Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Latham at Large
Latham at Large
Latham at Large
Ebook343 pages7 hours

Latham at Large

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars

()

Read preview

About this ebook

Mark Latham is, by his own admission, the most outspoken, rebellious, thoroughly uncontrollable former leader in Labor Party history.
In these brilliantly written opinion pieces Latham pulls no punches as he scrutinises the Australian political landscape, looking at everything from climate change to Clive Palmer, to what went wrong with Rudd–Gillard and what’s now wrong with Abbott. Beyond politics, Latham dabbles in his other great interests, such as critiquing the modern media and explaining his fascination with horse racing. His hilarious 'Henderson Watch' columns and other satirical writing also feature in Latham at Large.
Mark Latham has a formidable intellect and a forensic ability to get to the bottom of things. This is an entertaining, thought-provoking, sometimes scathing, often humorous collection from a man who is not afraid to speak his mind. There is no one else like him in Australian public life.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateMar 2, 2015
ISBN9780522867251
Latham at Large
Author

Mark Latham

Mark Latham is a writer, editor and games designer from Staffordshire, UK. After graduating with an MA in English literature from the University of Sheffield, Mark went on to become the editor of White Dwarf magazine, and then the managing editor of Games Workshop's games development team, before finally becoming a full-time author of novels, short stories and games. A keen amateur historian, Mark is fascinated by the nineteenth century, leading to the production of the popular tabletop games Legends of the Old West, Trafalgar and Waterloo for Warhammer Historical.

Read more from Mark Latham

Related to Latham at Large

Related ebooks

World Politics For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for Latham at Large

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings

0 ratings0 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

    Book preview

    Latham at Large - Mark Latham

    side

    PREFACE

    Like many Sydneysiders, I grew up watching Brian Henderson read the nightly Channel Nine news. Earlier this year, I finally got to meet the great man himself.

    In a moment of kindness, he said he had been following me in the media and that I had been making ‘a great deal of sense’. Then he asked about the difference between speaking as a federal frontbencher and as a retired MP. I told him my answer could be summarised in a single word: freedom.

    Freedom from no longer having to parrot the party line. Freedom from the 24-hour news cycle and tyranny of ‘gotcha’ journalism. Freedom to think and construct a considered argument. Freedom to be oneself.

    This book, a collection of my newspaper columns, primarily from the Australian Financial Review, is the product of that freedom, both political and intellectual. I have been able to write about Australian public life from a rare perspective: with the experience of an insider, having led one of our major political parties, but also with the objectivity of a political outsider.

    Normally, when people leave parliament and find a career in the media, they maintain their association with the party machine—rarely deviating from the party line. Instead of enjoying their newfound independence, they remain immersed in the patronage of the parliamentary system, with an eye out for future sinecures and financial advantage.

    Having burned my bridges and burned off the political class with the publication of The Latham Diaries (2005), I’ll never be offered a diplomatic posting or government board position. So I’m free to write as I please.

    Sure, I still talk to people in party politics, on both sides of the fence, and I prefer Labor governments to Coalition ones, but my first priority is to give my readers accurate and objective analysis. Being unencumbered by any formal or financial link to parliamentary politics is the best starting point for writing a newspaper column.

    Generally, I’m damned both ways. The Australian newspaper has said I’m too close to Julia Gillard (with whom I haven’t had a private conversation for nine years), while the head of Labor’s New South Wales Right faction, Jamie Clements, has denounced me as being too close to Tony Abbott. That puts me where I want to be: squarely in the suburban centre of Australian politics.

    Criticisms such as these are usually a response to something I’ve written. In The Australian’s case, the Murdoch machine is notoriously intolerant of dissent. They hate the way in which I’ve picked apart their long-running smear campaign against Gillard in the AWU/ Slater & Gordon matter—an important theme in this book. Likewise, Clements and his fellow machine men are down on me for chronicling their dishonesty and the need for internal party reform. Being attacked from both sides of politics is a useful discipline for a newspaper columnist—a performance measure of one’s success.

    Writing now holds a special place in my life, as a daily ritual and form of brain food. It has the twin benefits of creativity and isolation. As an MP, I loathed the constant travel and weeks away from my family. But as a writer, I can express myself without having to leave my home office—a huge advantage for someone with a glorious partner in life, Janine Lacy, and three equally glorious children. They are by far the best people I’ve known, so I would be a fool to spend time away from them.

    Last year, in another moment of News Corp nastiness, Hedley Thomas from The Australian told me to get a job but, realistically, I don’t have time. I’m too busy writing. It’s become the abiding vocation of my post-parliamentary years. As with most good things in life, it was totally unforeseen.

    When I entered the House of Representatives in 1994, my writing style was abysmal—a problem reflected in my uber-dense book, Civilising Global Capital (1998). Thereafter, I’ve been self-taught. Canberra press gallery doyen Malcolm Farr did me a lasting favour in late 1998, when he asked me to write a regular column for the Daily Telegraph—forcing me to simplify my style, and have shorter sentences and punchier wording. Then, in the lead-up to the 2007 federal election, the AFR’s editor, Glenn Burge, commissioned me to write a series of feature articles for the paper, which led to a regular column. He dragged me off the scrapheap of Australian politics and introduced me to a new career, something for which I have always been grateful. The other breakthrough was when Tom Switzer recruited me to the Spectator Australia, where I penned ‘Latham’s Law’ from 2010 to 2012. Warming to the Speccie’s quirky, irreverent style, I found a knack for satire, something I’ve tried to carry into my weekend columns at the Fin Review.

    I’m delighted that Peter FitzSimons has written a foreword to this volume. I once heard him say that ‘Good writing is constant rewriting’—a summary of how, in his own style, he’s developed one of the sweetest pens in Australian journalism. In preparing the columns reproduced in this book, I can attest to the importance of constant rewriting. Hopefully, it has led to good writing: some insights into how Australian politics really works, and even a little bit of laughter.

    There was a time when I took politics (and myself) too seriously. Now, in Latham At Large, I can correct the balance, combining pointed analysis with the rollicking wry side of Australian public life.

    Like all columnists, I write partly for my own enjoyment and partly for yours. So, please, get stuck into these pages and see if I’ve lived up to the second part of the bargain.

    Mark Latham

    March 2015

    MASS MEDIA

    THE STALKING OF JULIA GILLARD

    13 July 2013

    When I was working for 60 Minutes during the last federal election, I witnessed a strange incident with a senior journalist. It was the day of Tony Abbott’s campaign launch in Brisbane, with the Liberals cock-a-hoop that Kevin Rudd’s leaks to Laurie Oakes had sabotaged Labor’s electoral standing. In a room set aside for the media, I approached Oakes for an interview to discuss Rudd’s spoiling tactics.

    The big man was sitting at a table not far from a deserted bar area. Instead of cooperating with a fraternal Channel Nine program, Oakes looked timid, almost fearful. I expected him to respond to my request in the normal manner—with a straightforward yes or no—but he sat frozen and mute. Then he did the weirdest thing.

    He got out of his chair and ran to the other side of the room, turning his back on me, as if this would somehow make me go away. It was like watching an elephant trying to hide behind a bar stool. After decades of ridiculing MPs into the glass lens of a TV camera, face-to-face contact with a former politician was beyond him. He lacked the courage to stump up and say something.

    I thought of Oakes and his bizarre behaviour while reading Kerry-Anne Walsh’s new book, The Stalking of Julia Gillard. We have never seen a text like this in Australian politics: a press gallery insider, a veteran of 25 years of reporting in Canberra, chronicling the disintegration of the professional ethics of her colleagues. If there is an institution more thoroughly broken and discredited than party politics, it is journalism itself.

    Walsh lists scores of examples of reporters assisting Rudd’s destabilisation campaign against Gillard. They published inaccurate information from off-the-record briefings, giving greater priority to the creation of headlines than the truthfulness of their work. Then, having attended Rudd’s press conferences, at which he declared his loyalty to Gillard, they turned a blind eye to the deceitfulness of his position—a case of journalists allowing lies to stand on the public record.

    Walsh depicts this as ‘dump-and-deny’ politics, a tactic dependent on the moral corruption of the media. It is part of a symbiotic relationship, ‘the insidious practice of reporters being on the drip— getting stories from politicians and in return, giving their sources favourable coverage’.

    Anyone wanting to understand Rudd and the dark art of media manipulation needs to read this book. The stalking of Gillard was so relentless that many aspects of Rudd’s bastardry have been forgotten. Walsh methodically sets out the lies, the leaks, the self-centredness and trashing of Labor values that ended Gillard’s career.

    While the book is strong—at times, overpowering—in its chronology of events, it offers little explanation of the underlying causes of the media’s ethical decline. This is where my encounter with Oakes is instructive: modern journalism is founded on a culture of cowardice.

    More than any other press gallery figure, Oakes has allowed the practice of off-the-record backgrounding to flourish. He has built a reputation for ‘scoops’ through covert deals with senior MPs. They feed him material, usually damaging to their own side of politics, on condition of never being associated publicly with the information. As Oakes is a leader in his profession, his technique has been infectious— an industry standard by which political reporting now carries more quotes off the record than on it.

    This is not just a favoured tactic of the Rudd camp. During the aborted leadership coup in March 2013, for instance, Sky News reporter Kieran Gilbert told his viewers of a text message from an unnamed Gillard supporter declaring, ‘Rudd’s got it’. This was an attempt by Gillard’s strategists to lure Rudd into a caucus ballot (for which, at that stage, they still had the numbers).

    Off-the-record briefings have become so common that MPs know they can manipulate the media and public opinion with impunity. Instead of having to use the tools of persuasion and policy work to get ahead in public life, they can advance their cause by stealth. The democratic principles of transparency and accountability have been lost. The Australian virtues of being upfront and fair dinkum have been replaced by the whispered cowardice of ‘working the phones’.

    It was never meant to be this way. Walsh points out that traditionally, in journalism, backgrounding was only allowed in extreme cases: to protect whistleblowers and provide information vital to the context of a story. Even then, reporters needed to be cautious about the political motives of their sources—not allowing tactical manoeuvres to be dressed up as news. Background information was never intended as a mechanism for ongoing leadership instability and personality politics.

    In an era of increased competition and media cost-cutting, getting a story, any story, has become more important than the integrity of news. Off-the-record articles are cheap and easy to produce. They don’t require research skills, in the reading of books and policy papers, just a series of anonymous quotes. They are a perfect fit for the demands of the new ‘fill-the-space’ journalism.

    Walsh lists many guilty parties in her book, among them Simon Benson, Phillip Coorey, Dennis Shanahan, Phillip Hudson, Matthew Franklin, Chris Kenny, Jessica Wright and Steve Lewis. But she saves special contempt for Peter Hartcher of the Sydney Morning Herald, who is the equivalent of Rudd’s press secretary; a political agent masquerading as an independent reporter.

    Last month, Hartcher unintentionally confirmed the strength of Walsh’s critique when he wrote of how his man Kevin was using ‘the proxy of the press gallery’ against Gillard—summarising the media’s role in making Rudd’s comeback possible. This is the greatest cowardice of all: people who want to be players in politics but lack the integrity and courage to run for elected office under their own name.

    THE ELEPHANT MAN

    5 June 2014

    Recently I was asked to speak at a dinner organised by a book publishing company. It was a gathering of literate types with a keen interest in Australian politics.

    After my speech, I was taken around to each of the tables, answering questions about the new parliament in Canberra. There was one universal subject of curiosity, and it didn’t concern the prime minister or opposition leader. At every table, the guests wanted to know more about Clive Palmer—his motives, his policies, his personality.

    In the sideshow alley of federal politics, he’s our answer to the Elephant Man, a grotesquely fascinating creature. Initially, people try to avert their eyes, but, drawn in by his strangeness, they end up spellbound, wanting to know how he came to be so different.

    What they are actually doing is staring into a mirror. Australia’s political class—in particular, those who sustain the 24-hour news cycle—created Palmer. Sure, he’s an eccentric character who knows how to pull off a media stunt, but ultimately, his brand of big money/ big personality politics would not be possible without news outlets that hunger for political novelty.

    Under growing commercial pressure, the mainstream media have fewer resources with which to do more work, and to fill the space of the 24-hour cycle. Reading policy documents and listening to parliamentary speeches is too time consuming. The easiest, most entertaining way of reporting politics is to visit sideshow alley, to highlight the weirdest act in town.

    Within the major parties, most of the authentic parliamentary characters have disappeared, replaced by heavily scripted machine apparatchiks. When they are interviewed on Sky News, their monotonous dirges parrot the party line of the day. In the serious business of trying to win government, there is zero tolerance of MPs who go ‘off-message’ and freelance on policy issues.

    Accordingly, a niche market has opened up for cross-bench infotainment politicians—independent MPs who attract publicity by offering the media colour and movement. It’s not just the Palmer phenomenon. Walk right up and see the astounding Mad Hatter, a North Queensland original. Then, further along sideshow alley, try to spot the Invisible Man, hurling kangaroo poo on behalf of the nation’s motoring enthusiasts.

    A large part of Palmer’s electoral appeal comes from the novelty of his media appearances. As public disillusionment with the major parties has grown, a certain kind of voter has emerged. They are uninterested in the details of politics, but strongly committed to anyone who appears to be ‘shaking up the system’.

    Even though he comes from a Liberal/National Party and big-business background, Palmer is seen as an anti-establishment figure. His buffoonery aside, he has skilfully positioned himself as an outsider to the Canberra club. He speaks his mind and uses language most people can understand.

    In many ways, he is reminiscent of the Pauline Hanson phenomenon in the late 1990s—a political leader who, despite obvious shortcomings, has the virtue of authenticity. As with Hanson, Palmer is stripping support away from the Coalition, appealing to earthy blue-collar conservatives.

    In 1998, to combat the One Nation threat,Tony Abbott established a slush fund, Australians for Honest Politics, to bankroll legal action against Hanson. Today, the nation’s right-wing establishment is pushing back against Palmer in a more conventional way, using the resources of The Australian newspaper to dig into his business affairs and expose inconsistencies in his public statements.

    So far, none of this has harmed the Elephant Man. He brushes aside any inconsistencies as yesterday’s news and, as the 24-hour cycle rolls forward, it’s an effective strategy.

    As with Hanson, the biggest threat to the Palmer party will come from within. It’s hard to see his Senate team holding together. The problem with right-wing mavericks is that they don’t like people telling them what to do—a natural aversion to party discipline. Eventually, this will be the greatest freak show of all: watching the Palmer people turn on each other.

    DEVINE INTERVENTION

    5 October 2013

    When Tony Abbott said he wanted more sport and less politics in Australia’s newspapers, Miranda Devine snapped to attention. A fortnight ago, the Sunday Telegraph columnist developed a new theory of political leadership. It’s all about sport.

    Like Julie Bishop, Devine believes Abbott’s greatest attributes can be seen in the change rooms. He’s the perfect captain-coach: a sharp-minded strategist, a Churchillian motivational speaker and even a dab hand on the rubdown table. His role in guiding Sydney University Rugby Club’s fourth-grade squad to a premiership in 1986 gave the budding PM ‘priceless insights into bringing the team with you’.

    With the smell of liniment in my nostrils and the sound of jockstraps clicking into position, I felt inspired to contact Abbott’s protégés and ask for their recollections of the great man’s style.

    ‘Abbo’s game plan was pretty simple,’ one of the uni veterans recalled. ‘He relied on three-word slogans like Stop the Props and Axe the Backs.’

    Another said the tactics were designed to scare people. ‘Before a big game in May, Tony said we faced a rugby emergency, and if I didn’t Axe the Backs my hometown would be wiped off the map.’

    ‘It was a pretty macho set-up,’ a third player remembers. ‘The only female who made it into the dressing sheds was a blonde chick called Julie—a token strapper. The coach said a Greek girl named Sophie would be joining the squad but she never made it.’

    For Devine, writing about her leadership theory on 22 September, nothing beats being a sports-minded bloke. Men have an advantage over women because ‘they are programmed from childhood to harness personal ambition for the good of the team; they learn to submit to the immutable rules of a sport’. In this Darwinian world, literally defined by survival of the fittest, ‘Little girls are just as keen as boys on team sports, yet fewer are given the chance to play and to learn the lessons which are an unspoken requirement of high office’.

    Devine credits little Julie Bishop’s success to her captaining ‘her netball team at St Peter’s Collegiate Girls’ School in Adelaide’. What happened to the thousands of other netball captains around the country, we do not know. Maybe they ended up writing dopey columns for Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph.

    Whatever the case, Devine’s thesis is bad news for the Abbott government. The best sportsperson on the Coalition benches is the incomparable JA—John Alexander. He wasn’t fumbling around with alcoholic fourth-grade rugby teams in the 1980s. He was leading Australia’s charge in the Davis Cup, teaming up with heavy hitters like Phil Dent and Kim Warwick. That’s real teamwork, real leadership, forged in the cauldron of elite international competition. Look out for a JA coup in the near future.

    What about the rest of this hopeless-looking cabinet? It has too many passengers; weak pasty types, who, as young fellas, spent more time in the church choir than on the bottom of rugby rucks. This is what brought Kevin Rudd undone. Now Abbott has stacked his cabinet with half-men like George Brandis, Christopher Pyne and Kevin Andrews.

    Think of the missed opportunities. Abbott could have promoted the big three: Shane Warne as minister for foreign affairs; Wayne Carey to look after home affairs; and, to really shake up the Canberra bureaucracy, a new minister for public service performance enhancement, James Hird.

    With all the hoo-ha about not enough women in cabinet, Abbott should have made two other merit-based appointments: Candice Falzon as the minister for sportsmen, and Jana Pittman-Rawlinson-Pittman-Rawlinson as minister for family services.

    Devine has set a new standard for Australian political leadership; she must look back on John Howard as a joke. His most memorable sporting effort was to almost break his toes while ‘bowling’ a cricket ball in Pakistan.

    On the Labor side, Devine has it in for Gough Whitlam. The big man reckons the only sport he ever competed in was rowing—the perfect preparation for politics, as it involved facing one way while moving in the opposite direction.

    The Sunday Telegraph column also revealed a different side to Miranda, who normally presents as a prissy North Shore matron, a yummy right-wing mummy. In eulogising Abbott’s footy career, she is obviously a big fan of his après-rugby social life, the highlight of which was being arrested for defacing public property. After a big night on the squirt, Abbott and his mates attacked a street sign. Unfortunately, a police patrol car was sitting on the other side of the road.

    University rugby didn’t teach Abbott about leadership. It taught him how to be a Tarzan-type figure, a wild man swinging from one confrontation to another. Since election night, he’s been playing the role of a born-again statesman, but it’s just an act—Australia’s Prime Impersonator. Deep down, he’s still a cut-loose, take-no-prisoners kind of guy.

    If sport is good for teaching politicians how to muscle up, why weren’t other ruffians included in the first Abbott cabinet? Surely I should have been the minister for transport, to sort out customer service issues in the taxi industry. Even Gough could have come back, in recognition of the night he hurled a glass of water at Paul Hasluck. One of Abbott’s old ministerial colleagues, Amanda Vanstone, aka Aunty Jack, also has a lot to offer: ripping their bloody arms off.

    I never thought I would say this, but Miranda Devine is a creative thinker—she has come up with the craziest theory in the modern history of Australian politics. And her emphasis on violence is spreading. I showed her column to three, otherwise mild-mannered, middleclass, suburban mums, and each of them said, ‘I just want to punch her.’

    HOW TO RUN A REAL SMEAR

    9 August 2014

    I’m worried about my friends at The Australian, I really am. Having made significant progress in mastering the politics of smear in recent years, most noticeably in the AWU-Julia Gillard matter, they have now regressed to a less plausible form of mud-slinging.

    Last Saturday they resurrected Grace Collier’s wacky notion that I’m under the control of devious Labor Party puppet masters. As conspiracy theories go, this one is hard to sustain, even for accomplished spin doctors.

    The degree of difficulty is obvious: the most outspoken, rebellious and, some would say, thoroughly uncontrollable former leader in the party’s history is actually a malleable scion of Gillard’s publicity machine. In trying to bucket me, surely the Oz could have done better than re-running Graceland.

    The problem started with the headline: ‘Latham’s Secret Role As Julia Gillard Backer’. Given that for the past two years I’ve been writing columns and now a new book (The Political Bubble) condemning News Corp for its smear campaign against Gillard, it doesn’t seem like much of a secret.

    The article itself, under the by-line of Sharri Markson, Chris Kenny and Hedley Thomas, was simply a rehash of ‘news’ first reported by the ABC’s Latika Bourke in December last year: that from late 2012 onwards, Gillard’s communications director, John McTernan, communicated with me. For a newspaper that constantly attacks the ABC as vacuous and derivative, this was the ultimate humiliation for The Australian. It reheated Bourke’s story like a mouldering slice of meatloaf.

    When I think of the things I’ve done wrong, the misjudgments I’ve made, the sexual atrocities I’ve committed that could have underpinned a News Corp bucket job, the Markson-Kenny-Thomas effort was feeble. I’m terribly disappointed.

    But I’m not blaming Hedley, the Oz’s Smearer-in-Chief. It’s the people around him who have dropped their standards. He’s been made to work with amateurs: fools who don’t understand the finer points of smear.

    First, The Australian hooked him up with Michael Smith, the prolific anti-Gillard blogger. That was going okay, until Smith declared the Prophet Mohammed to be ‘a paedophile’—a statement so extreme that even Sydney radio station 2GB axed him as one of its announcers.

    In 2011, when Smith lost his job at 2UE for trying to defame Gillard, he launched a savage vendetta against her. Mohammed is lucky he died 1400 years ago. Otherwise, Smith and Thomas would be rummaging through his family archives, looking for evidence of how Osama bin Laden funded his home renovations.

    Now Hedley has been forced to work with Markson and Kenny, News Corp’s answer to Burke and Wills—two lost souls trying to break into the higher echelons of the Murdoch machine. Sharri does it by impersonating Hansard whenever Chris Mitchell walks into the room. For Kenny, it’s more of a family affair: recruiting his son Liam to publicise his impeccable right-wing credentials.

    The tragedy of last week’s article was that the big news was right under their noses. In the origins of the story, Latika Bourke was the recipient of hundreds of McTernan’s emails, accessed sometime after June 2013, when Kevin Rudd regained the prime ministership.

    Gee, I never saw that coming. Fancy an outbreak of gratuitous leaking inside the Labor Party after Kevvie’s people had marched back into the PM’s office and accessed Gillard’s computers.

    Coincidentally, the Great Leaker himself bobbed up in the Markson-Kenny-Thomas piece. He said that ‘I will adhere to my longstanding policy of not responding to the content of anything Mark Latham has to say.’ And then he couldn’t stop talking. It was classic Rudd: planting a story with compliant journalists but then appearing to be reluctant to comment—fulfilling his self-image as a serious statesman.

    He explained how he had been ‘emotionally supportive’ of me, especially after I had ‘cried on his shoulder’ in December 2003. According to the Ruddster, ‘The one sadly consistent part of Mark Latham’s behaviour over the years is that he is always personal, always negative and almost always full of hatred, even towards people who have tried to be kind to him when he has been down.’

    Now the real secret is out. Kind Kevin and I were once very close, bonding in a deeply emotional way. When I was crying on his shoulder, Kevvie, his mellow eyes overflowing with empathy, reached out

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1