Kim Carr

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Senator Kim Carr

Kim John Carr (born July 2, 1955) has been an Australian Labor Party member of the Australian Senate since April 1993, representing the state of Victoria. He was elected to the Senate at the March 1993 election, and was due to take his seat on 1 July. When retiring Senator John Button resigned before the expiry of his term, however, Carr was appointed to the resulting casual vacancy in April.

Carr was born in Tumut, New South Wales. He was educated at the University of Melbourne where he obtained a Master of Arts degree and a Diploma of Education. He joined the Labor Party in 1975. He was a secondary school teacher for nine years before becoming a political staffer^[1] for Victorian government ministers Joan Kirner and Andrew McCutcheon. He was a close associate of Wally Curran, the left-wing head of the meatworkers union, the AMIEU. He returned to teaching briefly after Labor lost office in Victoria and briefly performed research for the meatworkers prior to his appointment to the Senate. Carr is married to Carole Fabian and has three children.

Carr became a Parliamentary Secretary in March 1996 in addition to being the Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate until his election to the Opposition Shadow Ministry in November 2001. He was Shadow Minister for Science and Research from then until October 2004. He was also Shadow Minister for Industry and Innovation from July 2003 to October 2004. He has been Shadow Minister for Public Administration and Open Government, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs and Reconciliation and Shadow Minister for the Arts October 2004 to June 2005, when he was appointed Shadow Minister for Housing, Urban Development, Local Government and Territories. He is one of five voting Victorian members of the party's National Executive.

Carr is a leading figure in the Victorian Labor Party's Socialist Left faction, and is regarded as its organisational head. His prominence in factional politics has made him a deeply disliked figure to members of the rival Labor Unity faction, who refer to him as "Kim Il-Carr", a pun on the name of the late North Korean dictator Kim Il-Sung.

In 2005, Carr was instrumental in the recruitment to the Socialist Left of Mohamad Abbouche^[2], a former mayor of the City of Hume in suburban Melbourne, who had been previously accused of branch stacking by members of the Socialist Left faction. In return for his change of alignment, Abbouche was promised a seat in the Legislative Council. This arrangement was subsequently vetoed by Victorian Premier Steve Bracks.

During the round of bitterly contested preselections for Labor-held federal electorates in early 2006, Carr frequently accused the Labor Unity faction of branch stacking and other offences against party rules. Labor Unity members regard these charges as hypocritical, claiming that the Socialist Left under Carr's leadership had invented the most common form of branch stacking, the mass recruitment of members of ethnic minorities into party branches.