Run for Your Life

Bob Carr

• Publisher: Melbourne University Press Digital
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780522873139
• eBook ISBN: 9780522873146
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

All author proceeds from this book are donated to help the children displaced by the Syrian civil war by funding humanitarian aid through the registered charity Australia for UNHCR. Most political memoirs are boring.Bob Carr tears up the rules. He plunges in, beginning with the despair of a young man pining for a political career, convinced he's going nowhere, then vaulting to the exhilaration of a premier who, on one day, saves a vast forest and unveils the country's best curriculum.He lashes himself for ignoring a cry from a prisoner in a cell and for a breach of protocol with a US Supreme Court judge. He considers talking to the leader of a notorious rape gang and celebrates winning power against the odds: a leader without kids or any interest in sport.He describes growing up in a fibro house without sewerage and a 'lousy education' that produced a lifetime appetite for self-learning. He is candid about dealing with the media, dining with royals, working for Kerry Packer. He reveals the secrets he learnt from Neville Wran. He is open about his adulation of Gough Whitlam. Floating above all is Bob Carr's idea of public service in a party, he says, that resembles an old, scarred, barnacled whale. In an era of bland politicians, here's one with personality true to his quirky self.Silence the jet skis! Balance the budget! Liberate the dolphins! Roll out the toll roads! Declare a million hectares of eucalypt wilderness! Be a politician of character.

INDEX

Aarons, Mark 233–4

Abbott Coalition government, China policy 280

Aboriginal Australians see Indigenous Australians

accident victims, lifetime care for 12–13

Adams, John Quincy 271, 274

Afghanistan, war in 270–1

Akister, John 237

Allen, Doris 29–30

Allen, Pam 231

Anderson, Peter 244

Angel, Jeff 232, 237

Anita Cobby case 46

Anthony Powell 38

Anti-Discrimination Act 267

anti-terrorism laws 267

Appleton, Gillian 69

Aquilina, John 71

Armitage, John 53

Armitage, Rich 270, 273

Armstrong, David 38

arts infrastructure under Carr 103–4

asbestos compensation 217–25

Asbestos House 222

Ashrawiri, Hanan 174, 176

Asian policy, under Keating and Howard 92–3

Auburn Primary School 210

Australia

civic achievements 291–2

population growth 150–4

relations with China 278–87

relations with US 269–77

Australia 2020 Summit 127

Australia: A Political and Social History 55–6

‘Australia Unlimited’ 23

Australia–China Relations Institute 282

Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council 180

Australian American Leadership Dialogue 270, 272

Australian Committee for Workers’ Rights in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe 278

Australian Labor Party

Bill of Rights policy 265

Carr joins Malabar–South Matraville branch 3, 25–6

Carr joins Young Labor 57

Carr rises within 36

conservation policies 244–5

corruption concerns 171

factional rows 15

in NSW, under Carr 61, 65–9, 74–5

Jewish lobby and 180

literature on 56

Palestinian policy 182–4

supporters in small business 211–12

tinkering with structure of 48

under Whitlam 53–5

union pressure on Labor MPs 85

US policies 273–4

wins government in NSW 60, 91

Australian Labour Leader 57

Australian Republic Movement 123–4

Australian Ugliness,The 51

Austria, Carr visit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Thirty and going nowhere
• Intermezzo
• Cockroaches in the cells
• What a day this has been
• Hello, I must be going
• Of seaweed, scrub and subdivisions
• A lousy education
• Fever in the blood
• Events control me
• Nev: always give ’em hope
• The great man comes to university
• Dry enough to win government?
• The Carr crash
• Opportunistic ferals
• Our royal commission
• A lonely government
• Bob the builder
• The tolls stuff-up
• While the grilled salmon waits …
• Not worth the candle
• Injecting rooms: taking a stand
• Me and sport
• The Olympics
• In love with Europe
• The more the merrier
• Kids?
• Against mandatory sentencing
• Trogs, Terrigals and the smashing of crockery
• Me and ‘the lobby’
• The sausage-roll affair
• Oops!
• Just indictment
• The rapist in his cell
• The lock-out
• What about the workers?
• Beating the bastards
• Call me a tree hugger
• Goody, goody
• Better humans than we
• Is it 2050 and I am 102?
• Hymn to our harbour
• What about our rights?
• The world’s policeman
• China panic
• To change the country
• Bundeena and the honour of it all
• Index