KEY POINTS:
It is not easy to miss Peter Garrett. Towering a head - at least - above most in the room, bald, in sports jacket and open-necked shirt, a Timorese scarf draped around his neck, Labor's spokesman on climate change, environment, heritage and the arts is one of the most recognisable faces in Australian politics.
He is also one of the central players in Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd's bid to end Prime Minister John Howard's 11 years in power. Climate change and the environment, spurred by Howard's late, poll-driven, conversion and rush of lavishly funded policies, have become key issues in the election to be held in the final months of the year.
Nor has it been only the greenies who have been driving the debate. Scientists, engineers, even businessmen have been urging the Government to take climate change and the accelerating decline of the Australian environment seriously.
Public perceptions of the growing urgency have been heightened by almost a decade of one of the worst droughts in the nation's history, and the near-collapse of the mighty Murray-Darling river system that keeps the eastern states alive.
But the environment can also be dangerous ground for politicians regardless of their environmental credentials. This week, Garrett faced cat-calls of "turncoat", demands for his resignation and threats to direct green preferences away from Labor following Labor's decision to court Tasmanian votes by dumping earlier policies and supporting continued logging in the island state.
Then again, whatever his religious beliefs, Garrett can claim to have God on his side. In the past few days Pope Benedict has said the world must listen to the voice of the Earth if it is to survive, while in Australia Catholic organisations announced their intention to turn to solar power and to convert church car fleets to hybrid vehicles.
Cyberspace also seems to be running Garrett's way. On competing MySpace sites, Garrett has 1040 "friends"; rival Environment and Water Resources Minister Malcolm Turnbull, a multi-millionaire merchant banker, lists a comparatively paltry 223.
And public perceptions continue to favour Labor. The most recent Newspoll on the issues closest to voters' hearts places water planning second only to health, followed by education and the environment - ahead even of the economy, social welfare and national security. In both water and the broader environment, the Government trails badly.
This was why Rudd appointed Garrett to his portfolio on a Sydney beach shortly after taking party leadership from Kim Beazley last November. He may prefer Vivaldi, Simon and Garfunkel and even John Denver to Midnight Oil - Garrett's former rock band - but Rudd can recognise a good political bet when he sees one.
For the same reason, Howard became a fervent climate change advocate, cranked the environment up to the top of his election policy-making machine, and appointed the youthful and dynamic Turnbull, a former head of the Republican movement, to blunt Labor's environmental steamroller.
Howard has made some dramatic moves, most notably his intention to take control of the Murray-Darling system from the states, using constitutional powers to flatten opposition from Victoria in a bid to reverse the decline of the nation's single most important supply of water. It is a plan supported by Labor.
Turnbull this week used an international conference on forests and climate in Sydney to announce a US$10 million ($12.8 million) injection into the World Bank's forest carbon partnerships fund, and Canberra's intention to launch a new global system to monitor changes in forest cover and forest carbon levels.
Earlier, Garrett had announced a A$150 million ($167 million) climate change package for developing countries in the region. Accusing Howard of fighting for years against the inclusion of climate change on the agenda of the South Pacific Forum, Garrett noted: "I think this funding means that our Pacific neighbours finally get a sense that Australia is listening to them, and understands that they are facing a huge, huge challenge with climate change and potential sea-level rise.
"We [recognise] that climate change is an important development issue as much as it is an important environmental issue and a regional security issue."
ALTHOUGH in his mid-50s and a baby-boomer icon through Midnight Oil - a hugely successful, politically and environmentally charged band that survived from the early 1970s to the second year of the new century - Garrett has credentials that span generations. With art and law degrees, he was president of the Australian Conservation Foundation for four years, helped forge alliances between environmentalists and traditionally suspicious farmers, and sat on the international board of Greenpeace for two years.
The University of New South Wales awarded him an honorary doctorate. Even the Howard Government recognised his merits, including him in the Order of Australia in 2003.
Garrett personifies a new, more international, approach by Labor to environmentalism, tying a vast and at times dismaying list of domestic problems to global issues and policies. He sees problems such as the now-passing drought, storms, coastal degradation and coral bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef as being linked to climate change.
Unlike Howard, Garrett is a passionate supporter of the Kyoto protocols on climate change, and of a multilateral approach to global environmental action. He regards as sensible the proposed harmonisation of carbon trading schemes between Australia and New Zealand, and shows interest in plans for transtasman research into clean coal technology and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by farm animals - even if he's a little puzzled as to how ruminant flatulence might be controlled.
Garrett is also aware that a large chunk of the world is watching Australia, and has not been impressed. This is brought home in Sydney, where he addresses a luncheon meeting of the Foreign Correspondents Association, whose members include representatives of the world's biggest and most influential media organisations.
In his introduction, FAC president Urs Walterlin, correspondent for major daily and financial newspapers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, makes it clear that Europe considers Australia a major global environmental player that is not pulling its weight. Bluntly, he tells Garrett that earlier hopes of significant improvement under Labor appear to have been misplaced.
Garrett does his best to change that view. Howard, he says, has been asleep at the wheel on climate change for the past 11 years, has taken the issue away from Turnbull and placed his emissions trading task force within his own department, and directed Treasurer Peter Costello to undertake "too little, too late" economic modelling.
Further, policies devised by climate change sceptics had allowed Australia's greenhouse gas emissions to continue rising unabated, Howard continued to refuse to ratify the Kyoto protocols, and the rest of the world decidedly does not share the Prime Minister's view of Australia as a guiding light.
Quite the reverse, Garrett says. Stavros Dimas, the European Environment Commissioner, recently blasted Australia's "negative attitude" on international negotiations, Richard Worthington of South Africa's Climate Action Network urged his government to distance itself from Australia's Kyoto position "at every opportunity", and Canberra's own Greenhouse Office reported that the nation's greenhouse gas emissions were running above Kyoto targets.
Garrett lists a string of studies over the past decade urging action, and says: "The Government responded by slamming the snooze button."
He says Canberra has been effectively locked out of the most important, decision-making international climate change forums by its position on Kyoto and is failing to take advantage of the series of Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) forum meetings that will peak with the leaders' summit in Sydney in September.
Garrett wants Apec to avoid the creation of competing regimes and participate fully in negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to include effective targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions - Japan, Canada and the European Union plan a 50 per cent cutback by 2050 - a process for UN-based technology transfers, embracing forest preservation in the Kyoto protocol, and a single framework of global rules for emissions trading.
At home, Garrett is fighting Government attempts to portray him as an economic barbarian, predicting his environmental policies will create a "Garrett recession".
He argues instead that there need not be a conflict between environment and economy, pointing to calls by engineers and business for an end to procrastination on emissions trading and the setting of firm targets, and opportunities for Australian companies to cash in on a A$71 billion global market in renewable energy and clean technology.
More immediate political minefields have been laid by Rudd's decision to secure key Tasmanian votes by promising to maintain existing logging arrangements and to support a controversial A$2 billion pulp mill in the island's north. Former ally and Greens Leader Senator Bob Brown accused Garrett of selling out and threatened to direct support elsewhere.
Garrett is unrepentant, saying the policy in place at present is the best and has been accepted as such, and that people will have to make up their own minds about whether to spit the dummy on Tasmanian forestry or back Howard and his climate change policies.
Nuclear energy is another hairy issue for a man previously famously opposed to the prospect. Garrett remains adamant that reactors are not an option for Australia, but does not buck Labor policy supporting increased mining and exports of uranium. Life, as former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser once said, was never meant to be easy.
