It seems to have worked. Articulate and well-considered, Garrett, 44, is a qualified barrister, though he has never practised. For over 20 years other things have claimed his attention: notably music, justice and the intersection of the two. In 1984 he ran for the Australian Senate as the head of the Nuclear Disarmament Party and received nine per cent of the vote. He is also a past president of the Australian Conservation Foundation and its current patron.

Yet despite this high-profile political activism it is as the lead singer of Midnight Oil that he is best known. MTV described Midnight Oil as responsible for more "songs about more things that count, than virtually any band in the history of music." Garrett suggests this is "a little over the top". But it shows the level of respect the band has gained in an industry not known for its probing social conscience

While Garrett's profile as singer, spokesperson and social activist is well established, what lies behind the burning passion is not. In reflection he explains that it is "not out of conviction but rather out of the composition of a person that their action comes." If you scratch him, he says, "not only will I bleed, but I will tell you what I believe." Peter Garrett grew up in Sydney in what he calls "a fairly average middle-class family." After attending the Australian National University in Canberra for five years, he finished his Arts/Law degree at the University of NSW.

Then, as he puts it, "I just ended up hanging out with a bunch of people with guitars and drums and some panel vans and proceeded to make music." And they've been making it ever since.

"The fact is that we take music very seriously," he says, though with a chuckle. "In our early period we pretty much survived or perished on our capacity to reach people, and on getting into the pattern of having no money and playing lots of shows." Now, after two decades and over 12 million album sales, money is no longer a problem, and the band can pretty well choose when and where they will play. But their sheer love of making music continues unabated.

So does their trademark disdain for the trappings of rock stardom. Their unconventionality is proverbial. For example, in 1996, with the release of their album Breathe, they knocked back every request for an interview. "Our career path has tended to be the most perverse and contrary approach to the entertainment industry imaginable, while at the same time doing the kinds of things that you have to do, the videos, the photos and all that sort of stuff," Peter says. "We've come at it from a different perspective and the fact that we have survived shows it can be done."

From their first album in 1978, Midnight Oil have used their music as a vehicle for strong moral and political statements. Not surprisingly they have been frequently misunderstood. Peter is philosophical. "You just get used to it. You don't want to spend your life explaining yourself. You just get on with the work and explain yourself by your actions." Those actions have generally been to keep producing music filled with passion and righteous indignation. But Peter rejects any view of the band as "a fermenting bunch of people sitting in this room straining to bring stuff to bear". "It's much more down-to-earth, much more a basic nuts and bolts, grinding activity than that," he says. "Stripped of its mystery it's fairly mundane."

Peter does concede, somewhat reluctantly, that Midnight Oil have been successful - at least by "the classic criteria" of selling records and commanding audiences here and around the world. His own criteria are more demanding. "I guess for me what is more significant than success is the nature of each of the songs and of the words. I tend to define what we've done much more by the actual substance of what we've created than by whether we've sold 50 or 50,000 records."

But what about Peter Garrett the man? When he's away from the band, he likes to "hang out with my family and with close friends" and "find a quiet moment". Living south of Sydney with his wife and three children, he describes himself as "very much a day-to-day person." "I rarely look over my shoulder, and I rarely, to be honest, look that far ahead," he says. "That sounds like a short term view, but I really am endeavouring, often full of doubt and uncertainty, just to get the day sorted through well."

Although he sometimes feels the wolf of burnout snapping at his heels, he keeps it at bay with doses of healthy realism. "At an everyday level I would reckon myself more than fortunate. I can always retreat into what I do for a living. I can always retreat into family. And living in Australia I am relatively well off. There is very little, if you start indulging in martyristic feelings, that I could ever complain about. And honestly, I wouldn't ever."

Over the last two years the band have cut down their public activity, primarily because the members have young families. "We're still caught with the fact that rock 'n' roll and kids, if you are really honest with yourself, don't mix," Peter explains. "For me this has meant not taking on stuff that I'm anxious to get into, because if I do that I'm going to be an absentee person. I suffered from it when I was a kid and I don't want to repeat it. I don't blame my own parents for the way I grew up, as quite often there is little choice in these issues. However, the guts of it is that you've got to put time in with your kids when they're young if you care about them at all."

Peter traces the roots of his strong sense of justice and rightness to his own parents' influence, as well as to his university experience during the post-Vietnam war period and the extensive reading and activism it spawned. And he identifies another crucial factor, what he calls "the total belief that you have."

He is "very happy" to talk about his personal faith, though he does so with just enough diffidence to suggest that he knows how hazardous bringing deep personal beliefs into the open can be. Despite what some of his fellow-believers have concluded, Peter has never hidden his Christianity. But he refuses to push it to the forefront of his public persona. "I haven't chosen to make an issue of faith," he explains. "This is partly because it is capable of being misconstrued, both by the mainstream media and by religious and faith communities. And secondly, it is not a component of my public creative life. In other words, it is not a representation of what Midnight Oil is."

One of the greatest challenges for public figures, according to Peter, is the high level of scrutiny to which they're subjected. "If you have a belief system as well, you can very quickly find yourself as the archetypal representative of that belief system for the whole population of Australia," he says. "That's not my job."

Instead, he goes on in typically measured language, he is simply "somebody who is walking as steadily as they can with an underpinning of the practising Christian faith towards what is hopefully a more meaningful and connected life." His aim is "to be as diligent and aware and focused in issues of belief, family life and work life as possible, and not to be diverted by all the other entanglements that exist out there."

Entanglements? "Yes. But in classic terminology, the distractions/temptations are directed, in what always appears to be a premeditated sense, towards the very thing which you yourself know is a weakness. God knows we've all got them, and I've got them," he says. "It's just something you have to work through as best as you can."His faith does impact his contribution to Midnight Oil, although he thinks this happens more implicitly than overtly. All the band's members participate in its decisions, so "there are probably places where I've said, 'No, I don't know that we will do this' partly through being informed by my faith." But he stresses this is not a case of making theological points; "it's a much more subtle, wholistic thing than that." For Peter, Jesus is a compelling figure. "As far as the gospels are concerned the challenge is to get past the years of formulations, hairsplitting and pinpricking that goes on at a theological level and just be able to see the bold, very stark, very uncomplicated, but often mysterious power that is exerted by Jesus," he says. "He was the transforming figure, and this capacity for transforming is something that is offered freely as a gift. The compelling thing about it is that it confronts all of us."

Despite his eloquence, Peter can still be lost for words. When asked to describe the part the church plays in his life, a long pause ensues. "Language is hard in these areas, isn't it?" he says finally. "I just can't find the right sentence for it without people misinterpreting me." He explains that to him church is much greater than "the fairly artificial and stereotyped idea that it could or should only happen within a building with all the forms. This is not an anti-building and an anti-church answer, either," he quickly adds. "It's just that I think the church is more than buildings."

Doesn't it have something to do with Jesus' words that wherever two or more gather in his name, he's there with them? "Yes, it is partly that, although when two or more are gathered they can be very contentious, too." Church is a "particular type of two or more gathering. It has to do with less self more other, more giving less taking, more openness less closedness - and, if you like, there is a bearable lightness of being around the place." I put it to him that his difficulty in finding adequate words to express these thoughts reflects the defining moment that Christians find themselves in in Australia - the challenge to reinterpret spiritual truth within the modern context. "You're absolutely right," he agrees. "There's tremendous yearning out there. There are a lot of people on a variety of spiritual walks. Those in their twenties are really starting to see that the materialistic-only lifestyle is a fairly hollow old shell. "I think we've got a great story, a story that conveys itself both as history and as a more substantial faith. But I think that in 1998 in Australia it has to be relieved of its straight-jacket and given lots of new language and poetry and songs and movements and expressions."

The release just before Christmas of Midnight Oil's eleventh album, 20,000 Watt RSL, and the pending release of their twelfth, Redneck Wonderland, sees Garrett once again doing what he does best: belting out the controversial anthems of a band that has probably done more than any other to make rock music serve ends greater than itself.

His own views are as strong as ever. The current Australian government, he told an interviewer from Sydney's Sun-Herald recently, seems to have "decided we're going to be backward-looking, narrow" and is trying to "demolish the planks of a civil society with [its] completely outmoded, outdated, atavistic attitude to government and people."

Yet despite the band's accent on doom and gloom, Peter is basically optimistic about the future. "I think most normal, average living-their-lives people believe that there are means and ways of bringing societies into balance," he says. "The problem is that the dominant system we have, both in decision-making and economics, doesn't work towards that balance.

"The place where the system and people's intentions meet is the political arena. What generally happens in this county is that our politicians don't serve us well because they don't tell the truth, and they don't keep their promises. Once they are in power they are far more subject to the whims of powerful economic forces and lobbies than they are to the wishes of ordinary people, who only get a chance every three or so years to throw them out and try a new lot.

"But there are reasons for hope. When you take a long view of the human condition, I think it is possible to mount an argument that says that, in a most generalised and overstated kind of way, we are, through our own endeavours, through social, religious and political practices, improving the lot of the totality of humanity.

"A lot of that work has come about specifically as a result of Christian reformation, something that is often ignored by post-Enlightenment thinkers. Without playing down what other people have done, if you go back and have a look at it you will see it is quite true."

Peter believes Australia is at a genuinely important historical moment. "So many things are coming to a culmination, so many issues are being bubbled up to the surface." The opportunity for change is great because we are in a period of such enormous flux. "There are a lot of black holes," he adds, "but there are fantastic-looking bush tracks opening up all around." Peter Garrett wants nothing better than to see Australians heading off down those tracks, having faced the past with its mistakes and decided to travel into a national future shaped by a realistic sense of justice and compassion. To do so will require frontal lobes that are unfuzzy indeed. Perhaps we should all shave our heads.

Garrett On The Natural World

"Our senses convey that all is not well with the natural world. No one has fully grasped, including myself, the cumulative effect of treating natural systems as though they are machines producing an inexhaustible supply of resources. I don't think it matters which way you look at it, it is very clear that we have to reorder our way of living. "There is a beauty, a synergy, an interconnectedness, an absolute overpowering aspect to the natural world, which I think leads you to the divine. I believe the divine is part of the world, not in a pantheistic way but by way of the movement of the Spirit. As a consequence, we have to really look at the world and ask what we're doing to it."

From On Being Alive, by Stephen Baxter

(Note: this article has been approved for reproduction.)