You have to feel sorry for Peter Garrett. He’s had a pretty rough time since he joined the Labor Party more that three years ago, and it all came to a head last week.

When Garrett, on behalf of the ALP, signed off on the government’s decision to approve the Tamar Valley pulp mill, the Greens turned carnivorous. From being a trusted environmental warrior, Garrett had become a sell out and a cipher, the shadow minister who didn’t cast a shadow. As everyone had predicted, the Labor Party had chewed him up and spat him out. From being an idealist and a man of principle, Garrett was now just another politician.

Well yes, he was, and this is precisely the point. After spending his youth banging his impressive head against various brick walls in pursuit of noble causes, Garrett has now grown up. In 2003 he became convinced that actually achieving change for the better, imperfect though it might be, was more useful than spending the rest of his life yearning for an unattainable green utopia. Whether consciously or not he accepted the truth of Gough Whitlam’s dictum: the impotent are always pure. He may even have turned it around: the pure are always impotent.

From the start he knew politics would involve compromise, that he would no longer be the free spirit his fans had idolised at Midnight Oil concerts. He would have to balance the interests of the many against the dreams of a few. But he made the choice, and to his great credit he has stuck with it.

Moreover, he has seen how dire the consequences of uncompromising idealism can be. In 2004 Labor under Mark Latham went down the deep green path in Tasmania. Seduced by the Greens Leader Bob Brown, Latham was persuaded that a policy of quarantining large areas of forests from loggers would be vote winner both in the state and across the mainland. Garrett embraced the move and campaigned vigorously in the short time remaining before polling day.

The result is now history: not only did Labor lose the seats of Bass and Braddon in Tasmania, but the party forfeited any chance of picking up mainland forestry seats like Eden-Monaro and Gippsland. The policy did not lose the election for Labor, although the contrast between Latham sneaking away from timber workers through an underground car park while Howard was cheered by them in a mass rally was one of the enduring images of the campaign, and one which would have swung many waverers to the government in the final week. But there is no doubt that the net cost was at least two, probably three seats. Those on the left now excoriating Garrett’s pragmatism might care to remember this if in 2007 Howard scrapes back by a similar margin.

There is no doubt that the man himself feels uncomfortable with the pulp mill decision, or that he is hurt by the attacks from former friends and allies. But he has held the line and will continue to do so. And he can take more than marginal comfort from the fact that Labor’s primary vote continues to run at 47 percent, while the Greens are at just 7.6. As a result there is every possibility that in two month’s time Peter Garrett, Minister for the Environment, will be signing the ratification documents for the Kyoto treaty and preparing to implement a radical and far-reaching program on sustainable energy, pollution control and climate change, while Bob Brown, Greens leader in the senate, will still be leading futile demonstrations against a pulp mill.

The purists will no doubt dismiss the political rise of Peter Garrett as his 30 pieces of silver, the wages of treachery. Those of us more interested in results than rhetoric will applaud it as a hard-earned laurel wreath, a reward for courage and vision, but above all for common sense.

Meanwhile, as John Howard continues to dither and procrastinate in the dwindling time left to him, his supporters cling to one last straw of hope: the polls still say that their lame duck hero is well ahead on the crucial issue of economic management. As a bonus, they note that his ugly duckling heir apparent, Peter Costello, is massively preferred for the role of treasurer to his Labor rival, Wayne Swan. This is hardly surprising; as one commentator noted last week, shadow ministers can never hope to attain the prominence automatically accorded to their government counterparts, who have the luxury of announcing real decisions.

Even so, the Rudd team have not done badly. Julia Gillard and Peter Garrett at least are pretty well known, Nicola Roxon, Stephen Smith, Anthony Albanese, Robert McClelland, Lindsay Tanner and Jenny Macklin, together with Swan, are all experienced parliamentarians who have taken the fight up their opponents and of the younger brigade Tanya Plibersek and Penny Wong have proved outstanding. All are well on top of their shadow portfolios (Swan, for example, is far better qualified to become treasurer than Costello was when he took the role in 1996) and there is no reason to believe that they would not do better in office than the current jaded front bench.

And anyway, how many of Howard’s mob are household names? Costello, Downer and Abbott come readily to mind, also Malcolm Turnbull Phillip Ruddock, Joe Hockey, Brendan Nelson and Kevin Andrews. With a little effort you can probably recall four or five more. But do you do so with delight, happy and relieved that they are there looking after your interests, or do you shudder slightly, perhaps even gag? And then there are the others: how much do you really know about Nigel Scullion? Or Peter Dutton? Or Bruce Billson? And how much do you care? The real contest is, and always has been, between John Howard and Kevin Rudd, and here your preference remains devastatingly clear.