Senator Andrew Bartlett
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
 
Mark Latham
The media frenzy over the Mark Latham diaries in the last week or so has been hard to avoid. I haven’t read his book yet, nor have I watched or listened to any of the various interviews he has done on television or radio. However, I’ve read bits and pieces of the newspaper and magazine pieces, as well as a lot of the commentaries on the web, with many blog sites (far too many to list individually) giving a view, as well as plenty from the more mainstream media.

I probably will read his book at some stage down the track. As a few other people have said, there is probably a lot of useful information and insights in there, but its value will be obscured by the malevolence with which it appears to be expressed. I’m actually more looking forward to reading the book on Labor and Latham by journalist Annabel Crabb. She seems to me to be one of the more perceptive writers about politics, who appreciates the bizarreness and occasional absurdity of the political environment whilst still respecting the importance of it. She also had the rare knack of being able to be make fun of what politicians do without being cruel or vicious in doing so.

The focus on Latham made me revisit the posts I wrote on this blog at the time he announced his retirement, which in the current environment appear in contrast to be very sympathetic. I guess he has given plenty of reason for people to be a lot less sympathetic about him now. One of the few recent efforts I’ve seen which seeks to draw attention to the physical condition which Latham is probably still enduring is this item by Catherine Job, which notes the impact that living with constant physical pain can have on a person’s mindset.

John Howard has certainly had some luck with this event. The extracts from the Latham diaries in the News Limited papers were released earlier than originally planned. They were brought forward to appear the morning after the Telstra sale legislation passed, which certainly helped push the details surrounding that bastardised process off the front pages very quickly. It has also very much buried the perception that was starting to develop about the level of thuggery and malevolence between people inside the Liberal Party, not least from the religious extremists who seem to have control of the NSW branch of the party (amongst others). Assuming half of what Latham says is true, the degree of callousness and lack of respect for democracy amongst Labor is truly appalling (although not overly surprising), but I’ve seen enough to have little doubt it’s similar inside the Liberals. To me, it is just a manifestation of the way many politicians, journalists and operatives behave in parliamentary politics, rather than something peculiar to the ALP.

There has been plenty of no-holds-barred commentary on Latham from press gallery journalists – which is perhaps not surprising seeing many of them are as much of a target of Latham’s as are his former Labor Party colleagues. I found this piece from Tim Blair one of the most eviscerating, perhaps because it is hard to dispute any of it. The Latham comment he starts with, regarding the armed forces, is both callous and hypocritical in the extreme. The comment he ends with, by Labor supporter and one of Australia’s more thoughtful bloggers, Chirstopher Shiel, is also very telling.

Mind you, the end comment on another recent post by Chris about the nature of political debate today is also worth noting when considering how much truth there is to the various Latham allegations and anecdotes – “Whether a political matter is true or false has increasingly become beside the point, just so long as interest rates don’t go up.“

Tim Blair also has a collection of old comments by various people in The Bulletin, which gives a reminder of how past quotes can make most of us look a bit silly in hindsight.

Whilst there have been many comments suggesting Latham is performing a valuable service in opening up the workings of the major parties and the media to public scrutiny, about the only example I’ve seen so far of someone specifically praising the actual content of Latham’s views was by Ben Oquist, the Green Party’s long-serving spin doctor in Parliament House. It appeared in the daily email sent out by Crikey. It’s not on line, so I’ll reproduce it in full here without making further comment:


No doubt you have heard some of Latham's fine words over the last week. While much of it is crude, there is none the less a very very rich vein of truth in what he has been saying on many issues. His statements about foreign policy (and how safe New Zealand is from a terrorist attack), individualism and materialism this morning for example.

I think that while some in the political class and mainstream commentariat are suggesting that there is nothing worthwhile in the diaries, many – particularly in the Greens constituency – will be taking good heart from what he is saying. So much of it is Greens sentiment expressed in a language that cuts through.

Here are a couple of bits relating to the Greens that I have picked up from reading the book this morning that haven't been directly covered in the media so far.

"Bob Brown is killing us on this issue [Iraq] through the power of a simple, commonsense message: Bush is an imbecile and Australia should not be part of this war"

"I also like Brown: other than economic policy, our beliefs are quite similar. I prefer his political values to the likes of [Dick] Adams and Michael O'Connor [CMFEU forestry division], with their close links to the timber and woodchip bosses. It's a shame that people like Bob Brown have been lost to the Party. Gough tells me he was a member in Western Sydney in the 1970's. [this last bit is untrue actually]

"And then there was the Forestry Division of the CMFEU which organised the rally for Howard, the same CFMEU that was subjected to a Royal Commission by the Howard Government. This one was even beyond Billy Hughes.""The problem with the Forestry Division is that it has formed a dependency relationship with the companies. Their officials can't fart unless the bosses say it's ok."

"The Media. As detestable as ever. One thing I underestimated was the capacity of the Liberals to use large parts of their commercial media as an extension of their campaign. The Murdoch tabloids, for instance, kicked off the scare campaign against the Greens, which the Government finished off in their last days of the campaign. I knew Murdoch was backing the Government, but not as a formal part of its campaign."

All in all I think there is much to congratulate Mark Latham for in this book. It is a shame these honest things are not said by more politicians when they are actually in parliament. Thank God the Greens are there to do it!


posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Wednesday, September 21, 2005 Permalink
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