Bob Carr

'It's not about the source, it's about the numbers, stupid'

Professor Carr was the longest serving Premiere of NSW from 1995 to 2005. He also served as Federal minister for Foreign Affairs from 2012 - 2013.

Bob Carr has been a long time advocate for a sustainable population. In 2000, as Premier of NSW, he stated that Sydney was full, bringing the issue of population into the headlines at a time when domestic population policy was rarely discussed.

While serving as foreign minister, Carr also advocated for a global population policy, including foreign aid for family planning and empowerment of women. During this time, he was approached by SPA to be Patron, a post to which he accepted.

Since leaving politics, The Honourable Bob Carr is Industry Professor (Business and Climate Change) at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS).

In this video, Bob discusses his role in advocating for a sustainable population when in politics, public opinion on the issue, and why organizations such as SPA are crucial to advocate for this critical issue.

Growth lobbyists outnumbered environment and democracy proponents three to two on Last Monday's Q and A on ABC 1, with Jane Fitzgerald (Property Council of Australia), Jonathan Daley (Grattan Institute) and Dr Jay Song (Immigration professional who arrived here two years ago) and Tony Jones (Compere) vs Tim Flannery (Population scientist and author of the famous Future Eaters) and Bob Carr, (journalist, environmentalist, and former Premier of New South Wales). The show started with a brilliant question from audience member, Matthew Bryan. He read it off his mobile phone, with a steely emotional intensity that only someone blinded by dollar values could have ignored, and all the growthists did, of course. Nonetheless since the ABC almost never invites representatives of the non-growth side, we could call this an improvement. Read on for a commentary on some of the highlights and lowlights of this historic confrontation between truth and lies and ignorance.

Watch an old reporter turned politician do a few rounds in the ring with skilled Russian interviewer, Oksana Boyko of RT. Oksana gives him his head initially and he struts predictably, but things get interesting later, particularly on the issue of Australia's role and responsibility for the mess in the Middle East and Syria. (Bob Carr was a recent foreign affairs minister for Australia.) For me, it was fascinating listening to Carr's 'justifications'. Could a grown-up really believe this stuff? Who knows when Western leaders may really be called to account for their removal of order and warmongering in the Middle East. I wonder if this troubles them, if they lie awake at night going over their stories.

See also: Mark Latham, who opposed "Your Rights at Work" campaign and supported Howard in 2007, says Albanese shouldn't be Labor leader of 9 Oct 2013; Labor Leadership Contenders' Views on East West Link - Albo opposes it! of 6 Oct 2013.

Update, 28 Nov 2013: No mention was made of Syria by Albanese, Shorten or the audience in the leadership debate of 24 September. (Whilst this could have been because of time constraints, it seems a surprising omission.)
On 20 April, 2013, Anthony Albanese, a candidate for the national leadership of the Labor Party by membership ballot,₁ expressed ₂ his support for Syria₃. This is contrary to how much of the senior leadership of the Labor Party has acted. ₄ For two and a half years they supported the United States as Syria has tried to defend itself against invasion by proxy terrorists armed, paid for and supplied by the United States. This war has, so far, since March 2011, cost 100,000 lives.

War criminals and serial liars, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, and their Australian accomplices, Prime Minster Kevin Rudd and Foreign Minister Bob Carr

This coming Saturday 7 September, most Australians will be forced to make the unpalatable choice between, on the one hand, the Opposition Liberal Party and the ruling Labor Party. The Liberal Party is resolved to destroy 7,000 public service jobs, remove the right of trade unions to enter workplaces and give the Green light to destructive and horrifically expensive projects such as the East-West Link and the Phillip Island industrialisation project. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, as well as promoting rampant population growth and section 457 visas has, on the international stage, facilitated military aggression against Libya in 2011 and has done his utmost to repeat the exercise with Syria. Fortunately for Syria and the rest of the world, President Obama's war plans against Syria have been defeated by international and domestic opposition as described in the included article of 30 Aug 2013 by Paul Craig Roberts. It is vital, if peace and democracy are to survive that Kevin Rudd, Bob Carr and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott be held to account for their support for the U.S. Government's criminal actions.

Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr, informant for the US embassy since the 1970's

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who colluded in the invasion of Libya by calling for a "no-fly" zone

Breaking news : (30 August, 11:30AM GMT+10) UK Parliament votes against war

(Originally posted: Mon, 26 Aug 2013, 01:20:28 +1000) See also: Syria 'Chemical Weapons' Crisis: Live Updates on RT, Appendix 1: Links to factual reporting on Syria, Appendix 2: Mainstream media war propaganda.

Unlike Syria, Australia has participated in several unjust wars since the end of the Second World War.₁ As a result of two of those wars, 1,300,000 Iraqis, fled to Syria. The illegal wars, in which Australia participated include: The Korean War,₂ the Vietnam War, the Gulf War of 1991, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In its "demographics" section The Wikipedia Syria article, states:

According to the World Refugee Survey 2008, published by the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Syria hosted a population of refugees and asylum seekers number approximately 1,852,300. The vast majority of this population was from Iraq (1,300,000), but sizeable populations from the former Palestine (543,400) and Somalia (5,200) also lived in the country.[106]

In an interview on the 4 Corners program, The Battle For Syria, on 4 October 2012, Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr said to Kerry O'Brien, "... perhaps an assassination ... is what is required ... ."

Carr's support for the assassination of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is consistent with allegations that for 40 years he was an agent of the United States Government within the Australian Labor Party. His relationship with the CIA is the subject of Bob Carr: Washington's man in Australia in the Melbourne Age of 8 April 2013 and the article, by Murray Hunter, Is Bob Carr a spy? of 11 April 2013 in the Independent Australian, which cites evidence from the Age article and which we republish below. The US, which Carr uncritically supports, has used assassins, and worse, against the people of Korea, Vietnam, Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and now Syria. A number of its own Presidents including JFK and a number of popular American political leaders have also fallen to the bullets of assassins.

See also: Assange slams Carr as a 'well-known liar' in the Sydney Morning Herald of 31 May 2013.

We wonder if Bob Carr, Australia's Foreign Minister, has any idea of the utter distress he has given to wildlife carers all over Australia in his endorsement of the kangaroo-meat industry for export? It has reduced to despair mature activists who normally soldier on impressively (where the rest of us dare not even look) despite constant exposure to brutality, cruelty and a useless legal system in their daily rounds. Carr's position is even odder in view of his patron status with Voiceless, the vegan fund for animals.

Those who want to know the truth about the recent Houla massacre, blamed by the corporate newsmedia on the Syrian government, should consider these chilling words said in 2005 by Ziad Abdel Nour, a corporate-financier and founder of "Blackhawk Partners" as well as chairman of the Neo-Conservative run "United States Committee for a Free Lebanon" :

"This Bashar Al Assad-Emil Lahoud regime is going to go whether it's true or not. When we went to Iraq whether there were weapons of mass destruction or not, the key is — we won. And Saddam is out! Whatever we want, will happen. ... Whether we lie about it, or invent something, or we don't ... I don't care. The end justifies the means. What's right? Might is right, might is right. That's it. Might is right.[1]

Australia's new Foreign Minister Senator Bob Carr continues his predecessor's enthusiastic volunteering of Australia in the Coalition of the Willing, this time against Syria. Between 1991 and now, the Coalition caused the deaths of possibly 1,500,000

5.1 Purging disloyalty

'Divide and Conquer' in Caesar's Gallic Wars - 'Vercingetorix Throws Down His Arms at the Feet of Julius Caesar', 1899 painting by Lionel Noel Royer.

The political strategy of dividing one’s enemies in order to secure power is tried and proven. Compared with a united and focused force; fragmented, smaller enemies made to become suspicious of each other, are distracted and weakened. The Latin origin ‘divide ut regnes’ is indeed ancient and can at least be traced back to Julius Caesar picking off his enemies by siding with individual tribes in disputes with their local rivals.^#0101DF">1

Chapter 4: Carr’s ‘regeneration’ sowed factional vengeance

4.1 Carr’s leadership ethos

"Should I not be Premier by the end of this day, let there be no doubt in the community's mind, no doubt, that any challenger will be a puppet of Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi." ...and with those prophetic words on 3rd December 2009, the next day New South Wales’ second puppet premier Nathan Rees bowed from the public limelight.

When unelected political factions become puppeteers of government the people have lost democracy. The Labor Party in Australia's most populous state New South Wales, since before it came to power in 1995 under Premier Bob Carr, has been under the powerful influence of right-wing factionalism, always behind the scenes. Immediately following a 17-year reign under Carr, the rise of the Labor Right has controlled the NSW Government, pre-selected candidates, appointed ministers and propped up successive puppet premiers. The NSW Labor Right has pulled the strings on the government like a puppet show. The influence started before Carr’s ‘reluctant’ leadership and controls the length of string of puppet numero due, Kristina Keneally.

Transcript:

Panel discussion on population, Radio National Breakfast program
Friday 9 April 2010, 8.10am – 8.23am
Interviewer: Fran Kelly
Panel Members: John Coulter (SPA), Bob Carr, Nick Minchin

Fran Kelly: This week has definitely been about the politics of population. With the appointment of Tony Burke as population minister on the weekend Labor has 12 months to come up with a national population policy. Australia’s never had a formal national population policy or target. So we thought we’d discuss this morning what that policy should look like and also explore why the politics of population is so fraught with danger. To help us answer those questions we’re joined by three guests who all support a contained population for Australia and have tried for many years to put the issue on the map. The call for a smaller Australia was backed up by a Lowy poll this week which showed that 69% of us think that 36 million Australians by 2050, which is the Treasury projections released earlier, is simply too large, too many people.

...
...
Article by Geoff Brown

Delfin Lend Lease, the developer of the ADI Site, is now promoting its new suburb. It has the appalling name of Jordan Springs (another generic Delfin project with Springs in the name).

Jordan Springs is the 230 ha area of bushland - the now critically endangered Cumberland Plain Woodland - found on the western (Penrith) side of the ADI Site. Check out the spin from Delfin http://jordansprings.com.au/

There should now be a big question mark over this development

There should now be a big question mark over this development with both the NSW and Australian Government's upgrading Cumberland Plain Woodland from Endangered to Critically Endangered. You would assume any development that proposed to clear over 200 ha (there is still another suburb to go at ADI and it is 130 ha) of critically endangered bushland would be struggling to get approval.

Penrith Council recently approved the first 6 ha subdivision prior to the critically endangered listing.

This is a dramatic turn of events

First it was Kelvin Thomson MP and now Bob Carr former Premier of NSW speaking out strongly about the increase of population being forced on us by Federal and State. Will this strike a chord and open Pandora's box for the government?. Will the silent majority finally speak out?

Population numbers is the factor behind our planning and development woes and also helping to wreck our environment.

"In March the Australian Bureau of Statistics projected that one scenario, with ramped-up immigration, could mean a population as high as 42.5 million by 2056. Its mid-range scenario comes in at 35.5 million.

I need only summarise the indictments of such high-end population growth. It assumes rainfall reliability not reflected in any known data. It ignores evidence that high immigration has only a marginal impact on age distribution over the long term. It glides over the proof marshalled by Ross Gittins that high immigration worsens, not relieves, skill shortages. It also spikes the cost of land and cruels housing affordability."

Bob Carr has spoken out strongly this morning in a truly major article in the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, but it did not get printed in the Age, though it is on their website, only printed in the Sydney Morning Herald.

In the ABC 7.30 Report of October 13th, which dealt with the absolutely critical matter of Australia's rapid population growth, Channel 2 viewers were served up with the usual homogenised glop of current journalism. Opinions were sought rather than facts and impacts researched and reported. Vested interests were glossed over in the promotion of questionable 'authorities'. Noticeably absent was the one Australian politician who has shown leadership and coherence on this subject - Kelvin Thomson. We can only suspect that the program was yet another countering of his views without allowing him a right of reply.

"Australia's population steeply rising"

This is a review of ABC televisions 7.30 report segment 13 October 2009 on Australia's population dynamics.

Shambolic treament of crucial topic

It's amazing that such a serious topic as the deliberate inflation of Australia's population through high immigration can be treated in such a shambolic way as it was by ABC's channel 2 last night.

Bert Denis - president of the Australian Population Institute was wheeled out to spout the plusses of a growing population- very good for business that's for sure! His business that is.

It seems that the people who have managed to get into power in this country simply cannot take seriously the importance of the natural world to climate, aesthetics, society and human survival. Money eclipses everything in their Growth Lobby paradigm, including democracy.

Today this dreadful news arrived from Geoff Brown of the ADI Residents' Action Group:

Keneally gazettes green light to Delfin Lend Lease to bury last grasslands in vast suburbs

Kristina Keneally the NSW Planning Minister on Friday gazetted amendments to the SREP 30 the zoning plan for the ADI Site. Under the NSW Environmental Planning and Assessment Act the Minister could, based on submissions received from the public, amend SREP 30 any way she saw fit. We called on her to use her planning powers to protect a further 100 ha of Cumberland Plain Woodland by rezoning land from urban to conservation (E2 Environmental Conservation was proposed - therefore no cost to government). Nearly 300 ha of regenerating bushland is zoned urban by SREP 30 and will be cleared so our proposal was a compromise in the hope that we may just get some support from the NSW Government. It would of reduced the development by 1000 dwellings = $100 million that Delfin would of lost.

This article was first posted as a comment to an article by Tim Murray, but I decide to turn it into my own blog entry after it was pointed out that the size of this comment caused Tim's article to be dwarfed.

Tim Murray, in his excellent article "Is the home-building industry the prime mover of our ecological ruin?" of 31 December 2008 wrote:

"The former Premier of New South Wales, Bob Carr, once offered Australia a choice. It could sustain jobs and economic security by using its brains, by being a smart economy, by adding value to the products it produces and by transforming manufacturing. Or it could continue to be a 'lazy Australia' that depends on job growth simply by driving up population numbers and depending on the growth you get by building homes and shopping malls. And that is indeed what is it has done, adding a third to its population in less than three decades."

These words point to the essence of the problem.

A short article in the The Australian Financial Review of 24 September 2008 leaves the reader wondering what exactly was the point of NSW's extensive program of privatisations going back to the 1980's.

The article, "Bits and pieces won't fetch $1 billion" by Tracey Ong purports to show what options are available to the NSW government in its planned mini-budget to cover the claimed $1 billion-plus shortfall in its budget.

The article states, "The problem for Mr Rees is that the once-rich government asset portfolio has been depleted after two decades of reform." This 'reform' left, according to the article, apart from the electricity assets, the sale of which is now politically impossible, "only a handful of assets... worth offloading."

This surely begs a question from those who have held out privatisation to us as the panacea for all of our economic ills: Exactly what of enduring benefit has been achieved by past waves of privatisation?

Two of the principle justifications given for privatisation have been:

Contents: #OFarrellPilloried">O'Farrell pilloried, #DebateIgnored">Parliamentary debate ignored, #EarlierMisreporting">Earlier misreporting: Iemma exhorted to ignore Labor conference, public will, #WhatCanBeDone">What can be done about this?.

Those who have read "The Latham Diaries" will have found startling confirmation of the fact the State Labor Premiers are cynical enough to deliberately damage the electoral prospects of their Federal counterparts in order to better ensure their own survival at the state level.Adapted from an article cross-posted to Online Opinion. Also, see article on webdiary "Peter Beattie bent on destruction of Rudd's chances" by Margo Kingston.

Those who have read "The Latham Diaries" will have found startling confirmation of the fact the State Labor Premiers are cynical enough to deliberately damage the electoral prospects of their Federal counterparts in order to better ensure their own survival at the state level. Former NSW Premier Bob Carr expressed it thus in his own diaries on 6 November 2001, quoted on pages 305-306 of "The Latham Diaries"(2005):