A BIT like admitting to favouring Collingwood as your second team, a residual affection for Peter Garrett is one of those things it is best not to mention too loudly. The Minister For Something To Do With Schools has precious few admirers or defenders on the left, which is hardly surprising, as it is very difficult to determine exactly what he is meant to be doing, there being a veritable tribe of cabinet members with some or other responsibility for the alleged promotion of education. If Gillard could only find one or two more scholars’ advocate she would have the appropriate half-dozen – six being the traditional number for carrying a coffin. With Garrett no longer allowed anywhere near the Environment portfolio, he could draw some relief for the thwarted green urge by insisting on burying old-fashioned, rigorous and fact-based educational standards in one of those organic, worm-welcoming cardboard coffins in which his sometime friend, Helen Caldicott, plans to be laid to rest.
On the right, Garrett gets even less respect, regarded as the roof-burning, apprentice-electrocuting incompetent whose guidance of the pink-batts fiasco continues to cost taxpayers dear…The Front Man For Incoherence
