Midnight Oil: the policy documents

Veteran’s affairs

You’re watching people fighting you’re watching
People losing on Armistice Day
You’re watching people fighting
You’re watching people losing on Armistice Day

Border security

I’m back on the borderline
Yes I’m back on the borderline

Budgetary equity

You say times are tough
We’ve got the best of both worlds here
Things are rough
We’ve got the best of both worlds here
Times are tough
We’ve got the best of both worlds here

WorkChoices

The bosses they can sense your mood
All in place to a hand that rules
They all want to deal you out

and

We’re all looking for a shorter day
We’re all looking for an easy way
Even when the debts are dead and gone

Leadership aspiration

I’m an innocent victim, I’m just like you
We end up in home units with a brick wall view
I can’t believe the perfect families on my colour TV
If I don’t make it to the top it’ll never bother me

Resources policy

Heavy machinery loud in the outback
Dreamtime developers they make all the sound
Where will we be when they leave us a quarry?

Defence support

Put down that weapon or we’ll all be gone
I must know something to know it’s so wrong

Retirement Income

And if the blue sky mining company won’t come to my rescue
If the sugar refining company won’t save me
Who’s gonna save me?

Land Transport

Nothing could be longer than a corrugated road
No one ever follows where the road trains go
And nowhere in the country do the dust storms blow so hard
So hard

Family

The raising of children, the rearing of young
Used to be simple but look what it’s become
The choice of career, the proper vocation
Out of your hands, all for the needs of the nation

Housing

The time has come
To say fair’s fair
To pay the rent
To pay our share

Omnibus positioning statement

Terracotta homes – backyard BBQ and eucalyptus smell
It’s fine on the clothes line, it’s fast food and slow life and red roof
My silence – comic interruptions
Surely there’s some relief from atomic art and the fragile state of world
Events with clowns who love the kings and power and the mutant media babes
Working on dreams and fashions and toilet paper flowers
Don’t talk to me in this backyard – it’s clandestine, it’s nuclear
Smell of space and now forever I wanna go straight down the exit eight mile
Attraction u-turn is up and the time clock sings let’s go.