Bob Carr confirms he is leaving the Senate
Former foreign minister Bob Carr will enter academia after formally tendering his resignation from the Senate this morning.
Carr has confirmed weeks of speculation that he is leaving politics following Labor’s election defeat on September 7, exiting with a slap at Labor’s leadership in recent years.
“It’s been a very great honour for me,” Carr said of his 18 months as foreign minister.
“Life is a learning experience and the last 18 months has been the richest learning experience imaginable.”
Carr said he believed he had also done some good in the role.
Carr was recruited by former prime minister Julia Gillard in March 2012 to take over as foreign minister after Kevin Rudd resigned to challenge for the Labor leadership.
He filled a Senate vacancy triggered by the retirement of former minister Mark Arbib.
As he parted, he contended that Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd damaged the party’s chances of holding onto government because they lacked canniness and cunning on key issues.
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Labor needs to move beyond the tension of the leadership rivalry between Rudd and Gillard and embrace the new leadership team of Bill Shorten and Tanya Plibersek, he said.
If that occurs, Labor could win back government at the next election.
Asked for his assessment of Labor’s leadership in recent years, Carr said: “I was struck by a lack of canniness, a lack of caution and cunning.”
He said the issue of pricing carbon had been mishandled and should have begun under Rudd with a modest scheme applied only to the electricity sector.
“To have moved cautiously to start with, that … would have been a canny approach,” he said.
Carr believes a change in weather to persistent dry and hot conditions could shift public opinion back to urgent action on climate change and the need to price carbon.
The former foreign minister also took aim at Rudd’s decision in 2007 to dismantle the Howard government’s so-called Pacific Solution, set up to stem the flow of asylum seekers on boats, without weighing up the problems it would cause.
He urged Labor to stick by the arrangement with Papua New Guinea to process and resettle asylum seekers.
Carr said his decision to switch support from Gillard to Rudd came early in 2013 when it appeared Labor was on track for a massive election loss, from which it would be hard to rebuild.
“I certainly thought the government had lost its way when, at the cabinet meeting convened to discuss coal seam gas, (which he had decided not to attend) there was a big package of media reforms dropped on the table,” he said.
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“To embark on a row with the media in the six-month countdown to a general election was a radical recasting of all the (political) rules I had learned.”
However, he said the cabinet process had generally worked well under Gillard and Rudd and they both achieved many positive policies.
Carr said Bill Shorten, who he supported in the leadership ballot, would give Labor the best chance of getting back to government within three years.
“I believe that Bill Shorten and Tanya Plibersek have got what it takes to get back to government in three years, a one-term strategy, or to get very close to it.”
Carr said it was “irrational exuberance” that led him to suggest he would stay in the Senate for many years when he first took up the role in federal parliament.
“I was very high spirited about taking this job, but my enthusiasm probably got ahead of a more calculated approach to it,” he said.
He said his view on whether he would resign or stay after the September election had “ebbed and flowed”.
“But I think this is the better course on balance,” he said.
Had Labor won government he would have served for at least three years, he said.
Turning to the process to replace him, Carr said the idea of a plebiscite of Labor members had “a lot of merit”.
But “if they (the ALP) were going to do that I think we would have heard of it by now”, he said.
He refused to nominate a successor for his Senate spot, with former lower house MP Deb O’Neill tipped to be elected by the NSW Labor administrative committee.
“I think it is bad form for someone vacating a position to baptise a successor,” he said.
“I’ve got no influence on that. I’ve leave that to the process, whatever the process is going to be.”
