Latham: Bombshell or Dud Round?

When Mark Latham was leader of the Labor Party, I was of the view that here was a man to tell it like it is and to cut through John Howard’s political gibbering and to bring down the Liberal government, which quite frankly has done more to deteriorate this country than any other event since the Second World War.  I was looking at Latham as a means to an end to rid us of the xenophobia and down and out religious persecution of those of non-Anglo-Saxon Christian faith.  In my view, I could live with the wheeling and dealing of tax issues and health and social security as long as Australia was maintained as a country with people of good will and positive outlook on life that was multi-cultural and accepting of others.  Now we are country of bigots, racists and religious zealots who see themselves as modern day religious crusaders who seek to deliver the people of the Middle East to Democratic Christianity.

In Latham I saw a man who would deal with issues on their merits and would see the end of the political manoeuvring that Howard exploits to gain popularity such as the Tampa incident or the exploitation of the word “Terrorism” as a justification of anything and everything.

Now a mere 10 months on, Latham is a shell of a man who is bitter, twisted and out for some sort of revenge against people from within his own party.  Sure he takes swipes at Howard and Costello, but the surprising thing is how he has pretty much decimated the persona of Kim Beazley (who I personally don’t think is a strong leader anyway) and hence potentially struck a mortal blow to the Labor Party in their ability to win the next election.

The Liberal Party will be dining out for months on Latham’s comments and book extracts and will bluster their way around the Parliament so as to avoid any real meaningful debate whilst pushing through their Right Wing policies through securely held Senate.  We now have no contest in the Senate due to their overwhelming balance of power (Barnaby Joyce’s conscious aside) and now in the House of Reps, we will see political debate pushed aside in favour of rhetoric about Latham, Beazley and the demise of the Labor Party.

Mark Latham has therefore gone from being the potential winner in the fight against Howard’s conservative views to potentially handing Costello a smooth transition after the next election and hence potentially 2 more terms post the next election to the Liberal Party.

Discuss this and other issues on the Lime Kettles Forum.