Australian ex-foreign minister defends book as 'darn good read'

Former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr has defended his new book in which he savages colleagues, speculates about whether US peers have had plastic surgery and derides business class travel as inspired by the slave trade.

Carr, who spent just 18 months in the job until the Labor government was ousted in elections last September, also wrote that he wishes Canberra was "a little less craven" toward the United States.

"I am foreign minister. ... I soar above the mundane and serve my country," he writes in Diary of a Foreign Minister, a book he admits is heavy on self-parody.

The former premier of New South Wales also describes himself, after complaining of tortuous meetings, as "the best chairman I know" and as having "more energy than 16 gladiators".

Seated next to Russian leader Vladimir Putin and across from US President Barack Obama, Carr recalls the words of late author Gore Vidal: "I cannot feel humble. Interested, curious, of course. Just not humble."

The yet-to-be-released book has been criticized by Australia's current foreign minister, Julie Bishop, for "breaching confidences".

But Carr said Australians had a right to know how government works on a day-to-day basis.

"I make no apologies for providing people with a darn good story about how Australian foreign policy is made, about pressures on a foreign minister, about how the whole thing works," he told reporters on Thursday.

He said he used judgment when discussing national security issues in the book, profits from which will be given to a children's charity.

"I gotta tell you, I was briefed on a few big slumbering secrets when I was foreign minister, they are national security concerns, they didn't go in the book," he added.

"But there are a lot of insights into how the political process works and I think Australian democracy is going to be better because someone has explained this."

Carr, who was parachuted in by then-Labor prime minister Julia Gillard to become the nation's top diplomat, is candid about his colleagues, notably describing Gillard as selfish for holding onto the leadership when her polling was dismal.

On US politicians, he writes that John McCain was "younger and more sparkle-eyed than I might have expected. Plastic surgery? Two days earlier I noticed something about the skin under John Kerry's eyes, smooth and slightly discolored."

Carr also complains about airline meals and the lack of airline pajamas in business class, forcing him to lie in his tailored suit. On one flight he says passengers were "lying in cribs, packed in business class, a design that owes a lot to the trans-Atlantic slave trade".

Speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Carr admitted the book indulges his love of self-mockery and irony, noting: "Life is too short to be taken seriously."