Robert John Carr was born on the 28th September 1947, the child of Edward and Phyllis Carr, at Matraville in Sydney's South. Educated at Matraville High School, where he was dux in 1964, he went on to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts with honours in History from the University of NSW.
At the age of 15 he joined the Australian Labor Party, and was elected, in turn, the President of the NSW Branch and then the national branch of Young Labor. Between 1969 and 1971 he worked as a professional journalist for ABC Radio, working in current affairs, particularly in the areas of industrial relations, a topic he also covered for the Bulletin magazine.
Carr was elected to the NSW Legislative Assembly as Member for Maroubra in 1983, during the term of the then Wran Government. He quickly rose to become Minister for Planning and the Environment, and then also Minister for Consumer Affairs. Carr held the position of Minister for Heritage when Barrie Unsworth was defeated at the 1988 NSW State Election, and was elected by the Parliamentary Caucus as Opposition Leader shortly afterwards.
Labor's impressive performance in the 1991 State Election forced the conservative Greiner Government to rely on the votes of lower-house Independents, in an experiment in minority Parliamentary Government extremely rare for Australia. After Greiner was forced to resign after an adverse finding from the ICAC in 1992, Labor won the 1995 State Elections, and Bob Carr became Premier.
Bob Carr's ten years as Premier of New South Wales were characterised by cautious, responsible financial management, leading to NSW's now-established 'triple A' credit rating. A keen bushwalker, Carr also created more than three hundred National Parks, and expanded other State reserves through Regional Forestry Agreements. Other key achievements included staging the "best ever" Olympic Games, major educational reforms including a massive new investment in literacy and numeracy, reform of the School Certificate and HSC, an apology to the Stolen Generations, the innovative Drug Summit in 1999, new laws to protect migrant outworkers, the biggest reform to tort law in 70 years, and a massive infrastructure program. A noted public intellectual and commentator on American politics and Civil War history, Carr has been the author of several books, including the 2002 Thoughtlines.