THE man considered one of Australia's finest foreign ministers has given Bob Carr a big tick for his controversial stance on Palestine but marked him down for being "too kind" to Sri Lanka.
Gareth Evans, foreign minister in the Labor Hawke and Keating governments, helped Mr Carr launch his much talked about Diary of a Foreign Minister in Sydney on Monday.
He lauded Mr Carr for leading a cabinet push against then-prime minister Julia Gillard's plans to vote against a Palestinian bid for upgraded United Nations status.
In a rare break from the United States and Israel, Australia in 2012 decided to abstain from the vote.
"As Bob records in the book me saying at the time, a 'no' vote would have been the worst Australian foreign policy decision for a generation," Professor Evans said.
"Not only wrong in principle, but leaving us totally isolated from every friend we had in the world, apart from the US and Israel itself, and mortally wounding our credibility."
Prof Evans disagreed that the move to abstain was more about western Sydney votes.
"Forcing the issue in the cabinet ... even if Julia Gillard was rather deeply embarrassed in the process, was not about crude electoral politics," he said.
"It was about ensuring that Australia was not seen internationally as being on the wrong side of history."
But Prof Evans was critical of Mr Carr's softly-softly approach on Sri Lanka, which has been accused of human rights violations.
As foreign minister, Mr Carr resisted calls for Australia to boycott a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Sri Lanka, saying he favoured dialogue with the nation rather than isolating it.
Prof Evans said Mr Carr had been "much too kind" on Sri Lanka.
"It's a regime which has never made an atrocity accountability commitment which it hasn't breached," he said.
Speaking at the launch, Mr Carr said he knew he'd have the foreign minister job for only 18 months before Labor's electoral defeat and wanted to give Australians a glimpse into how foreign policy was formed.
"I wanted to capture for my own sake and for the historic record what it was like," he said.
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