Bob Carr: Restless with Ambition, Twitching with Yearning

HEART & SOUL with DAVID LESER Ep 7 Bob Carr: Restless with Ambition, Twitching with Yearning A life-long learner and curious being, Bob Carr reveals a life devoted to politics, history and reading, and what it took to learn to live without his lifelong partner Helena after their fifty-year marriage and her sudden death in 2023. About the guest Bob Carr was Premier of New South Wales from 1995 to 2005, the state’s longest continuously serving premier. A lifelong Labor politician, he is known for his reformist approach to government and his strong interest in culture, education, the environment and the future of cities. His political career later took him to federal politics, where he served as a senator and Australia’s Foreign Minister. Before entering parliament, he worked as a journalist, including at the ABC and The Bulletin, and writing has remained an important part of his life. Now an author and academic, Carr remains an incisive commentator on Australian politics, public life, international affairs, history He is the author of Thoughtlines: Reflections of a Public Man, My Reading Life, Diary of a Foreign Minister and the political memoir Run for Your Life. His latest book, Bring Back Yesterday (2026), is a deeply personal memoir about his fifty-year marriage to Helena and the experience of losing her suddenly in 2023. Credits Host: David Leser — Director: Ian Darling — Camera and lights: Harry Kielly, Tiernan Rennie — Sound: Mary Macrae — Front of House: Sarah Butler — Photography: Harry Kielly — Editors: Sally Fryer and Harry Kielly