Midnight Oil To Be Inducted Into The ARIA Hall Of Fame

"Midnight Oil is one of the greatest rock & roll bands this country has ever produced. They were incredibly successful all over the world, but much more importantly, they made music that mattered," said Ed St John, ARIA Awards Committee Chairman and President and CEO, Warner Music Australia.

"They covered subjects that had rarely been addressed in a rock song before: land rights, the environment, social justice, war, human rights and Australian history. The sound of their music, created by five supremely talented singers and musicians, evoked the very essence of Australia. There has never been a band like this, and I doubt there will ever be one like them again. Midnight Oil were unique, and ARIA is enormously honoured to be inducting the band into the Hall of Fame," he continued.

They will join Divinyls, Icehouse, Daddy Cool, Lobby Loyde, Rose Tattoo and Helen Reddy as the recipients for 2006.

Midnight Oil is a band that made a career out of making noise about the important issues. They brought a new sense of political and social immediacy to pop music with incendiary hits like Beds Are Burning and Blue Sky Mine, which brought global attention to the plight of, respectively, Aboriginal settlers and impoverished workers. Midnight Oil always put its money where its mouth was - in addition to staging benefit performances for groups like Greenpeace and Save the Whales, former singer Peter Garrett is now fighting from the frontline as a Member of Parliament for the Federal Labour Party in the NSW seat of Kingsford-Smith.

The Oils defied all musical fashions to create fourteen extraordinary albums with combined international record sales of more than 12 million units. As a musical unit they railed against injustice, apathy, inequality and the lurking evil forces of cynicism and conservatism with sound, fury and righteous indignation.

On October 28, Midnight Oil is releasing their 18th album 'Flat Chat', a cross section of heart-starting classics featuring the Oils at their hard, fast and rocking best and demonstrates once again why Midnight Oil were regarded as one of Australia's premier international rock bands!

Don't miss MIDNIGHT OIL as they are inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame at the 2006 ARIA Awards, broadcast on Network Ten at 7.30pm on Sunday, October 29.