Garrett's the good oil

In contrast to Brandis, the performance of the Shadow Arts Minister on the same program a week later was very refreshing. Peter Garrett (shadow minister for climate change, environment, heritage and [phew!]the ... arts) was clearly briefed on the issues, was able to speak passionately and with knowledge as a creator and copyright holder himself and made all the right noises about preserving ELR, abolishing the recent sedition laws, protection territorial copyright and even looking into annoying anomalies in the GST (although the GST on books is here to stay). If anything, he was slightly less 'bookish' than Brandis, but I suspect the industry will forgive him that if he delivers something more than the current incumbent. Given the complete absence of any measures for the industry in the recent Federal Budget, that probably won't be very hard.