Farewelling the Populist: Bob Carr Evacuates

Soon to be ex-Senator Bob Carr, a man who has done in a short time more damage to the Senate than any single roo poo thrower could in an election, is thankfully taking to some other distant, and no doubt corporate pasture. He has demonstrated how ill fitting he was for an institution that evidently did not pad his populist fantasy.

As he left, he made it clear that Labor should retain its unimaginative, vicious edge in refugee politics. Scott Morrison, the current immigration minister, has not read the Refugee Convention, but Labor, in its time in office, did a good job of simulating illiteracy on the subject. Carr was the perfect representative, unflinching in assuming that Australia was being swamped by “economic” refugees. Don’t deviate from this land, he warns, lest Labor sacrifice a chance to win the next election.

The Carr resume is grotesque. He was always going to be the blow drier in a salon, the convenient fit that found a way when Mark Arbib resigned from the Senate mid-term. Procure him when needed. Shut him away in the drawer otherwise. He has a retainer in perpetuity with Macquarie Bank, his soul well and truly mortgaged as long as the deposits keep coming in.

On Wednesday, when he announced his resignation, we think immediately of his appointments when Carr was NSW Premier, a carousel of dark decisions and shoddy leanings. A certain Eddie Obeid springs to mind, that minister for minerals and fisheries in 1999 who thrived in corrupt pastures for years. Of course, Obeid, being the principled creature that he is, sought damages in a defamation action. The law, being blind, complied. The Independent Commission Against Corruption wasn’t quite so enthusiastic, and blotted the Obeid copybook.

Paul Sheehan observed that, “Carr clearly regards himself as too important to serve in opposition, and is bored by the routine of government when it does not involve flying around the world as foreign affairs minister” (Sydney Morning Herald, Oct 23). Sheehan is also colourful, finding the narrative of antiquity as appropriate: “It was a perfectly bad day for such a cynical revelation, as fired raged across the state, invoking, in his ill-timed absorption, the image of the narcissist emperor Nero playing the lyre while Rome burned.”

Carr was certainly not fiddling. He played the Rudd-Gillard game as well, or as competently, as any. He conspired when required. It would seem that his fingers were also well and truly in the fiscal pie, dirtying the greasy tips with glee. In his “somewhat fleeting” stint, as he himself termed it, he cost $4220 a day. Yes, the mean spirited should not deprive a minister of the crown from indulging a bit from his retiring chair. Might these be written off as “sunset” expenses, accumulated at the culmination of a career?

Of course, there was a whiff in the press that Carr had been hard done by, finding his retirement home, politically speaking, in Julia Gillard’s haphazardly cobbled Cabinet. At least, that is what Tony Wright felt. The other members of Labor’s NSW right had found glory in Canberra, be it the improbable Leo McLeay as Speaker, branch stacking operator Laurie Brereton in the federal cabinet, Paul Keating as the supremo, finding form in the position of treasurer then prime minister.

Then, for Carr, came the coveted position of foreign minister. But it was but a brief sojourn, that “chariot and the rose petals” being “no more than a figment of the imagination, the ticket to ride no more than the scent of stale, burned out incense” (Sydney Morning Herald, Oct 23).

Carr was, in general, bored with the sluggish dealings of political process, with that rather withered notion called democracy. He was perfidious. He was a demagogue, and any demagogue is centrally hollow, a whisper of substance. Refugees for him are economic scavengers seeking protection behind weak laws. Right wing factions sing the appropriate lullabies. Back stabbing simply accords more in the way of ALP tribalism. That is Carr to a tee, and representative of the very party that was given the cold shoulder at the elections. But his effect, in all its putrescence, will be felt long after he evacuates.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne and ran with Julian Assange for the WikiLeaks Party as a senate candidate for Victoria.

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