Bob Carr has a foreign affair
Bob Carr's threat of sanctions against PNG if it dared to delay the scheduled election was an important moment in the education of Bob. Not the least problem with Carr's short-lived thought balloon in his first days as foreign minister, as it was explained by his new department, was the reality that Australia would have a lot of trouble getting the rest of the South Pacific to embrace any action against PNG. To follow that thought, come back down the time tunnel to the day after Carr had been sworn in, his first full day as foreign minister. What was virtually Carr's maiden interview was with that old-Labor-mate-turned-TV-interviewer Graham Richardson. Everything was so new the transcript never got posted on the DFAT website; the maiden effort was not kept for posterity because its sentiments were so quickly shredded. Surveying the array of issues about to confront the new minister, Richardson asked about the speculation then coming out of Port Moresby of some de