Gotye and Basics bandmates enter politics
He's conquered the music world, now Gotye has turned his sights towards politics.
The Grammy Award winning solo artist is forming a political party with his band mates from Melbourne three-piece, The Basics, and is hoping to run in the upcoming state election in Victoria.
Gotye, aka Wally De Backer, Kris Schroeder and Tim Heath are forming the Basics Rock'n'Roll Party (BRRP) to run on November 29 as the antithesis to what Schroeder describes as "life-long politicians".
"Politics in this country is treated like it belongs to the elite," Schroeder told AAP.
"We have these career politicians who often come from well-to-do families ... and they are groomed in to becoming these life-long politicians that have no other life experience outside of either being in the young Liberals or young Labor, and becoming a Member of Parliament," he said.
Instead, the trio aim to prove anyone can take their place in the political arena, and even inject a little bit of rock 'n' roll into it.
"Decisions don't have to be made by these elite, you can just be musicians," he said.
"We've all got higher education degrees so we're not just musicians, but we haven't come up through any political ideology we just care about certain things like indigenous affairs and education."
The three pillars of the party's political movement are innovation, education and Rock 'n' Roll.
Their objectives include improving indigenous local learning in Victorian schools, compulsory first-aid training in high schools and having more access to music in rural areas.
"We're interested in giving an equal opportunity to all as far as access to music is concerned, and I guess that's across the board what we're really interested in," he said.
In order to be in contention for the November election, the party needs 500 registered members registered with the Victorian Electoral Commission .
So the band have been campaigning via their Facebook page, which is also where more detailed descriptions of the party's objectives can be found.
If they are successful, Schroeder says the band could take their political ambitions to a federal level.
"A lot of the issues we're discussing are really federal issues, I can see that being an arena for the future," he said.
It's not like the band would be the first rockers to run for politics at a federal level.
Schroeder, however, says the band were keen to do things on their own terms unlike Midnight Oil frontman, Peter Garrett who he thinks blew a great opportunity by joining the Labor Party.
"I think it was a bit of a compromise between his own ideals and what was convenient at the time," he said.
"We look up to the ideals that Midnight Oil espoused through their music, and we would like to look at his example as a lesson learned and think if you're going to do something like that you should do it on your own."
The band will still rely on the medium of music to get any social or political message across.
"We've just recently recorded stuff at Abbey Road," Schroeder said.
The band have completed 16 tracks, most of which will make up their next album but some will be put out "this side of Christmas" as an EP, according to Schroeder.
"The EP will be called The Lucky Country which I guess is starting to get into talking a bit more about social and political affairs in Australia, so I'm sure it will get plenty of comparisons to Midnight Oil," he said.
"Hopefully people will appreciate it on its own merits. But I do love Midnight Oil."
