He's back
There are few things that political journalists take greater delight in than former party leaders breaking their vows of Trappist public silence and dishing vast quantities of dirt on their former colleagues.
All the better if they left frontline politics under a heavy storm cloud, have been harbouring bitter personal resentment ever since, still have the power to open up fissures within the parties they used to lead, and choose to do so in the midst of an election campaign.
Westminster hacks have long relished the public appearances of a handbag swinging Margaret Thatcher, especially if a) she appears in front of cinema hoardings advertising movies like “The Mummy Returns”; b) drapes her handkerchief over the tail fins of model aircraft bearing the new “world art” branding of an international airline; or c) stands on the steps of a 10 Downing Street in the company of a Labour prime minister.
Evidently, the former Labor leader Mark Latham, who took on John Howard at the last election, has some of that same headline-grabbing allure.
More swinging haymaker than swinging handbag, Mr Latham has punched his way onto the front page of the Australian Financial Review with his caustic observation that this is “a Seinfeld election, a show about nothing”, and that there is no real difference between the parties.
Arguing that the dominant ethos is “greed not generosity”, he continues: “Many people in the Labor movement are expecting Labor in power to be far more progressive than its stated election promises. I expect a Labor administration to be even more timid, more conservative.”
Mr Latham, whose eponymous diaries published in 2005 featured a daily stream of expletive-ridden consciousness, talks of “the zenith of policy convergence”. That’s a fancy way of describing what countless others have called “the me-too campaign” being waged by Kevin Rudd.
On issues great and small, the present Labor leader stands accused of political plagiarism: massive tax cuts, the Tasmanian pulp mill, the intervention in the Northern Territory, the treatment of Dr Mohamed Haneef.
Clearly, there are major policy differences - the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq and the ratification of the Kyoto protocol on climate change, among them - but many voters view him as a shameless copy-cat.
The oft-heard complaint is that such is his determination not to be “wedged” by John Howard that Kevin Rudd has failed to carve out a distinctive political personality of his own. At times, he has even ventriloquized the prime minister, most notably during the televised debate when he claimed to be an “economic conservative”.
“Howard-lite”; “John Howard, but a younger model”. Mr Rudd has heard all the barbs.
If anything, he probably welcomes them. They amplify his message of risk-free change.
So perhaps he views the contribution of his predecessor in much the same light. Secretly, he might even like to open his next press conference with words that are appealingly derivative: “I knew Mark Latham, I worked with Mark Latham, and, ladies and gentleman, I’m no Mark Latham.”
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It's great to see that this Australian general election has all the drama of the 389 bus ride to Bondi.
On the one hand you have the sad spectacle of watching a rable of spineless twitchers within the Liberal party gleefully deciding who will feast on which of John Howard's bones after the election. On the other side we have the mournful spectacle of an impotent Labor Party willing Rudd to defeat it's arch enemy.
Is watching paint dry that unpleasant or boring compared to this contest, me thinks not!
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To Martin:
You, sir, have obviously never ridden the non-timetabled, phantom 190 routes at 4AM to Palm Beach!
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I think there's a little boy by the name of Mark Latham who is a little jealous but anyway being an Australian living in Australia, this election campaign is about as interesting as watching grass grow. We have one leader trying to convince Australians that he is still fresh while the other is spending a lot of time trying to prove how conservative he is so really there's no alternative at this election.
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I do not agree that the Liberals are spineless. There approach is refreshing from the same old same old.
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Grass! Does it grow in Australia? Where?
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