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Author Archives: Bob Carr
America’s silo society has to face its racial demons
In past upheavals, Americans at least all shared the same news. Now there is an apartheid of the national spirit that is creating deeper divisions than ever…If people were given the choice between democracy and whiteness, how many would choose … Continue reading
Posted in Politics
6 Comments
World leaders deserve to know about Australia’s abysmal climate change policy, so I wrote to them
Australia’s leaders are playing with climate policy, pitching a nationalist and populist message to their base.
Posted in Climate
6 Comments
The US electoral system is a shambles. They could learn a lot from Australia. (The Guardian Oct 29, 2020)
Systemic voter suppression and rules still being set for an election within days – this is American exceptionalism.
Posted in Politics
4 Comments
There’s an essential starting point for grasping the crisis engulfing US politics
In the 50s the head of CIA counterintelligence James Angleton said Russian stratagems were like “a wilderness of mirrors”. The same phrase captures the maze of the US constitutional and electoral system, a wilderness of mirrors that can warp, even … Continue reading
Posted in World Affairs
5 Comments
How Australia’s climate policy fell victim to the conservatives (SMH Sep 11, 2020)
It took one lunch with George W. Bush in 2001 for John Howard to agree to dropping ratification of Kyoto, without a word to his ministers. We became the president’s closest friend in resisting climate change.
Posted in Climate
3 Comments
Joe Biden’s bold climate policies would leave Australia behind (The Guardian Sep 2, 2020)
Australia may be sailing perilously close to being cast by Biden’s team with other climate resisters Brazil and Saudi Arabia.
Sinking billions of taxpayer dollars into gas would make Australia an international pariah (The Guardian, August 21 2020)
The Morrison government’s post-Covid recovery commission has called for an astonishing level of support for a declining carbon fuel.
Posted in Politics
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Coalition toes party line between US and China (SMH, 3 August 2020)
“Don’t sell your soul for a pile of soybeans,” warned US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a year ago, when Australian foreign affairs and defence ministers met their United States counterparts.
Posted in Defence and Security, Politics
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We now know gas is far from the clean fuel it’s claimed to be (SMH 16.7.20)
Australia’s recovery will be driven by gas says the prime minister. A task force headed by Andrew Liveris- a business figure with career doused in carbon- recommends subsidies to ramp up the industry.
Posted in Climate, Economy
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BOB CARR. Hidden Reality of Australia-China Relations
The best reading on the state of Australia-China relations is in documents we can’t see. That is, in the cables sent from Canberra to their capitals by ambassadors of Asian nations.
Posted in Asia, Politics
5 Comments
BOB CARR. While the world looked the other way, corporate giants abandoned coal (SMH 15.5.20)
Can we deal with a pandemic and global warming at once – both urgent, one an immediate hit, the other a decade-long burn? Well, yes, because – even with front pages dominated by COVID-19 – last month saw an astonishing … Continue reading
BOB CARR supports Pearls and Irritations.
Pearls & Irritations is unique, indispensable, provocative and refreshing. It really does make a difference.
Posted in Commendations
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BOB CARR. Erratic US Pacific policy is leaving Australia stranded (Australian Financial Review 8-11-19)
The Canberra hawks hope that our tough stance on China will encourage US resolve. But that underestimates the flightiness of Donald Trump.
Posted in World Affairs
1 Comment
BOB CARR. Vale Paul Francis Patrick Whelan.
Bob Carr Tribute to Paul Whelan October 31, 2019. Former New South Wales Premier Bob Carr paid tribute to his Police Minister Paul Whelan for his achievement in implementing the Wood Royal Commission recommendations to reform policing in NSW.
Posted in Tributes
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BOB CARR. Abandoning the Kurds confirms Asia’s view that US power is waning (SMH 9.10.2019)
The Syrian Kurds were more than allies. They were a US client, recruited by the Obama administration for house-to-house combat against the Islamic State caliphate. This America, however, cares little for core relationships and sweeps them aside. The decision shatters … Continue reading
Posted in World Affairs
4 Comments
THE HON BOB CARR. Tribute to Graham Freudenberg.
The speech arrived on the Premier’s desk already clipped into the black leather folder. Did my staff realise that coming from the pen of the master and being a speech of welcome to a US President I would be disinclined … Continue reading
BOB CARR. Making a multilateral Belt and Road (East Asia Forum)
Between 2012 and 2030, China will add 850 million people to its middle class. This is unprecedented in human history, even exceeding the numbers of the European, North American and Japanese industrial revolutions. It is the biggest rolling back of … Continue reading
Posted in Asia, World Affairs
1 Comment
BOB CARR. The China panic and John Fitzgerald.
In a contribution to Pearls and Irritations published on April 16 I took up a point made by Gareth Evans who argued in March that “in Australia a new form of Sinophobia is emerging.” He said this was one of … Continue reading
Posted in Politics, World Affairs
4 Comments
BOB CARR. Australia could be the big loser in a US-China trade deal, not that Donald Trump seems to care (South China Morning Post)
Australia sticking its neck out for the US on the issue of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei will not stop America from striking a trade deal with China that could result in Australian exports suffering
Posted in Asia, World Affairs
7 Comments
BOB CARR. Australians with Chinese origins need to come together.
A new burst of messaging on China Panic has been unleashed by Four Corners and newspapers, again giving the impression that hostile forces are threatening Australia. Last month former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans noted “a new form of Sinophobia … Continue reading
Posted in Politics, World Affairs
6 Comments
BOB CARR. Real diplomacy could have avoided China’s coal revenge (Australian Financial Review, 3 April 2019)
The ban on Huawei itself isn’t the problem, but the way that some arms of the government rubbed China’s face in it.
Posted in Asia, World Affairs
1 Comment
BOB CARR. Disaffected electorate knows the real score (The Australian, March 18 2019)
Why in a sports-mad nation, with football as an overarching religion divided into different denominations, has the promise of two new stadiums been such a vote loser?
Posted in Politics
2 Comments
BOB CARR. NSW state election: time for Gladys Berejiklian to show she cares for environment
If Gladys Berejiklian wants something as much as a day without stadiums, it is one without a mass fish kill.
BOB CARR. The Best of 2018: How the Israeli Lobby operates.
The letter was in the bulging file marked ‘Premier’s Invites’. The invitation was to an annual dinner where a peace prize was presented to a person chosen by the Sydney Peace Foundation at Sydney University. This year they had decided … Continue reading
Posted in Politics
4 Comments
Bob Carr replies to China critics (Australian Financial Review, 12.11.18)
That the mob always gets it right is cornerstone wisdom of Australian politics, often confirmed by polling that shows the public’s deeply rooted common sense.
Posted in World Affairs
4 Comments
BOB CARR. Chinese Australians are the silent minority on foreign policy (Australian Financial Review, 25.10.18)
Imagine the crucial byelection had not been in Wentworth but in another Sydney electorate, Barton. Instead of a 12 per cent Jewish population, it is one with a 34 per cent Chinese population. And imagine that, in the context of … Continue reading
Posted in Asia, World Affairs
3 Comments
BOB CARR. Australians have no interest in joining U.S. cold war against China
Alexander Downer chewed ruminatively on his steak: “If you want a cold war with China, you will get a cold war with China.”
Posted in Asia, World Affairs
6 Comments
BOB CARR. How the Israeli Lobby operates.A repost
The letter was in the bulging file marked ‘Premier’s Invites’. The invitation was to an annual dinner where a peace prize was presented to a person chosen by the Sydney Peace Foundation at Sydney University. This year they had decided … Continue reading
Posted in World Affairs
5 Comments
BOB CARR. ASIO and the China scare (the Australian 14 August 2018)
Australia was “unimaginable” without the dynamic presence of Chinese-Australians. Those were the words of Malcolm Turnbull last week, resetting the rhetoric of Australia-China relations.
Posted in Politics
5 Comments
BOB CARR. Australia draws line under anti-China hysteria. Will it be enough to unfreeze relations? (South China Morning Post 11.08.18)
Bob Carr says Malcolm Turnbull’s reset of relations with China was inevitable, as the fears his government has allowed to spread – about Chinese money in Australia’s democracy and China’s growing influence in the region – had little substance, and … Continue reading
Posted in Asia, World Affairs
2 Comments