The end of a long road...Bob Carr resigns

Bob Carr today announced his retirement from his position as NSW Premier and Member for Maroubra. He has left behind a government that has just passed 10 years in office and has a massive parliamentary majority, yet it also trails in the polls and is facing a major task to win back the hearts and minds of a jaded electorate.



I met the news with a shiver of apprehension. Bob Carr always had a dual identity with me - both an electoral genius and a Right royal arsehole. Yet no matter how much of an arse he acted, he could pull it all together at election time (and I still hold the opinion that a bad Labor government is better than a good Liberal one!).

In the 1991 state election Labor was expected to follow their previous defeat in the polls with a further dip in popularity. The NSW economy was going along relatively well, other State Labor Governments were facing scandal over economic mismanagement, Nick Greiner was at the height of his popularity, and the NSW ALP was scraping the bottom of their coffers.

Yet Carr nearly won. Greiner was forced into a minority Government.

Then we go to 1995. John Fahey, a footballer and the complete opposite to Carr, had won Sydney the Olympics and Labor was on the nose federally.

Carr won.

And Carr kept winning. Both 1999 and 2003 saw Labor's majority increased to the point that only a seismic shift in the electorate would dump them out of office in 2007.

Yet Carr's failings have perhaps offered the Coalition a chance at that victory. The obsession with retiring debt has seen massive underinvestment in public utilities and services that creates daily angst on our public transport systems. The lack of a water plan (beyond praying for rain) has shown the public Labor has lost its ideas. Public schooling continues to take a battering in the press and the state government takes the blame. The budget, for so long fueled by stamp duty and associated taxes, is diving into the red.

I'd like to think the ALP can win in 2007 but Centrebet have just posted the odds and have the coalition as favourites. I have seen many a poor punter but have you ever seen a poor bookie? They know how to pick 'em...