When Bob Carr is history, will we remember the good or the bad?

When it comes to the Carr Government's own labour record, however, the defining event will be the extraordinary showdown over workers' compensation.

The Premier may feel that all is well, now that he's back on speaking terms with most union officials; but the pain of the betrayal that brought on a 20-hour blockade of the NSW Parliament by thousands of unionists still reverberates among many workers who once saw the Labor Party as their own.

Carr's eloquence cannot conceal the fact that it was a Labor Government that introduced new laws that limit payouts to injured workers. There is perhaps no more fundamental issue for workers and their unions than the right to compensation for people injured at work. Future historians could well identify this battle as the starting point of Labor's loss of its traditional rank-and-file union support base.

Thanks to the assiduous work of Carr's media managers, we hear relatively little about his decidedly patchy record on the environment and worker's rights. Unfortunately for Carr, history is less likely to be tricked by a clever media strategy.

Historians do not have to rely on press releases, or put up with pushy spin-doctors, or be curtailed by an impending deadline. How Carr's record will fare when stripped of these buffers that help any politician survive the daily pressures of public life is yet to be seen.

As a history buff, the Premier knows how cruel history can be. There is still time, if he wishes, to take the hard decisions on health, education, industrial relations and the environment.

If Carr is prepared to accept this challenge, he may yet leave us with something more precious than a good headline: namely, a progressive legacy of real substance.