Source : Perth Now news
Peter Garrett stands tall on the gnarled roots of a Moreton Bay fig tree and walks among the ferns in an inner-city park.
While green spaces like the reserve in Annandale, Sydney’s inner-west, are part of his natural habitat, Garrett will be looking much further afield as the new chair of Landcare Australia.
The activist, musician and former environment minister has been appointed more than three decades after he was instrumental in bringing conservationists and farmers together to form the national movement.
Garrett was president of the Australian Conservation Foundation in 1989, working closely with his colleagues and the National Farmers’ Federation to lobby the Hawke government to back Landcare.
An ongoing alliance with the agriculture sector is more important than ever, as global temperatures rise, putting pressure on landscapes and waterways, Garrett said.
“There’s a greater mission at play here, which is to make sure that we’re leaving a country in a better state than we found it,” he told AAP.
“The partnerships that we build enable that work to happen much more successfully and much more quickly than it otherwise would.”
As a grassroots movement to restore and protect the natural environment, Landcare supports more than 100,000 volunteers across the country, from the coast to the outback.
That is the strength of a large nation, one Garrett has traversed many times in his various intersecting lives as the frontman of Midnight Oil, an Indigenous rights champion and a politician.
“Australians do things in a way which other countries probably look at and scratch their heads,” he said.
“Having environmentalists and farmers working together, First Nations people on one end of the country and coastal care on the other, even bringing partnerships between business, philanthropists and governments.
“That’s the great strength we hold as a democracy.”
Garrett takes up the mantle from Doug Humann, who served as chair for nine years.
In recent years, Mr Humann said one of the challenges facing Landcare was lack of continual funding for conservation and finding a new generation of volunteers.
“Who could blame younger Australians for looking through their social media feed and wondering whether there’s hope and opportunity for them?” Garrett said.
“The short answer is there most definitely is.”
Hope can be found in taking action, Garrett said.
That’s something he has believed since he co-wrote Minutes to Midnight about the threat of nuclear war in 1984, which features the lyrics: “Hope is what you say and do.”
“There’s a great Australian mission here for us,” he said.
