Thank God Mark Latham will never be the Prime Minister of this country. The most worrying thing though is that the ALP actually selected Latham as the individual with the greatest ability to lead the party at all.

A very understated revelation to come out of the whole saga was actually eluded to by Kevin Rudd. Basically Rudd chastised Latham for biting the hand that had fed him and stated that, "It is doubtful that Mark has ever held a job that was not in some way organised by or related to the ALP." How can a Prime Ministerial candidate in this country not have held a job that is not politically related? It is a disgrace and sad indictment on Australian politics.

It appears Mr Latham that you did your fair share of 'arse licking' too!

Latham has revealed nothing at all about the ALP.

The role of the unions and factions in pre selection is old news - the degree of control they have on Policy is also old news.

People think the ALP is characterised by the likes of Whitlam, Hawke and to a lesser extent Jones and guys like Race Matthews; they were an abberration, a passing blip on the political radar. Latham has merely picked the scab off an old wound we all knew was there. The ALP is as self-possesed as it ever was - out dated and out positioned at most every turn. It might be cliched but the ALP has been apart from two rbief period in Government been a policy free zone.

Lathams assesment is essentially correct but it aint no Eureka moment. What will happen in the wake of his comments is precisely nothing for the very reason Latham spat the dummy;- the party is dominated by career unionists or politicians. Graham Richardson was once a stand out as a careerist - he could have done exactly the same within the Liberal Party as he did with and for Labour - for him it was quest; for most of them it is the quest, the fight - principles are things of convenience in order to secure power. They are like skilled debaters - the topic is secondary - it is the arguement and victory that counts.

The dominance of the "me too" policy initiatives of Labour are reflective of this. The chances of the ALP going down in a blaze of policy initiative glory in 2007 is very remote. They no longer hold to any principles other than that of pursuing populist themes in an attempt to regain power.

Latham climbed the ladder of political opportunity and realizing there was really nothing at the top, just fell over the other side. The ALP cat has just coughed up another fur ball - once the heaving is over it will go back in its own self satisfied way to lick its nuts once again.

Rebecca

Thank you. I always enjoy your articles.

wre's post sums it up for me. Thanks mate.

Cheers
Kay

Of course Latham is right about the ALP. He may have disastrously misjudged the Australian people and their views, but he always had his despised “party machine” in his back pocket.

I mean here’s a rather unimpressive fellow who reverse-adopted Gough Whitlam as his mentor, rose to party leadership right under the nose of the Beazley-backing media, inflicted the most humiliating electoral defeat on Labor in the party’s recent history, vanished completely after the weather warmed up in November, silently watched the tsunami play across everyone’s TV screen and HAD TO RESIGN TO GET OUT!

That’s right, folks. The most unsuccessful leftist political leader this country has seen in ages had to resign to extricate himself from the terrible demands of politics. His demoralised colleagues could not muster the influence to oust him even though 1) he wanted to go and 2) he was an utter failure.

Latham should be given the permanent chair of ALP studies at Melbourne, Sydney and the Australian National Universities. He knows Labor. In fact, that’s about all he knows

I don't claim to be prescient but I knew this was coming. Philip Adams has used his column to keep us informed about the doings in the ALP. He hinted that the result of rejecting the enormous talents of PJ Keating would see Australia enter a condign anomie.

Our 'reward' was Mr Latham, a B grade leader of the ALP. All those days of sitting on Gough Whitlam's knee listening to the garrulous master talk about his favourite subject - himself. At last it was Mr Latham's turn. And it seems like only yesterday that Mr Latham, with young Oliver and Gough in tow, stood before the incestuous Canberra media circus and told us all how mighty the ALP was and how proud he was to be its leader. At that press conference Mr Latham had managed to subdue those atavisms which had gained him a bit of notoriety. He said the ALP under his stewardship would possess a certain cachet lacking in the other political parties. Nothing or no one prepared him for a pratfall.

Now he wants to break the ALP 'omerta' and talk about an ALP front bench that resembles a police line-up. He wants us to know that politics is full of perfidious schemers. The sad part is that he has wasted about 10 - 12 years finding this out. Had he phoned me I could have told him that Australian politicians are vile, inept, dysfunctional types who spend most of their time planning raids on the public purse.

I don't feel sorry for Mr Latham or the spivs, the conmen, the inept, the greedy, perfidious types who are loosely described as politicians.

sage,what a depressing picture.They all can't be that bad.What about John Button.Now he was a good bloke.Can we ask for nominations for fine upstanding current pollies?

They say politicans just reflect our society's values and perhaps we all should do some introspection.

Wre “Thank God Mark Latham will never be the Prime Minister of this country. The most worrying thing though is that the ALP actually selected Latham as the individual with the greatest ability to lead the party at all.”

Wholly concur

Sneekeepete “Latham has revealed nothing at all about the ALP.”

By electing Latham to leadership – it reveals the labor party is, as well as being the tool of union factions, bereft of ethics, credibility, foresight or any other quality of a redeeming nature.

Sage – yeah – I heard one TV commentator suggest Latham might have been the product of an overprotective mother who, when the infant Mark did something wrong, she would blame it on something else and thus for all the ills which befell her precious prodgeny, the chair or the cat or whatever was to blame. Hence LAtham has adopted the idea that all the “bad things” are to be blamed on others and only “good things” attribute to himself.

Arjay, Button did seem to have some character.
However, he did bring us the “Button Plan” for the motor industry which forced the closure of Nissan manufacturing in Australia as well as a shot-gun marriage of inconvenience between Toyota and Holden (and which had some strange one off financial benefits for Toyota at the expense of Holden).

Ummm, its not only the Labor Party that needs a Fire Hose used on it.

The Liberal Party is long, long overdue for the same treatment!

Mr Latham is not the only person with tales to tell, all the latest sudden shock - its been happening for many years. J Howard is heavily involved too.

Sadly, the people who can genuinely contribute as a Member of Parliament in the main are not attracted to this life,because of the current state of politics State & Federal, they are capable of earning a far greater income.

Agreed, in the main politics for some 25+ years has attracted the dysfunctional in our society, and we pay the price for it.

The Journalists in this Country also need to self-examine themselves and their role in the political world in Australia.

Arjay, Button is just as bad as the rest. While Button was beavering away in his office, 2 doors down was his contemporary Colston who had discovered the 'trough'. In 1983 Colston was carpeted for conducting joy flights for himself and an unauthorised person. Even the federal police investigated Colston for irregularities. The investigation went nowhere because it is a bad career move to be too harsh on an MP. Did Button sponsor an ALP rule to expel any member who abuses the trust of the people? No.

Button's inaction and the inaction of his colleagues condemns the lot of them for allowing anyone to raid the public purse while Mrs Smith can't get a hip replacement operation due to lack of hospital funding.

I am tired of seeing our most valuable idealogical contributions being reduced to party politics.

I see "silo cultures" not just in the departments of Immigration and Health, I see it in all of us while we reduce ourselves to the smutterings of "who is dirt and who is not".

What about some balance. A view that may focus through the person, and back to issues the they stood for.... ie: social capital, building capacity at local level, (say let's try some healthy forms of ) community engagement?

Australia, I believe needs to see the value in people and begin discussion that neutralises the slagging. We seem to have trouble promoting anyones good points.

For example, there are many people I think are too narrow, too old fashioned, too simple, to fundementalist, to racist, to religious, too apathetic, to radical, to mainstream ... whatever.... but let's not totally strip the person. Let's do more to open the kind of communicaton that can discuss issues. We are people, we need social change and that change must come from us.

I see Lathan's loss as a loss to younger generations. Because we (Australians) shoot people down, we also shoot their valuable contributions, the parts that are resourceful and it takes years to get some of these things back on the local agenda.

We are all clumsy, non-perfect. Lathams arguement is with his party, it is also a window to what many of us know to be true in government. I don't see his personal issues as my issues, I give him the right to "speak" any way he can. As I do others, who have grievances. Without this right we are all oppressed.

Let's not contribute yet more "moral chaos", (play two-up merely to a bully side of this political culture)

I am deeply concerned about what we are about to leave behind, in this decade of "mateship" for "fair-go" Australia!

ie: If Latham was wrong about the US_A, then what does that say about Howard and, where does that leave us?

Latham has tapped into existing discontent with 2 party adversial politics but offers no way forward.

Perhaps Rebecca has some ideas?

If Labor is is suffering from a crisis in belief then it can only blame itself and well before Latham and his Frankenstienish rise to leadership came along, departed and is now capitalising through publication on his own failure to understand this internal party bleeding from the outset.

Bring on a new innovative Left coalition says me. Labor is now just a dead carcus floating in a pool of its own political bloodletting.

Rainer,the bulk of the pop has moved away from the ideals of the left.What are you proposing,more tax more socialism? Where are you going to find the votes?

Did you hear the one about the Politician who was rushed to hospital in serious shock after awaking from slumber?

Yes he dreamt that he was spending his own money.

What are the qualifications for entering parliament? Are there Degrees in Economics plus experience in different areas such as Foreign Affairs, Immigration, etc, etc.
Or is it knife in the back climbing to the top, bullying unionism, mateship, 'conga lines', Old Boys from the right schools?
What makes a polititian?

I don't know if you need any qualifications but I do know one thing. Upon entering parliament an MP sends all his suits to the tailor to have all pockets removed. There is no need for a politician to carry a wallet 'cause he has access to the taxpayers' cheque book.

I would like to add a little more to what I was saying about the cupidity of our politicians. We have a dob-in-a-cheat CentreLink phone number where members of the public are invited to snitch on a person getting welfare and working when they aren't supposed to. We have Operation Noah which the police run so that members of the public can dob in a drug dealer. We have various other opportunities of dobbing in those who cheat the system. How 'bout a dob-in-a-politician phone number. Someone could position themselves at the Qantas departure lounge in Sydney and observe the outward bound pollies going on their fact-finding-missions. How many 'facts' remain hidden in Paris, Rome, Vienna etc. Hell, you could fit all those countries into Tasmania so there can't be much more to find out over there.

Mark Latham will always be remembered with affection by me because of his success in reducing the benefits from parliamentary superannuation.

The best way to reduce the number of careerist politicians is to cut the salary and benefits. A political career should be something that people do after they have retired from a normal job or made their fortune in other ways (such as Malcolm Turnbull). To allow for younger aspirants a salary could be provided, but I can see no reason that it would need to exceed the dole. Superannuation would pay benefits at the same level.

Such action would require strengthened provisions against corruption. This could best be done by a parliamentary commission (staffed by members on the opposite side), who would ensure that for the rest of their life politicians would not enjoy a better lifestyle than they had before entering parliament.

I find the Latham bashing quite funny, he did have the Liberal Party on the run for a while, sure he shot from the hip, but whose to say that the more considered deliberations of our PM and his sidekicks have been any better? The current crowd have made just as many stuff ups, but haven't been able to do anything that has stuffed the economy up. If inflation spiked and the RBA lifted rates and we started getting a slowdown...there's stuff all the Government can do, they inherited an improving situation and now via their IR agenda are trying to impose their pro-business ideology on Australia. It's worth remembering that our PM was treasurer at a time when the Australian economy was on the skids, go check the history books to see how the ALP came in to turn things around. The current crowd are managers for good times...

I was looking forward to Allan Ramsies editorial on the matter, considering his editorial content, before the last election, and after, Latham the Messiah hay, wonder what God they worship, must be Frightening. Slight miss judgment in Character, hmmmmmm, I wonder if Alan is still on Mark's Christmas card list. Sorry Agnostic card list. Embarrassing

Dare I say it-I think a few people have gone a little over the top in their condemnation of politicians. The vast proportion of them are extremely talented individuals who have taken massive pay cuts to be MPs. For example Costello would have been on 500k plus a year as a commercial litigator. The same goes for Gillard and Howard. Abbott was a Rhodes Scholar. Rudd a highly regarded diplomat. The list goes on.

I can't help but feel that Latham was a symptom of his party rather than Australian politics. We all know the political landscape in this country has rather large blemishes-unfliching partisanship, lack of youth, disinterested public. However the ALP's problems are compounded by much more. The right people are held back by faction not promoted on merit. The party is radically split down the middle causing a complete loss of direction. And to top it all off its traditional working class base has been neglected.

The ALP has to split in two. One half should discuss a coalition with the greens. The other half should snap to it and begin building a viable centre option with the democrats. Perhaps if the politicians know what they are working towards the public may have a chance of figuring it out too.