Saturday, September 17, 2005
LATHAM LOSER LATEST
Most revolting line thus far from Mark Latham’s diaries:
I detest war and the meatheads who volunteer to kill other human beings. The US alliance is a funnel that draws us into unnecessary wars; first Vietnam and then Iraq.
Here’s Latham last September with one of the meatheads he despises, at a time when Latham was promising to increase the size of Australia’s army:
Latham lied. Paul Kelly spells it out:
The diaries are frightening on the US alliance. They reveal Latham as the first Labor leader who wanted to ditch the alliance and fold Australia into the New Zealand model. They show that Latham misled the public, concealed his real opposition to the alliance for electoral reasons and was utterly hostile to Australia’s 20th-century history as an ally of Britain and the US. The book confirms that George W. Bush was correct in seeing Latham as a threat to the alliance, and that the media outcries in this country on Latham’s behalf and against Bush were misconceived.
Even Labor’s Wayne Swan says Australians were right to reject Latham:
Australian voters made the right choice by not electing former Opposition leader Mark Latham prime minister, senior Labor frontbencher Wayne Swan said yesterday ...
Mr Swan said the electorate “absolutely” made the right decision by not sending Mr Latham to the Lodge.
"The Australian people always get it right and that’s why I think Mark is somewhat embittered,” he said.
Labor defence spokesman Robert McClelland says lying Latham would have been removed by the ALP had he been elected:
"Latham misled both his colleagues and the Australian public,” he said. “He most certainly would have been rolled. I and others would have moved to remove him."
Mr McClelland — whose vote delivered Mr Latham the leadership in December 2003 — said the US alliance “was certainly a live issue during the leadership contest. He reassured me personally of his commitment to the US alliance,” he said.
Latham’s word is worthless. More from McClelland:
Mr McClelland said he personally had asked Mr Latham what his position was on the United States alliance during the leadership contest.
"He indicated to me then that he had a strong commitment to it,” he said.
“(If he hadn’t) I certainly would not have voted for him, and I know a number of others would not have voted for him."
In fact, Mr Latham even held his first press conference as Labor leader in front of an American flag, Mr McClelland said.
"His first press conference as leader he placed himself in front of the American flag rather than the Australian flag to convince the voters of Australia that he was committed to the alliance,” he said.
"He was misleading not only his colleagues but also the Australian public."
McClelland also reveals that several Labor identities are seeking legal advice in the wake of Latham’s claims. Legal issues are flying everywhere:
Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd is reviewing its costly agreement with Mark Latham’s publisher after a day of recriminations about who broke exclusive access deals.
Mr Latham’s publisher, Louise Adler, who negotiated the reputed $125,000 deal with News to promote his diaries, yesterday criticised ABC management for sparking the legal fight over access to Mr Latham.
The ABC’s managing director, Russell Balding, decided to break into normal programming and air Andrew Denton’s Enough Rope on Thursday night because Mr Latham had given an interview to Lateline that day. Anxious to protect its exclusivity, News then won a Supreme Court injunction at 8pm blocking the ABC broadcasts by arguing they breached confidentiality ...
Denton was worried Mr Latham would allow other TV interviews before the program’s scheduled airing on Monday. “In the end the party at fault, ironically, was Mark Latham."
Says The Australian’s editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell:
I’m pleased we were able to disrupt the ABC’s schedule after they welshed on their obligations, and am amazed that yet again the accountant managing director of the corporation has marginalised news and current affairs on behalf of an (Enough Rope’s) outside production company.
Latham is also calling his lawyers:
Mark Latham has threatened legal action against his former wife, a rival author and a publisher over a semi-authorised account of his rise and fall, claiming it had not put his side of the breakdown of his first marriage.
Mr Latham demanded his allegations, some of which were of a sexual nature against his then wife, should have been included in the book Loner: Inside a Labor Tragedy by Bernard Lagan.
In letters from his solicitor, Mr Latham claimed to have been defamed in that book but he has not included those allegations in his own effort, The Latham Diaries.
His former wife, Gabrielle Gwyther, told the Herald yesterday she feared Mr Latham would pursue her through the courts. “He knows no restraint. He can’t stop himself,” she said ...
Mr Latham’s allegations were not included in the Lagan book because Mr Latham could not provide details to support them. Ms Gwyther denied them.
"I can’t believe he would stoop to making such allegations … The thing is, when I met him I was the most sexually inexperienced 22-year-old in the country,” Ms Gwyther said yesterday. “That obviously haunts him."
In light of which, this self-portrait is haunting indeed:
Control yourself, Mark! One bizarre byproduct of the Latham debacle is that the Age’s Michelle Grattan has been moved to satire:
Dear DIARY,
I said to Janine and Mum today, as we sat round the barbie: isn’t it great to light a REAL fire? To burn Kim, maim every caucus sewer rat in sight, and scorch the mealy-mouthed media mice. This time last year it was so hard to pretend. That I believed in the Labor Party, in the US alliance, in my front bench. That I could be trusted with those matches on the Lodge mantlepiece. Good God, I had to be civil. Me swearing off crudity’s like a heroin addict going cold turkey. Only you, dear diary, knew my pain. What comfort you gave me.
Now I can be myself. I can yell (as I did the other day) from my veranda at a photographer, “You’re a kiddy fiddler - leave the street”. I can claim Senator Stephen Conroy contributed to my mate’s suicide. I can say the Bomber’s not good enough to clean Parliament House toilets. (Well, actually, Mum - once a cleaner herself - was not too happy about the slur on the workers. I don’t care. I’ll never see a Parliament House cleaner again. And who knows - they might have been spreading rumours, too.)
Diary, I feel great. At least ... I think I do.
That’s actually pretty good. Also funny—Laborite recollections of policy-making during Latham’s campaign:
Frontbencher Stephen Smith, drafted into the campaign’s second week, found a “mad scramble” to complete Labor’s tax policy, the day before it was to be unveiled. “Mate, this is a bit of a shambles,” he said to Senate leader John Faulkner. “You haven’t seen anything yet,” Faulkner laughed.
Could have been our government. Scary. Michael Gawenda is annoyed about John Howard’s good luck:
Kevin Rudd came to New York to press his party’s view that Australia had to remain committed to the UN, that the UN remained the best hope for peaceful resolution of potential conflicts after the Cold War.
Instead he had to deal with Mark Latham’s revenge on him for sins he did not commit. Will John Howard’s luck never run out?
Not so long as Labor appoints the likes of Latham as leader, and the ALP keeps seeking celeb candidates. Canberra press gallery reporter Phillip Coorey writes that Latham’s luck has run for years:
Not that we needed to hear rumours about Latham because we saw him as a backbencher, as a boorish and ugly drunk. His swaggering menace was best avoided should he be encountered in the pub on Wednesday nights ...
Latham decries the cesspit of politics and its smutty culture yet did more to drag it into the gutter with his mouth than any of his contemporaries.
He breaks confidences and snitches on people’s personal lives, knowing, but not caring, they will be caused severe embarrassment and even the loss of their jobs.
Yet he rails against those who he believes did the same to him.
He asked us to make him prime minister and now tells us he never really wanted it.
The only thing missing from Latham’s explosion is him claiming the CIA has planted a chip in his head and is reading his thoughts.
We don’t need a CIA device; Latham’s thoughts are offered direct from the man himself:
Mr Latham, who takes exception to rumours about his own sex life, also comments in crude terms on the antics of former MP Ross Cameron.
"Ross Cameron, the brilliant but creepy Liberal member for Parramatta, has talked me into participating in his youth leadership forum in Canberra. I rather suspect it’s a front for mobilising Christian soldiers, plus some quality box for Ross."
Charming. Utterly charming. Final word to ex-Latham supporter Chris Sheil, who is rightly disgusted:
Even if the diaries have been produced in full, as written contemporaneously, was this with a contract for commercial publication from the outset? If so, does this publication deserve the title of ‘diary’ in any traditional sense? Otherwise it is a deliberately plotted book on current politics, written contemporaneously but calculatingly, by a guy cashing out every implicit trust given in his life.
Imagine breaking every trust you’d ever made in your entire life. That’s Latham’s world.