Former Labor senator Kim Carr savages Albanese Government in memoir A Long March

A veteran Labor figure has savaged Anthony Albanese’s leadership, accusing the Government of losing touch with its traditional working class base and instead chasing after inner-city elites.

Kim Carr — a former senator who served nearly 30 years — excoriates the Government for an obsession with “identity politics”, writing in his memoir A Long March that the Government should have delayed the Voice referendum when it became clear it had failed to “connect with voters”.

“The Labor ship has struck the rock of identity politics, with too many of its spokespeople adopting a censorious tone to those who fail to embrace their particular social policy agendas,” the former minister in the Rudd-Gillard governments wrote.

“As the party of political grievance, it has been selective in the narrow range of marginalised groups it supports.”

Mr Carr wrote the Labor leadership responded to the public’s questions about the Voice ”with a mixture of condescending dismissal, lectures and accusations of racism, or simply hoping the problem would somehow resolve itself”.

“None of these responses did the Labor Party, Indigenous communities or the reconciliation cause any good at all,” he writes.

The former senator writes that the failure to change course once bipartisan support was lost was “nothing less than a disaster”.

Speaking to ABC radio on Friday morning ahead of the book’s release, Mr Carr said the Government went into the campaign “out of a spirit of hubris”.

The former senator has lashed the Government for its weakness on the AUKUS agreement, writing it has allowed the defeated Morrison Government to dictate national security “from the grave”.

Mr Carr cites Labor’s continuously falling primary vote — already at record lows at the 2022 election — and writes it is losing inner-city votes to the Green while its traditional base is “fraying” to minor right wing parties.

“Without an active agenda and an ongoing policy formulation process, a government can find itself waiting for discontent to sweep it away, just as its predecessor did,” Mr Carr wrote.

“For the Labor Party, however, the small-target play is an especially dangerous course, because when voters start to cast around for an alternative some will consider switching to a third party.”

The Government is failing to “show the appropriate level of ambition” in advancing Labor’s agenda, the former senator told radio.

When asked if Mr Albanese had been a good prime minister, Mr Carr did not directly answer but said the PM had faced “difficult circumstances.”