Peter Garrett and his former rock band Midnight Oil have long been scrutinised for exhibiting blatant anti-military and rabidly environmentalist sentiments in their lyrics. However, in light of yesterday’s comments by Silverchair front man Daniel Johns on the Triple J Breakfast show (and his immediate withdrawal of them) which for a moment linked Oils frontman now Labor frontbencher Garrett to the recreational consumption of marijuana, we thought it timely to scour the Oils archives for any psychedelic or otherwise chemically disinhibited references. Make of these you will.

“We got our pipe dreams, they went up in smoke dreams”
– Stars of Warburton (Blue Sky Mine, 1990)

“You may be safe in your hemisphere but there’s so much junk in the stratosphere”
– Progress (Species Deceases, 1985)

“In the city the heart still whispers
Flaking metal a silent witness
There’s chemical fields and cathode clouds
The milky way is emasculated as exhaust fans”
– Concrete (Redneck Wonderland, 1998)

“It’s stuff you cannot taste or see
It’s stuff you cannot smell
It’s stuff that’s twenty times as hot
As the hottest stuff in hell”
– Harrisburg (Red Sails In The Sunset, 1984)

“I was asleep with both eyes open
Dream freeze sprinklers in the sun
Beer soaked mansions block the sky,
Dingos howl and white flags fly”
– Seeing is Believing (Redneck Wonderland, 1998)

And finally…

“I look out and see those lines and lines and lines of swell and
Smiles”
– Bells and Horns in the Back of Beyond (Red Sails in the Sunset, 1984)

An SMS Poll conducted by NOVA in Sydney this morning found that 72 per cent of people believe that Peter Garrett, Bono and Daniel Johns smoked dope together. Which may yet give the Government something to sing about.