Julia Gillard's great escape

Bob Carr

IN a surprise - almost comic - moment, Julia Gillard has snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, securing Bob Carr as foreign minister after her leadership victory over Kevin Rudd.

It has been a week of high farce in Labor politics. Carr's appearance yesterday by the Prime Minister's side, three days after this exact event was abandoned, was the final stage in a farce redeemed only because of its satisfactory ending.

Gillard's roller-coaster week had three dimensions: the euphoria of defeating Rudd 71-31; the embarrassment of seeing her aspiration to appoint Carr collapse, with humiliating consequences for her authority; and the final reshuffle that contains her personal imprimatur and the selection of Carr as foreign minister.

The Gillard-Carr media conference yesterday was straight from Monty Python. Gillard, whose brazenness knows no limits, boasted that: "I've made a decision and that's why Bob Carr is here." She said her ministers "will be delighted" at his arrival. Sure.

Carr began the media conference with a nervousness that betrayed its theatre-of-the-absurd nature but hammed it up brilliantly. Having being stood up by Gillard three days earlier and played for a fool, Carr said he was an "unbounded admirer" of hers, declared himself a "natural senator" and offered a comparison with famous US senator Robert Byrd who served into his 90s (Carr is now 64) -- so that gives him another 30 years in the Senate.

Asked to explain the "up and down" nonsense of the week Carr, with an actor's genius, said: "When the distinctive voice of Prime Minister Gillard rouses you from your slumber and says, 'Will you be Foreign Minister of Australia?', I couldn't have found it in me to have said no."

Stephen Smith was stoic after putting away his political razor blades. Gillard had indicated he would get the job. Having expected to be reappointed foreign minister and being in the middle of resistance to Carr's elevation, Smith stays as Defence Minister and, in effect, has taken a second hit for the team.

Whenhe was removed in 2010 to allow Rudd to become foreign minister there was an unread understanding that, if the job fell vacant, Smith would have first rights. Having stepped aside for Rudd, he has now stepped aside for Carr.

The bottom line is that Gillard rescued herself from humiliation. The evidence, however, is that this was a narrow escape. Gillard's reshuffle looks good, dominated by Carr's trump card. But the chaos of the week betrays the fragility of Gillard's judgment and command of her government.

Last Tuesday morning, as he had breakfast at home in Sydney, Carr expected he would fly that day to Canberra to stand by Gillard's side for the dramatic announcement.

It would have been a clean and transforming moment for Gillard after her victory over Rudd, tangible evidence of her ability to change the political atmospherics. Instead, it descended into fiasco.

Carr's assumption that he would become foreign minister was based not on his talks with NSW ALP secretary Sam Dastyari, but on his conversations with Gillard on Monday evening. Labor's effort to pretend otherwise was ludicrous.

During Carr's talks with Gillard, the PM encouraged Carr and made it clear she was attracted to the idea of him becoming foreign minister. Carr initially had serious reservations. "I was churned up," he said yesterday. "I was in two minds. It was a big change in the life Helena and I currently enjoy."

But he put doubts aside and settled on the idea of moving to the Senate and the foreign ministry.

For Carr, this was fulfilment of a lifetime dream; being foreign minister was an ambition he had treasured as a young man decades earlier when he assumed he would enter national, not state, politics.

The initial approach was from Dastyari, who came to Carr's office on Monday afternoon given there was now a Senate vacancy caused by Mark Arbib's announced retirement. Dastyari and Carr canvassed the double vacancy and the opportunity that had opened. Dastyari was fixated on the idea of doing something big and worthwhile with the vacancy.

During their talks, Stephen Smith was mentioned and it was assumed any offer would depend on Smith relinquishing his return to the portfolio he had held under Rudd.

"Run it past" Gillard was Carr's bottom line to Dastyari. He was in the market to be persuaded. And, after talking with Gillard that night, Carr was on board. The message was manifest: the PM wanted him.

They had two or three discussions, with the portfolios of trade and Defence also mentioned. But Carr was firm: he would only come for foreign affairs.

He assumed, after his talks with Gillard, that the deal would be done and a formal offer made. After all, if you cannot rely on the authority of a just re-elected Prime Minister then there is no order or sense in Labor governance.

Carr was told on Monday night to be ready to travel to Canberra on Tuesday morning. But he had to await a final confirmation call that morning before getting on the plane. Things had to be tied up and that meant Smith.

But when the call came from Wayne Swan it was not what Carr expected. Swan said Smith was on a promise and was unhappy about standing aside. Gillard had retreated. She would not enforce Carr's appointment at that time against ministerial resistance and against Smith, who had backed Gillard against Rudd.

Once the story leaked, Gillard's furious purpose was to keep her authority and minimise her embarrassment. As Michelle Grattan from The Age told ABC's Radio National, these events were simply "beyond embarrassment".

It was staggering that Gillard, having won a smashing victory over Rudd, having mismanaged her pre-Christmas reshuffle and having determined to reassert her authority, could preside over such a mess.

Carr was puzzled and angry. There was no suggestion this was a mere delay. Carr made it publicly clear he was not coming. Dastyari began his search for other candidates. Leaning over backwards to ease the pressure on Gillard, Carr said on Wednesday that Gillard "had definitely not made any offer about the foreign ministry nor had anybody on her behalf".

No doubt that was technically correct. The truth, however, is that Gillard wanted Carr. Throughout the week, Gillard and her ministers tried to weasel their way from under this self-created mess. And they enjoyed some success in muddying the waters.

After The Australian broke the story on Wednesday morning of her retreat, Gillard declared at lunchtime its report was "completely untrue".

The report was lethal because it questioned Gillard's authority and judgment at the moment of her leadership success. A report on The Sydney Morning Herald's website, posted early on Wednesday, had the same account of events.

In parliament that day, Gillard went into hyper-assertion, saying "Do not believe everything you read" and declaring that "I will be dealing with the reshuffle" and "I want the best possible team". It was only the next day in parliament that she confirmed talking to Carr -- after she had gone back to him.

The damage to Gillard from her retreat would have been enduring. Smith's reappointment as foreign minister would have been a permanent reminder of how she tried to get Carr and failed. Gillard made the correct decision to revisit the issue and reverse her retreat.

On Thursday, she went back to Carr. He was always going to accept. Smith was always going to "take a hit for the team" if Gillard required.

Carr's switch to national politics has a significance beyond foreign affairs. He is the highest-level recruit to the national caucus for several decades. He has been the longest unbroken-serving NSW premier, with more than 10 years in office, seven years as opposition leader, and three years as a minister.

An unusual mixture, Carr is an intellectual who knows how to win elections. He is not universally admired and his record as NSW premier is seen as far too cautious and timid on the reform front. He is hardly a reformer in the Keating mould. It is undeniable, however, that his transition to national politics will have a far-reaching impact.

During the Howard era, Carr was periodically touted as an alternative ALP national leader but never took the bait. He now goes to Canberra a free agent, with nothing to lose and beholden to nobody.

A veteran of the NSW "bear pit", Carr is guaranteed to have an impact within the Senate as a parliamentarian. Frankly, it is desperately needed, given the thin quality of Labor's Senate ranks.

His credentials to be foreign minister are impressive -- unrivalled personal contacts in the US Senate for an Australian politician; wide contacts across the US, Asia and Europe; and a sustained role in foreign policy debates for 40 years, from the time in the mid-1970s that he was chairman of the foreign policy committee of the NSW ALP.

He will be discreet enough to operate within Rudd's legacy.

Carr's ruthless pragmatism and firm views about the path to Labor's electoral success make him a challenging presence in the cabinet: he espouses disciplined economic management, an end to appeasement of the Greens, a commitment to climate change action, a John Howard toughness on asylum-seeker boat arrivals and an abject repudiation of the progressive Left's rights agenda, with its transfer of power to judges.

Carr will support and respect Gillard as PM. Above all, his arrival helps to give Gillard a new narrative. Gillard is doomed if, after defeating Rudd, she merely offers more of the same.

Gillard must revitalise and change this Labor government. In terms of image and content, Carr helps in that project. This is the reason her failure to realise her plan to make him foreign minister would have been such an embarrassment. This is the week Gillard got out of jail, twice.