The Labor Party is rapidly becoming a Pepys show. The candid insights in Don Watson’s bestselling account of the Keating government draws on the journals he kept while employed as a prime ministerial ghostwriter. He now has a New South Wales doppelgänger in Marilyn Dodkin. Her annals of the Bob Carr era are based on the premier’s diaries augmented with comments, sometimes rather too glowing, from Carr’s staff and party colleagues.
The result is a tale of two cities. Writing in the shadow of the March 1996 federal election debacle, Watson sees things through a glass darkly. His is a glum Canberra tale of decline and fall. Dodkin, in contrast, has a sunny Sydney ending, tracing Bob Carr’s ascent from bookish nerd to ‘the people’s premier’.
Watson’s theme is the ruination of Keating’s Big Picture brand of government. Voters in the provinces saw this as remote and patronising. Dodkin’s Carr is rooted in the barbarous realm of state politics which, as Carr readily admits in his diary, is banal in comparison with Keating’s bold vistas.
Carr is an accidental premier. His first inclination was for federal politics, with ideally a stint as Foreign Minister before taking up a life of ‘elegant curiosity’ in Europe. He was transported to Macquarie Street because his right-wing faction felt unable to allocate him a safe federal seat. After his Labor state government lost office in 1988 Carr became leader because Laurie Brereton was blacklisted. This meant that when a longed for federal seat finally became vacant in 1990 Brereton, and not Carr, was free to take it up.
As a tyro state Opposition Leader Carr stoically embraced the treadmill of endless fundraising functions and visits to shopping centres. A journalist by trade, he was well equipped for the crucial task of hustling for media coverage. He had a wide range of conduits to the print and electronic media, including a private fax line to John Laws. These were used to the full as he tirelessly worked up local issues and publicised stunts in parliament and leaks from the bureaucracy.
The sense of hubris that permeates Watson’s account is singularly absent in the Dodkin book. There is no pride here. Carr seems to be driven by an excessive need to overcome self-perceived physical and cultural deficiencies. A ruthless regimen of physical exercise is matched by an equally earnest commitment to German lessons and reading Proust (although Carr’s willingness to skip