Carr: ALP was infested with communists

Former NSW Premier, Bob Carr, writing in The Australian today, aknowledges that the socialist faction of the ALP was infested with communists and communist-sympathisers at the height of the Cold War.

Carr says the new book The Family File by Mark Aarons, which contains ASIO files on four generations of Aarons' communist family, confirms these details.

"...the bombshell revelation is the system of dual membership of the ALP and the CPA, something long suspected but now spelt out by the ASIO documents and Mark Aarons's family familiarity with Australian communism."

"As a teenage Whitlam-ite I sat in the gallery of Sydney Town Hall and watched factional debates at the annual state ALP conference. I now know, courtesy of this book, the Left leaders carried Communist Party tickets. Their real loyalty was to the CPA, a party still loyal to Moscow."

Carr says the revelations vindicate the decision to split the ALP in the 1950s.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard is a member of the socialist faction of the Labor party and is a former member of 'Socialist Forum' which was an organisation at Melbourne University that included communists and communist-sympathisers.