Australian foreign policy was subcontracted to Jewish donors

Bob Carr diaries: foreign policy was subcontracted to Jewish donors

Ex-foreign minister casts light on support for Israel – and his obsession with diet and the indignities of businesss class travel

Lenore Taylor, political editor

Former foreign minister Bob Carr has suggested Julia Gillard’s dogged insistence on supporting Israel in a controversial United Nations vote was because Australian foreign policy had been “subcontracted” to Jewish donors.

In a new biography about his 18 months as foreign minister, Carr reveals deep tensions within Labor over foreign policy and intimate details of his conversations with foreign leaders - including an April 2012 meeting with David Miliband who was “pessimistic about British Labour being led by ‘brother’ Ed”.

In more unusual territory for a political memoir, he reveals a near-obsessive preoccupation with his diet and exercise regime, and complains about being “reduced” to business class travel.

Bob Carr: Diary of a Foreign Minister includes a detailed account of a period in October and November 2012 when Carr campaigned against Gillard’s insistence that Australia should support Israel and vote against Palestinian observer status in the United Nations.

The bitter fight became entwined in the leadership tensions that were reaching a crescendo at the time.

As it reached its height, he describes Kevin Rudd arriving at his parliament house office “purse-lipped, choirboy hair, speaking in that sinister monotone. A chilling monotone”.

Rudd’s had a “morbid interest” in the issue which had the potential to impact both on Australia’s fate in the upcoming vote for a seat on the UN security council and on his own chances to return to the prime ministership.

“How much of this is about money, I asked him,” Carr writes. “He said about one-fifth of the money he had raised in the 2007 election campaign had come from the Jewish community.”

Carr concludes that “subcontracting our foreign policy to party donors is what this involves. Or appears to involve.”

He describes how nine ministers spoke against Gillard when the issue was discussed by cabinet, and only two in favour of her position.

But she remained unmoved and said it was a “prime minister’s call”. She only changed her mind when she realised she was set to be overruled by the caucus - which would have ended her already tenuous hold on the leadership.

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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/09/bob-carr--gillard-foreign-policy-jewish-donors