BOB CARR: INSIPID DO-NOTHING LABOR SAVIOUR

Farewell to Bob Carr, who quit the New South Wales premiership yesterday for a life of placid, snoozy dawdling, or for a life as federal Labor leader, or possibly both at once.
So much commentary has focussed on Mr. Carr’s ambitions, and whether they can be fulfilled, that I think it better to examine instead what the movement to take him federal says about Labor, and about Australia. In one respect, it is surely indicative of Labor’s malaise that they even consider someone who is unarguably a failed leader on ‘serving the public’ criteria. Every working day for ten years Bob Carr has gone to his podium and procrastinated, and spun, and fluffed, to disguise his treading water on policy. He has had a decade and three election wins; but has squandered his time and mandate. He leaves NSW with its health system and transport network in near crisis. His achievements have been a marginal improvement in literacy, and the Olympics, for which the real work was laid by past Premiers. He epitomises an ineffective politician.
But though he failed to serve his the state and public, he has served his party admirably: for in 1995 Carr created a formula that has proved highly successful for winning elections ever since. Carr invented the – very electorally appealing – do-nothing, unthreatening, take-it-easy Labor government. He has given the ALP its very own version of ‘relaxed and comfortable’.
The significance, and extent, of the revolution can’t be overstated. When Carr was first elected, Paul Keating was ensconced in Kirribilli: the personification of old-school, fire-breathing ‘downhill, one ski, no poles’ Labor. When Carr left, he and his formula are being touted as distinct possibilities to fill Keating’s old position. And why not? It’s worked, even in Victoria, where ‘relaxed and comfortable’ in the form of Steve Bracks defeated Jeff Kennett in 1999.
‘Relaxed and comfortable’ is a lousy motto, whether in its Liberal or Labor incarnations. But nobody can doubt that it works on the Australian electorate. I cringe to think of Bob Carr working his insipid magic at the federal level, his soporific voice promising nothing dramatic in tone if not in words, his reassuring waffle espousing pretend solutions to very real problems. That said, those who think his 'formula' is Labor’s best chance are probably right. Though they miss something: it is not, necessarily, a matter of drafting Bob Carr to try his formula out federally. In Kim Beazley, they’re already trying it.
First appeared on my blog: davidfettlingbycharlesdickens.blogspot.com