James Morrow: Why is Bob Carr getting in the middle of ScoMo Twitter mess?

Bizarre online foray of accusations by the ex-premier suggests a man suffering from a severe case of relevance deprivation syndrome, writes James Morrow.

Defence Minister Peter Dutton is generally thought of as one of the Morrison government’s star performers, so it is bizarre to see him getting dragged down into the mud by the answer to a tie-breaker question in a pub trivia’s politics round.

Nevertheless, when the Sage of Malabar accuses you of being the source of leaked text calling the PM a “horrible, horrible person”, it’s going to be news and one best swat it down quickly.

But while Mr Dutton has completely denied involvement, it is Mr Carr who has come off looking like one of those retired teachers who hang out all day on Twitter trying to get everyone to believe the Liberal party room is moments from rolling the PM.

Former NSW Premier Bob Carr (centre) has entered a Twitter war of words with Peter Dutton. Photo: Kate Geraghty

All he’s missing is three syringe emojis in his Twitter profile to indicate he’s been vaxxed and boosted.

More fascinating, however, is the way the once-erudite ex-premier — who, the story goes, was once spotted reading Dostoevski at the footy — has become tangled in his own words.

At first, Mr Carr was unequivocal, tweeting, “The minister who shared the text with (Peter) van Onselen and gave permission to use it was Peter Dutton.”

The ex-diplomat went on to further stir the pot, adding, “If PM Morrison has one more week in free fall the prospect of a leadership change pre-election is real.”

But while Mr Carr took years to go from a staunch friend of Israel to shouting into the wilderness calling for the Jewish state to be investigated for war crimes, it only took him a few hours to do a sneaky about-face on text-gate.

Peter Dutton during Question Time at Parliament House, Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Having made morning news headlines with his original tweet, Mr Carr doubled down Monday, tweeting: “Only one way Peter Dutton can win his case: get another colleague to admit that they were the source for comments about the Prime Minister. If not you, Mr Dutton, which of your colleagues? Until then who has most to gain from undermining further a flailing PM?”

Er, so, OK, it might have been the Defence Minister, but it might have been somebody else?

Parse his words carefully and he’s opened the door to the texts coming from, well, just about anybody.

Even more amusing, he’s deployed a lawyerly tactic that’s more out of the playbook of Lionel Hutz than Perry Mason.

Throw an accusation on the table, and then shift the burden of proof to the target. Of course, getting to the truth isn’t the point here, it is destabilising the Coalition.

It’s all a bit of a comedown for Mr Carr, who as NSW’s second-longest serving premier did some actual good — most notably in education, where he held the line against the trendoids and faddists determined to make our children stupid.

Josh Frydenberg says Bob Carr is suffering relevance deprivation syndrome. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gaye Gerard

But then again, Twitter and ego are always a toxic combination, as anyone from Kevin Rudd to Malcolm Turnbull will tell you.

For Mr Carr, the warning signs have always been there in plain sight.

In his perhaps unintentionally hilarious memoirs of his time as foreign minister in the dying days of the Gillard-Rudd government, we can find Mr Carr basking in the glow of a colour piece written about him on a trip to PNG.

“He’s blogging, taking photos … raving about the quality of the PNG coffee on his Twitter account after sharing a cup with the former PM Paias Wingti …”, he quotes the article as saying, clearly in love with this depiction of his earthy worldliness.

It begins to make the story about his reading Dostoevski at the football come into sharper focus.

One wonders which of the great Russian’s works he was reading, but it would be unkind to suggest, “The Idiot”.