In 1975, as Gough Whitlamâs government hurtled towards its demise, a nineteen-year-old arts student at the University of Melbourne, Kim Carr, began a long march. Raised in an avowedly blue-collar household headed by his boilermaker father, Carr eschewed what he regarded as the fripperies of student politics and went directly for the real thing. He joined his local Labor Party branch, signing up as an active soldier in the labour movement. Forty-nine years later, Kim Carr is still part of the Labor army. He served in the Senate for twenty-nine years, and was a minister in the Rudd and Gillard...