once the option for Garrett to think, 'Well, if the political thing doesn't work out, I will always be remembered as the lead singer for Midnight Oil'. What will that be worth once he's finished 'poisoning its memory'?

The question is how he will go about shaking off such a "damaged" public image?

Think : Music.

One possibility may be music education available to all, or most, children which will be focused on rock, including rap and R & B, but mostly rock. Peter Garrett is apparently very aware of how popular video games that are now teaching hundreds of thousands of Australian kids how to play toy guitars and drums along to music actually are. And he can capitalise on it, and recast himself, as the politician who was responsible for getting the actual instruments of rock into the hands of all the kids that want them.

What if Garrett becomes the Australian politician who spearheads a public schools drive to teach a generation of kids how to rock for real? How to play a real guitar instead just a video game one? How to hammer away on an actual eight piece drumkit, real rims and skins and pedals, real noise, instead of noodling away on bleepy plastic pads? You want to get the aggression out of kids in school? Give them access to a drum kit.

The film industry is developing a ripe old stink, after the debacle of 'Australia'. Are you happy that ex-Australian Rupert Murdoch got back tens of millions of dollars of his investment in that movie before it even hit the cinemas, and died a non-blockbuster death?

Anyway, the real entrepreneurs have always known there is money to be made in Australian rock. It's far more fun, and the track record is superb. We've turned out many of the greatest bands in world rock history. More people will see live music in Australia this summer than will watch Australian movies, in the cinema or at home on DVD. There is, for Garrett, hope and redemption in the music, now, as there has been before.

In 2009, Peter Garrett will become the Minister for Rock...

...or he will continue to fart around and make hundreds of thousands of middle-aged people wonder why in all fuck they ever believed what he had to say, what they truly came to believe in too, back in the days when he was blasting pure energy and righteousness from the stage of a thundering Midnight Oil gig.

Greener Than Green

Paul Sheehan strips some bark off The Green's Bob Brown for his tireless, and tiresome, attacks on the new Australian environment minister, Peter Garrett, during the election campaign.

Some of Bob Brown's dozens of prominent media blasts at Garrett, mostly because he refused to say that he opposed the building of a new pulp mill in Tasmania, on his way to seizing control of the government's environment ministry :

"Peter Garrett and Malcolm Turnbull will get together and say more uranium mines," Brown postulated on ABC Radio's PM on October 15. The previous week, he told a rally: "Peter Garrett claims he is 'perfectly comfortable' with the pulp mill … Peter Garrett, we're not perfectly comfortable with you!" (October 7)

"This is the Labor hierarchy gagging Peter. Labor [including Garrett] … needs to get a backbone." (Bob Brown media release, September 7.)

"I can't see Peter Garrett at all. Where is he? Peter used to be such a defender of Tasmania's forests … but he is missing in action," Brown told ABC Lateline on August 29.

"Peter Garrett must not stand on the sidelines while the environment is trashed." (Media release, August 23.)

"He [Garrett] hasn't affected the Labor Party one iota; but the Labor Party machine has taken him over and turned him into an anti-Green campaigner," Brown said on ABC's Background Briefing on March 4.

Sheehan points out that Brown nearly gassed himself on his own hyperbole, and probably did some damage to the Green vote in the election :

This is all pretty rich, given Garrett's long track record of effective environmentalism. Garrett did not respond to Brown's hostility, he just won the war. As of this morning, Garrett sits in cabinet, as Minister for the Environment, with the confidence of the Prime Minister.

Brown, in contrast, has squandered one of the greatest political windfalls given to any political party in Australia since federation. At the 2007 federal election, climate change, global warming and water shortages were part of the mainstream debate for the first time, along with a prime minister who appeared incapable of understanding the critical political importance of these issues to a new generation of voters.

When Garrett emerged as a threat to Brown's power base, he was subject to a steady stream of claims that he had "sold out". Brown dismissed him as Little Red Riding Hood. Now, just three years after entering Parliament, Garrett sits in federal cabinet with his hands on the machinery of policy and power. He has always practised the art of the possible.

If anyone has sold out in this contest it is Brown, for using the environment as a screen for other obsessions, and for failing to grasp the enormous political opportunity presented by the 2007 election.

It hurts, but it's also true enough.

Global warming, protecting the environment, renewable energy - all these things were vote-changing issues at the election. 2007 should have seen The Greens make massive leaps and bounds, and they should be easily in control of the Senate. But they didn't.

Garrett has gone from radical conservation activist and wild rock star in the early 1980s to Minister For The Environment in 2007.

You won't see them say it in print, or in press conferences, but there are legions of old right-wing conservatives, and anti-Garrett old schoolers, whose jaws are still hanging to the floor today at what Garrett has achieved.

What he does with his new power remains to be seen. But it's a shocker that Bob Brown has not been cheering Garrett on, and celebrating his extraordinary win.

The conservationists and pro-environment crowd have won. And one of their own is now in a real position of power in the federal government. The highest position of power, short of prime minister, that any of them who were lashed to logging trucks and protesting uranium mines in the early 1980s could have ever dreamed of achieving.

It would be a terrible thing indeed if mere jealousy was the main reason Bob Brown went on the Garrett attack all the way through the election campaign.

TheArtzzzz : Show Us The Money

Peter Garrett is the new Minister for the Arts. Well, he officially becomes Minister for the Arts today, when he is sworn in. To celebrate, the Sydney Morning Herald runs a nice big fat story on how the Artzzz community is already antsy and impatient with the new minister for not spelling out how much moolah they'll be getting :

Peter Garrett talks about the arts like a therapist staging an intervention. In his first interview as arts minister-elect, the language is positive but short on detail - building confidence before the rehabilitation, it seems.

"Labor's starting point is to recognise that the arts are as big and as broad and as deserving of support as the country is," he says. "It's certainly a signal that from the prime minister, right through the whole of the government, the integral role that the arts plays in our society will be recognised, encouraged and applauded."

Garrett is not prepared to commit to funds allocated in the May budget, and will not use his position to influence the states on support for the arts - as has been promised in areas such as health.

"The role that the national government has is to ensure that the responsibilities in relation to film, to the administration and direction of the Australia Council [are met] … I'd expect to work closely with the states where there are shared programs for delivery," he says.

"I think the critical thing is to be unabashed about recognising the absolutely critical role that the arts plays, in all its branches, in all its forms of expression," Garrett says. "I'd use an expression such as opening up the shutter for a whole new landscape of possibilities."

WTF?

Now the election is over, is Peter Garrett actually going to start talking like a human being again, anytime soon?

Though they will cut out their own tongues before they freely admit it, most of the Australian arts communities did very well, funding-wise, under John Howard's reign.

Neither Kevin Rudd, or Peter Garrett, have given any indication whatsoever that they plan to fund Australian Arts beyond the levels outlined in Peter Costello's May budget, or even match those Howard government allocations.

Might be time to mulch up some paper-mache in preparation of building some Rudd and Garrett big puppet protest heads, just in case.

Garrett & Rudd Betrayal Of Green Vote Comes At Heavy Price

How can Labor lose 'green' votes to Howard And Friends? Easy. Betray the hardcore over issues like Kyoto and opposing pulp mills and watch their anger and dissent spread amongst the waverers like wild fire.

Some amazing stats drawn from the latest NewsPoll :

* In only four weeks, Labor has lost a big fat ten points in its lead over Howard And Friends on the question of which party would best handle the environment.

* 22% of 'Howard Huggers' would rather Peter Garrett be environment minister than Malcolm Turnbull. Yes, really.

* 45% of voters believe Garrett would be a 'more capable' environment minister than Turnbull at 37%. But there's still a whopping 21% of voters who believe neither are 'more capable' or remain uncommitted.

From The Australian :

Labor's strong lead over the Coalition on handling the environment - about 15 points since Mr Rudd became leader and appointed former rock singer and conservationist leader Mr Garrett as his environment spokesman - has shrunk dramatically.

Last weekend, when asked which party would better handle the environment, 29per cent said Labor, 24per cent said the Coalition and 27per cent said "someone else".

In June last year the ALP and the Coalition were equal on 28per cent and "someone else" almost the same on 26per cent. But after Mr Rudd became leader, the ALP's support jumped to 41per cent, the Coalition dropped to 24per cent and "someone else" registered 15per cent.

Labor is going soft on one of its biggest issues. And they're paying for it.

Think about it. Peter Garrett is losing votes to Howard And Friends on the environment.

Howard is now actively trying to portray himself as being a successful and reliable custodian of the Australian environment, a conservationist and the person who can realistically handle the complex environmental, social and economic issues surrounding climate change.

Incredibly, it seems like Howard The Greenie is now starting to become a more believable proposition to more and more voters. If Howard thinks there are votes in it, you might even see him lying down in front of some old-growth forest clearing bulldozers. Okay, maybe not. But you will see him standing with his hands on his hips staring up at a rainforest canopy sometime soon. Or handling some wide-eyed trembling little marsupial.

Turnbull, meanwhile, is quickly on his way to becoming as popular as Tony Abbott. That is, as popular as slipping in someone else's warm vomit on a hot summer evening.


And seeing as we haven't done this yet, we'll quote some lyrics from a Garrett-credited Midnight Oil song, one of their best, 'Pictures' :

I just want to talk through paradise
I just want to see that clear clear ight
Don't want to be a member of a species that's deceasing
Keep on making those promises that they aren't keeping

Don't sit around in silence you don't need a licence
It's moving in a hurry
there's no need to worry
We're really going to change it the critical mass approaches
I can almost hear it

The video for 'Pictures', from 1985, which ends with a quote from Dr Bob Brown follows :





Garrett can't afford to forget the messages that helped make him such a popular and important leader of the 'green movement'. Claiming he can achieve more by working within the system, rather than pushing against it from the outside, only cuts through for so long. He's losing the faith of green voters. Indeed, a critical mass approaches...

How The Garrett 'Gaffe' Will Become The Message Of Positive Change

Howard Prepares To Say Goodbye Bennelong

Three more weeks to go until we learn whether the Rudd opposition has succeeded in pulling off one of the more incredible election victories, and political psychological warfare operations (against the government facing defeat), in Australian history.

John Howard must by now truly understand what Kevin Rudd meant when he said he was going to mess with the prime minister's head. Rudd is 'psy-oping' Howard into a state of barely concealed terror. Howard knows he is going to lose, and it will be impossible for him to hide the fact that he knows this in his heart.

There will plenty of pouting, lots of whining and bucket loads of begging.

The Rudd "Me-Too" strategy is likely to go down as one of the more brilliant election strategies in decades. Rudd has managed to avoid nearly every wedge that Howard And Friends had planned to isolate and crucify him with. It's absurd to read Howard huggers like Piers Akerman and Andrew Dolt claiming that Rudd is running a dirty campaign. Well, why wouldn't they? They learned from watching John Howard, the Yoda of dirty politics, for a decade. They know every one of his tricks, and now they're using them all against him. And it's working.

Rudd has managed to not make this election so much a choice between Labor and the Coalition, but a choice between Howard and Rudd. And Rudd is just far too popular for the prime minister to beat right now. The majority of the Australian public don't hate Howard, but they don't want to vote him back into office. They want some new blood, or Rudd.

That may change in the next 22 or 23 days, but it's impossible to imagine how.

The Liberals are viewing Peter Garrett's supposedly serious admission that everything will change, as far as Labor agreeing with Liberal policies once they win the election, as "Gold!"

They think they've found the hammer they can use to crack Labor skulls.

This week, we will see the same old, tired, boring parade of Costello, Abbott, Howard, Downer and Joe Hockey trying to Fear Up the Australian public over what Labor will do when they win.

"It's all a big con!" they'll shout and whine. "You're being fooled!" "They'll turn Australia into a Union Socialist Utopia and you'll lose your job and your home!"

It won't make much difference. Not to Rudd's chances of winning anyway. But unless the Liberals have plenty of good, exciting and positive news to fill in the gaps around all the worthless Fearing, they'll find they're doing more damage to themselves than Garrett has done to Labor.

The media will lose interest by Monday night in Garrett's 'gaffe'. It doesn't help that the person most seriously pumping the story, radio jock Steve Price, has a wife employed by a federal government minister as 'an advisor'. Seriously, where is this guy's credibility?

Price thinks he has delivered the scoop of the election, the revelation that will turn the tide for Howard And Friends. Good luck with that, Steve. Garrett has already all but neutralised his own words. The interest rate rise will rip Garrett's 'gaffe' from the headlines and make it into yesterday's news.

In fact, Howard already has done exactly that :

To be handed such a stick with which to beat Labor was an unexpected windfall. But the PM knew where to draw the line. "(Are) you saying that a political party should outline everything they're going to do in the next term of government if they are re-elected?" Howard was asked in Darwin. "No, no, I'm not, I'm not saying that," he said quickly, seeing the familiar trap. Before the last election, he didn't signal WorkChoices...

It's hard to imagine anything more crushing for Howard than heading into the final half of the election campaign with the biggest selling newspapers in Australia headlining how he is going to lose his Bennelong seat to Maxine McKew. The polls are grim all round for Howard and the Liberals. How can they turn it around? What will work now? What have they got left?

The Murdoch media is running wide today with the story that John Howard is renovating his all but abandoned suburban Sydney home in preparation for his departure from his 11 year long occupation of Kirribilli House. Millions of Australians will read or hear about this, and most will probably think : 'The old bugger's already given up.'

Howard And Friends now have to get to election day without looking like they are heading to a funeral.

Howard, his ministers, his advisors, his 'huggers' in the media, can't believe what is happening. How did this all go so very wrong? How did those hopeless Labor union patsies get on top of them so quickly, so effectively and how do they keep winning the week?

Even John Howard's infamous morning walks are turning against him. For the next three weeks, every morning he steps out into the early sunlight, he will be ambushed by comedy teams, hecklers, protesters and bizarrely costumed attention seekers. As Michelle Grattan points out, as bad and as embarrassing as the morning walks have already become for Howard, he can't just stop them now :

The Liberals might be better off if the walk was scrapped before it gets entirely out of hand. But presumably the PM thinks he needs the exercise. More to the point, ditching it now, after so many years, would be akin to throwing out a major policy. The significance would take up hours of airtime, acres of print.

Garrett's gaffe, or blatant honesty, will excite them for a few days, but it won't carry them all the way through the next three weeks. And Garrett has already found a way to spin the 'gaffe' to Labor's advantage :

"Notwithstanding what was said, there is no doubt things would change under a Labor government," he said.

"We would launch an education revolution. We would get rid of WorkChoices. We would deliver a high-speed broadband network across Australia. We will end the blame game on hospitals."

His comment was about a change "for the better" that would come with a Labor government. "It's very clear to me that the changes we refer to here are the positive changes that Rudd Labor could bring forward … across a range of issues that count to the people of Australia," he said.

Garrett looks like he has already killed the controversy, or at least turned it to Labor's advantage, before the Liberals can even get started on it.

Every time the Howard cheer squad bring up Garrett's "everything will change once we get in" quote, Labor can counter it with exactly what Garrett said above.

They can now dare the Liberals to run with some full-blown Fearing on the Garrett quote, and get their positive, future-looking message even more air time.

The Rudd-approved messing with Howard's head continues, with gusto.