Crossposted
at
wsacaucus.org
.
It has been a few weeks now since the publication of
The Latham Diaries
, and most of the interesting and obvious questions have been answered. Over at
Larvatus Prodeo
, Chris Sheil has taken an
interesting
few
looks
at the content of the diaries, wondering just how much them can really be considered contemporaneous. Kim from LP
has also posted
on the diaries. I have enjoyed
Armagnac's
musings
on the
stark
differences
between what the media has reported and what Latham's political diaries actually contain, and was surprised when he stopped reading out of disgust. Other interesting observations have been made by
Ari
of
Ari On The Web
and
Bryan
from
OzPolitics
, amongst many others. It has been revealing to gauge the wide range of people's reactions. Some wonder seriously if Latham has gone mad, labelling him a modern day Santamaria. Others suggest that Latham has revealed some horrible truths about Labor that simply
can not
be addressed, and spell certain doom for the party. I think both views are extreme and an exaggeration of the truth.
The diaries are, well, diaries. Most of the entries are thumbnail sketches of moments in time, captured hastily and twisted irrevocably in their passage through Latham's psyche. They are often wildly emotional, often childish, and often abusive in a high school playground sort of way. Of course, that's typically the way diaries are. I actually read
The Latham Diaries
in conjunction with Marilyn Dodkin's book
Bob Carr: The Reluctant Leader
, and found very telling similarities in the way both men wrote in their diaries. Carr and Latham also exhibited similarities in their psychological approach to the leadership role. Both often thought of quitting. Both were at their core quite egotistical, and unfairly put down others. Both genuinely wanted to make a difference in their own unique way. In the end, one resigned on something of a high, on his own terms. The other resigned in controversy, and transformed frighteningly fast from a heroic tyro into a lecherous political hermit.
My thoughts on Latham's thoughts over the fold.
As Robert Manne writes in his somewhat unremarkable summary of the diaries in the October edition of
The Monthly
, Latham's decision to broadcast the secrets of the "political club" to the world had an instant, stultifying effect. Latham was attacked mercilessly from all fronts. Finally, an issue emerged which right and left could agree on. He had lost it. He was pissing all over the environment in which others were trying to forge noble careers for themselves.
The content of the diaries is something like a comic-book adaptation of political reality, emphasising strange events and overlooking ordinary ones. If there was a political version of
Womans Weekly
magazine available in your local supermarket aisle, it would read a lot like the diary entries in
The Latham Diaries
. Entertaining? Yes. Insightful? Perhaps, if your preferred form of "insight" is gutter talk of the "he said, she said" variety.
As a result, I am not overly concerned with the diary entries themselves for the purposes of collecting my thoughts on what it all means. What I am interested in, in simple terms, is why Latham thinks what he does, why he chose the course he did in publishing these diaries, and whether or not his views are correct or incorrect. The single part of the
The Latham Diaries
that contains the answers to these questions in any sort of coherent, relatively considered form is Latham's lengthy 22 page introduction to the book, written in May this year.
From the very outset, Latham tries to placate the reader with respect to the often vicious and unfair comments contained within the diary entries.
The Latham Diaries
, the author advises, is an "uncut commentary" (p.1), and a "very raw document" (p.2). The two central reasons offered by Latham in regards to his decision to publish the diaries are essentially vendettas against two key groups: Latham's colleagues within the Federal ALP caucus, and his enemies within the media. With respect to his ALP colleagues, Latham asserts that the diaries represent his "right of response" to the purported scuttlebutt that was circulated to undermine him during his leadership tenure (p.3). It is unclear as to why Latham felt it was necessary to exercise his rebuttal in this form. One wonders if the man is simply too burnt out and wounded after his time in politics to prepare a considered criticism for publication. Instead he took the quick and easy path, caring not for the implications of what he was doing, which are arguably legally defamatory in some cases. In attacking the media for only publishing half the story of political life, Latham has hypocritically done exactly the same thing, seeking no explanation or clarification from people before cutting them down and rejecting them completely.
One of the core criticisms levelled at Latham by political observers is that he has failed or at least been very reluctant to accept responsibility for his defeat at the 2004 federal election. The closest Latham comes to taking responsibility for his share of the blame is admitting that some decisions he made reflect poorly on him, "graciously" admitting that his parliamentary career was by conventional measures unsuccessful (p.4). Unfortunately, this rather shallow admission of culpability just doesn't wash, at least with me. Latham still sticks by his guns with regards to the "troops home by Christmas" decision, a decision almost universally labelled a poor one by anyone with a modicum of political sense. He has since suggested junking the U.S. alliance, a reaction that is amazingly foolish and extreme, even for him. As a policy, junking the alliance is a solid lead weight, politically and strategically. An election fought on such a policy would lead to a one-party Liberal Party state. I might not agree with the Bush Administration's foreign policy in the slightest, but the U.S. alliance will likely endure whatever mediocre statesmen Australia and the U.S. throw up as leader.
The remainder of the introduction to
The Latham Diaries
is a veritable festival of spleen venting on three topics; ALP machine politics, the sick state of society, and the collision between political life and family life. The first of these topics is probably the nearest to my heart, being an ALP member. The two key descriptive words Latham uses to describe caucus culture are "brutal" and "dysfunctional", borrowed from former ACTU President Jennie George (pp.5-6). The blame for Labor machine politics is laid at the feet of the union movement, for whom Latham clearly has little respect:
This is the irony of a so-called labour-based party. Inside the ALP, the trade unions do not operate as a voice for workers interests and representation. They function as part of the factional system, providing numbers, resources and patronage for the dominant grouping in each state. (pp.6-7)It is a skewed perspective, but only the most one-eyed unionist would deny it some credence. The unions operate in an oligarchic fashion within the ALP, and are to a considerable extent unrepresentative of the workforce at large. The relationship that remains today between the union movement is romantically symbolic, but also somewhat anachronistic. How can a conference where 50% of delegates are drawn from organisations representing considerably less than 50% of the workforce be democratic? Of course, Latham realises the vitriol in his diary entries will only be published at a significant cost to himself. Despite remaining a member of the party, he has severed almost all ties to it. He can't help but try to portray himself as a tragic martyr; an innocent victim of the evils of machine politics:
I believe it would be wrong to remain silent about a political culture that is fundamentally broken. I believe it would be wrong and cowardly not to talk about Labor's problems for the fear of retribution.He is of course correct, but then again, Latham has seemingly never managed to come to terms with the fact that the medium is, in modern political life, the message. By publishing his personal anecdotal thoughts on the party, undirected by any thoughtful post-facto consideration, he has silenced his message before it even left his lips. Other historical examples of this character flaw of Latham's abound. Rather than intelligently criticise Bush's foreign policy, Latham just plain abused him. He wrote a deadset brick of a book ( Civilising Global Capital ), when a punchy essay a tenth of the size would have conveyed the message of the book in a much more useful and effective way. A book on an important topic that nobody reads may as well not have been written. There is an obvious trend present here. The broadest criticism Latham makes of the ALP is the observation that the party is no longer a party of ordinary people; it has become a professional grouping of political activists and community organisers (p.11). He perceives the problem to be broader than Labor - a fundamental flaw in modern democratic politics in Australia:
Oscar Wilde once said he didn't think socialism would work because it would take up too many evenings. That is how Australians see political participation these days, especially in outer metropolitan areas, where the time pressures of working, commuting and raising a family are severe. (p.11)Two words that Latham repeats frequently throughout the book in describing Labor's problems are "intractable" and "insoluble". I'm not sure if he ever seriously thought that he, as a single person, could remake a rigid and somewhat archaic organisation like the Labor Party easily. To paraphrase Malcolm Fraser, political life was not meant to be easy. Organisations like Labor change over the course of decades or generations, not years. Throwing your hands in the air and giving up hope of ever finding solutions like Latham has is an act of intellectual cowardice. It is an act of someone who recognises that solving Labor's problems is beyond him, but is unwilling to recognise that just because he is unable to solve Labor's problems, that must be impossible to solve. The state of general society is the next target that Latham hurls himself at in the book's introduction, and once again, he misses the target, or at least the point. Do I think that Australia's society is currently "sick"? To a certain degree, yes, but to truly justify that assertion, I'd have to write something of a thesis on the topic. The average person doesn't think that society is sick, for starters, so it may well be a view constructed entirely out of bias. Latham doesn't bother with justification of his views, he just wheels out the usual anti-society rhetoric, backed by hardly any actual facts. Take for example the throwaway line:
Community-based sport, for instance, has been replaced by the coldness of commercial ownership and professionalism. (p.14)That's a bloody big call to make without a smidgeon of evidence, especially for all the Mums and Dads out there who drive their kids to netball or footy matches from week to week. Despite their inherent waywardness, it would be unfair and incorrect to say that all of Latham's observations are off the mark. His criticisms are strongest when he talks about "downward envy" - the phenomenon in Australia whereby the famous "tall poppy syndrome" has seemingly been replaced with a sense of disgust for the struggling. He offers no evidence, once again, but most of us intrinsically would know what Latham is talking about. There's the endless stories in Today Tonight and A Current Affair attacking welfare cheats and petty criminals. Or the squawking of zealots like Alan Jones who may as well be wearing a Liberal badge on his lapel when delivering his rants for morning television . The Paris Hiltons of the world are idolised, purely because they are wealthy. In bygone days they would have been ripped to shreds in the court of public opinion, exposed as the vacuous charlatans they are. The final portion of the introduction to The Latham Diaries re-iterates Latham's disgust with the media, and the manner in which public life today is perhaps more "public" than ever before. In a lot of ways, Latham is correct on this point. There are seemingly no firm barriers dividing the private lives of politicians from their public ones. Politicians need to live their job, literally, their entire being on public display. It almost recalls the spectacle of Big Brother , but with Fairfax and Murdoch journalists interpreting and twisting events through their own biases, instead of the 24x7 cameras. I'm not sure which is worse, but Latham was clearly not made of the stuff necessary to succeed in politics in the long-term. He was too volatile. He was too fragile. His heart was brazenly on his sleeve, and often ruled his mind. One observation in particular from The Latham Diaries has stuck in my head like a thorn since the time I first read it. It has kicked around for a couple of weeks. Re-reading it now I don't think I am any closer to rebutting the painful truth it embodies:
If [people] have no interest or experience in helping their neighbours, why would they want the public sector to help people they have never met? (p.17)Much of the diaries may indeed by delusional, irrelevant, or just plain infantile. In my humble opinion, however, this very simple observation of Latham's neatly frames one of the biggest problems facing social democracy in the 21st century. How do we make everyday people care?
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