Oz Politics Blog

I bought it. I read it. What’s more, I enjoyed it and I would recommend it to others.

I am as surprised as you. After the 24-7, coast-to-coast coverage in the media I was not expecting to enjoy it.

At one level, everything you have heard about this book is true. It is a sledge-fest. Hate, vengeance, vitriol — they are all there in abundance. It is blokey: four letter words and gross stories come a plenty. There are inaccuracies. There are (what appear to be) post facto flourishes. There is a disconnect between how Latham expects to be treated and his treatment of others. In short, it is a colourful tome.

Before I dipped into the Diaries, I was planning an acerbic review. The objective would have been to out-Latham Latham and scoff at the many inconsistencies. It was not a new idea — indeed, many reviews have taken this route. I figured cheap shots are warranted with trashy books. But behind the tabloid facade, I found an unexpected insightfulness into Latham, Labor and Australian politics. So rather than trawl through Latham’s personal flaws (all of which are confirmed by his Diaries), I thought I would pick over a couple of the many insights on offer.

Let’s start with the one myth that must be put to bed. It’s the myth that Latham blamed everyone else and did not accept responsibility for his failures. Well half a myth — Latham does share the blame around. But there are numerous entries where he acknowledged he did not know what to do; where he admitted to errors of judgement; mistakes in his first marriage; and in particular, where he recognised his mistakes on the 2004 election campaign. These mistakes included the slow and ineffective advertising campaign, the complex and reactive tax and family policy, the Tassie forests policy, and not distancing himself from state Labor problems like the Scoresby freeway in Victoria and Orange Grove in New South Wales. On this front, at least, I found a more balanced Latham than the media.

Latham’s central thesis is that the Australian Labor Party is no longer a party working for the workers. Labor is no longer a labour party. It is run by the machine men for the machine men.

[T]he majority of branch members are ethnic stacks, the lost souls who can barely speak English, organised into the Party by property developers interested in municipal preselections, or Lebanese hustlers looking for community grants, migration assistance and an easy life. They never attend any meetings but end up in the attendance book courtesy of rorting branch officials. And most of them do it. That’s the sorry state of workers’ representation in the modern Labor Party. [p.184]

When I worked at NSW Party headquarters in 1987-88, I remember the General Secretary, Steve Loosley, saying to me, ‘The big decision we need to make is whether we actually need a rank-and-file membership’. It took me a while to work out he wasn’t joking. With modern fundraising capacity and campaign technology, it is possible to run a successful political party without any local branch members. That’s what Labor has become, a virtual party controlled by a handful of machine men. [p.185]

All this rhetoric about unions being the backbone of the ALP is tosh. Worker representation is a great socialist ideal. But in practice, it has produced a cohort of officials who are out of touch with their membership and undemocratic in their values. The average union member couldn’t give two hoots if their union sends delegates to Labor Party conferences. The officials, however, use this unrepresentative power to throw their weight around inside the Party and try to run the parliamentarians by remote control. It’s a house of cards. [p.186]

A few dozen Party officials and faction bosses have the power to run the organisation: who goes to Parliament, how they vote in Caucus ballots, the outcomes at party forums. Very few people progress without their say so: through Young Labor, into State ministerial offices, recruited for future parliamentary service. It’s a dense network of influence, a political mafia full of favours, patronage, and, if anyone falls out with them, payback. [p.399]

Latham makes two broad criticisms of Beazley. First, he is weak on policy. The second criticism centres on allegations of muck-raking. This quote from 22 November 2001 captures a little of the first.

Whitlam used to call the Victorian ALP ‘impotent but pure’. It’s not a bad description of Beazley’s impact on Federal Labor. I can think of five big policy areas where Kim has gutted us:

• We love the symbolism of the Republic, reconciliation and immigration (so-called population policy), yet at election time we know these issues are uncampaignable. We treat them like the mad uncle in the attic.
• We want more government spending on education, health and just about everything else, yet the fiscal well has run dry. Beazley’s front bench only had one policy — how to spend more money — but ultimately they could not campaign on it.
• We look to the welfare state to solve poverty, yet it has no answers to the social dimension of the problem, say, when bad parents pass their dysfunctional lifestyle on to their kids. The big issues are social, but Beazley Labor had noting to say about social capital.
• We want to plan and control industries, yet the complexity of the new economy makes this impossible. Our attempt ends up looking like Barry Jones’s Noodle Nation.
• We want to run the country and modernise its institutions, yet our own structure is moribund — trade unions, local branches, Party conferences, preselection processes, plus our policy-making culture.

And another quote on Beazley, which captures elements of both critiques, this time from 1 August 1998:

Unfortunately Labor has contributed to the Hansonite surge with its populism on tariffs. We should never have let the protectionist genie out of its bottle. Economic isolationism is the flipside of social racism, encouraging people to think the worst of other nations and people. It also has a domino effect — just look at the special pleading groups that have jumped out of the ground in recent times. I never realised how correct Peter Walsh was in this argument.

I’m taking flak in the media for standing up to Beazley’s economic irrationalism. His mate Oakes bagging me in the Bulletin last week: ‘It is not a good time for any politician in any party to be marked with the economic rationalist brand. Labor’s Shadow Education Minister, Mark Latham, is a case in point’. Beazley’s people fed him a crazy critique of my proposals for welfare reform by the Queens Beach ALP Branch in North Queensland (of all places). Make no mistake, Beazley and Hanson are singing from the same economic song sheet.

Where would Latham like to take Labor? After the 2004 Election loss he made these observations to his comrades.

It’s horseshit to say we need to shift to the Left, per the Barry Jones remedy; or to the Right, the Billy Shorten solution. Were we too far to the Right on the environment, schools funding, saving Medicare or getting out of Iraq? Were we too far to the Left on the abolition of ATSIC, redefining multiculturalism, holding the line of refugees, on gay marriage or our welfare-to-work policy, which was denounced by ACOSS?

I don’t believe in the old ideologies. We are a modern progressive party; breaking down the old Establishment and dispensing power to citizens and communities — the enabling state. We don’t do things because they are Left- or Right-wing, we do them because they are right. So I reject the Jones and Shorten analysis.

Three strategies for the future:

• We gave away our economic credibility post-1996; we need to rebuild it. It’s a three-year job, appealing to the new class of free-agents and entrepreneurs. We need to find a way through Howard’s structure: our campaign against him on truth/responsibility is not sufficient to beat his perceived economic strengths.
• We need to maintain our existing strengths, not walk away from good Labour policy on health, education and the environment.
• We need to change the way the party operates. Are we a political party or a federation of sub-factions? We have 88 Federal MPs and 31 of them are so-called power-brokers, with their own little group and numbers. The main factions have broken down into personal fiefdoms and tribes. This has institutionalised conflict and made the task of leading the show more difficult. How do you consult with 31 different people on any given day? What does this party need: a Leader or a receptionist who’s on the phone all day.?

A big question is whether this book will hurt Labor and Beazley. Unequivocally, the answer is yes. You can expect to hear colourful quotes between now and the next election. I would be stunned if it did not feature in Coalition advertising come the next election. But with time, and given the dignified but dismissive treatment it is getting from Labor, I suspect the damage will be minimal.

In summary, it is a book packed with insights on Australian politics and the key policy debates between 1994 and 2004. It’s a passionate insider’s view: biased, at times jaundiced and occasionally over the top. It is as Latham claimed, politics in the raw. I found it a bloody good read. Four stars.

Update: Crikey and Mike Steketee both have reviews worth reading.

Update — 28 September 2005: Latham comes across as both clever and deeply flawed. It is not an unusual combination, though it would be worrying in a prime minister. In my review, I decided to focus on the clever. In his second post publication interview with Mark Latham, Tony Jones peeled back on the deeply flawed.

Update #2 — 28 September 2005: A couple of good essay’s on the Crikey site.