Peter Garrett - hypocritical twat or honest convert?

Peter Garrett, one time front man of right-on lefty activist rockers Midnight Oil and now Australia's Environment Minister, is a bit of a puzzle to me. On the one hand in his music career he sang about uranium mining, how bad it was and how nasty mining companies are and how they trample on the rights of the rest of us with government approval. On the other hand he's now just given his personal approval - and being a minister it's also a government approval - for expansion of a uranium mine in South Australia.

Now in some respects it shouldn't be a huge surprise since he's said before the Australian Labour Party even won the election that he'd toe the party line. However, some Midnight Oil fans, and some who weren't really fans and maybe even hated the music, reckon Peter Garrett is a hypocritical twat who's sold out on his principles to get a nice job in the government. Garrett himself has said that people can change their minds on an issue, though in this case it seems he's merely going along with a party policy that he personally disagreed with and voted against but that was approved by the majority.

So while I'd normally lean towards my stack of hypocritical twat labels, because as a pop star campaigner turned politician he seems likely to deserve one on both counts, I'm really not sure he deserves it, at least not for this. Could it just possibly be that he values the principle of democracy slightly higher than the principle of not digging up uranium? Without being able to take a peak inside his head who can say for sure except Garrett himself? Perhaps he shouldn't have accepted the job of Environment Minister since he must have had an inkling that sooner or later he'd have had to do something that might not fit to well with all the Oil eco-protest anti-corporatist stuff. Certainly some eco-types in Melbourne wish he hadn't, and some would probably like to force feed him every Midnight Oil CD smashed into little spiky bits because he approved the dredging of Port Phillip Bay. But if he really has modified his position on some environmental issues as he's got older, and lots of people do (including me), then why should he not take the job?

Still, while I think the hypocritical twat label might be unfair, having seen some Midnight Oil stuff on YouTube I will say he comes across as a self righteous prick and possible Michael Stipe wannabee. I thought the music was shit as well.