Some advice before Carr drives off Senator Bob Carr speaks to his wife, Helena, before a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra yesterday. Picture: AAP. HAVING resigned his Senate position with more than six years of his term still to run, Bob Carr left politics yesterday with parting advice for his party to be tactically smarter. Senator Carr defended his decision to resign after standing for re-election just seven weeks ago. The former NSW premier said no good would come of him standing in the way of Tanya Plibersek becoming opposition foreign affairs spokesman, and that the Constitution allowed his resignation from the Senate without costing taxpayers. The 66-year-old's move will open up a prized Senate seat for Labor to fill from its NSW ranks, with the recently defeated member for Robertson, Deborah O'Neill, the frontrunner in the upcoming preselection contest, which will be decided next week in time for the first sitting of parliament on November 12. She is likely to be appointed for the remaining eight months of Senator Carr's term, as well as the six years of the new term, which begins on July 1. She will create a record as a third senator to serve in the one position during a single term of the Senate, after Senator Carr replaced Mark Arbib in March last year. Senator Carr laughed off his previous statements that he intended to serve in the Senate until he was an old man as "irrational exuberance," adding that if the Labor government had been returned, he would probably have served only three years of his six-year term. His advice for new Labor leader Bill Shorten was to maintain the final asylum-seeker policy of the Rudd government because it was a policy the Australian people accepted. There may be a temptation from time to time to criticise the Abbott government from what might be described as the Left, on this issue. It is a temptation best resisted," he said. Senator Carr also criticised former communications minister Stephen Conroy's ill-fated media reforms as "wrong-headed," saying Labor should not have picked a fight with the press a year out from an election. "I'm struck by a lack of canniness in the (former) government," he said. Although Labor had done "many very, very good things," its performance was marred by a lack of caution and political cunning. Senator Carr said he would have applied a more gradual approach to the vexed issue of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And although he listed a series of achievements in his 18 months as Australia's foreign minister, Senator Carr admitted that he achieved much more as premier of NSW. Essentially, you are one voice among 20 when you are in someone else's government. "I'm not saying I felt that constraint, other than occasionally," he told The Australian after his press conference in Canberra. Senator Carr has accepted academic positions at Sydney University and the University of NSW based on his engagement with Asia.