Bob Carr diaries: foreign policy was subcontracted to Jewish donors

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.

He also describes his rigorous personal regimen. One passage reads: “I did two hours of Pilates, then to Double Bay for my third meditation lesson; then to the office to read cables; to the gym ...”.

Or, “travel devastates my diet...none of the official meals have serious protein content … I’ve got to order two main courses to come close to my protein targets. I’ve been wolfing down whey protein powder (cross flow, micro-filtered and hydrolysed) and branch-chain amino acid tablets”.

He also casts light on his struggle to “eliminate” sugar and flour and his penchant for “organic steel cut oats”.

Politics is never far away though. Australia’s ambassador to the United States, Kim Beazley, suggested to Carr, and to “a few people” in Washington that Carr - a long-serving former NSW premier - was a “viable alternative” as Labor leader as the tensions between Rudd and Gillard dragged on.

“This is fantasy, a bit of flattery. And who would want it, in these circumstances,” he concludes.

He also describes deliberately courting media attention, being “in and out of the TV studios in parliament house like a fiddler’s elbow” because the publicity would “ensure that Rudd can’t dump me (as foreign minister) if he takes over.”

And he reveals deep differences within the government about how tightly Australia should walk in lock step with the United States and bemoans that his short tenure in the job limits his options to change things.

“I would like to make us a little less craven, to correct the recent tilt away from China and the too-desperate embrace of the US, symbolised in last year’s announcement of a rotating marine presence in Darwin and Obama’s criticism of China in our parliament,” he writes.

He relates a cabinet meeting in August 2012 when then defence minister Stephen Smith proposed “pumping up” an announcement about the troops rotation during the high level bilateral meeting later in the year with then US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and then defense secretary Leon Panetta.

“I said my concern was the announcement - beaten up and embellished - would make us look like a continental US aircraft carrier with B52s roaring out of our airstrips, headed in all directions north,” he writes.

But he says “none of my colleagues seemed to understand what a strategic decision we were being asked to make here and this surprised me. I was somewhat surprised too that the prime minister didn’t express a view.”

The jet-setting former foreign minister also complained at having to do all his travel business class.

On a trans-Atlantic flight to meet Hillary Clinton he complains; “Business class. No edible food. No airline pyjamas….I lie in my tailored suit” and on another long haul flight he writes: “Eating plastic — no ceramic — food, passengers lying in cribs, packed in business class, a design that owes a lot to the trans-Atlantic slave trade ...”

And when he and his wife Helena, who regularly travelled with him, were upgraded to first class flights he writes “Pathetic that the public service rules reduce me to that, an upgrade for a middle-power foreign minister.”

He also comments on the prevalence of obesity in the United States and questions whether republican John McCain and other senior figures had had plastic surgery.

And he has colourful descriptions for his counterparts, including “… the super-urbane (Indonesian) foreign minister Marty Natalegawa who, Julia Gillard says, reminds her of Johnny Depp…”

Foreign minister Julie Bishop has claimed Carr would be “breaching confidences” f in the book and former foreign minister Alexander Downer told Guardian Australia the project was “inappropriate”, “embarrassing” and “wrong”.

Carr responded that every US secretary of state has written a memoir.

When it was reported in November 2012 that Carr was keeping a diary of his time as foreign minister with the intent of publishing it – based on the accounts of numerous sources – Carr immediately issued a statement denying he was writing a book.

Carr, who served as NSW premier for 10 years, entered the Senate and became foreign minister at the request of former prime minister Julia Gillard in March 2012, when Kevin Rudd returned to the backbench after losing a leadership challenge. He stood for another six-year term in the number one position on the NSW Senate ticket, but announced his resignation a few weeks after the election.