The Latham Diaries - a review

People on my side of politics should be a little hesistant in attacking The Latham Diaries and dismissing its contents as pure venom and spite. Sure, there is enough tripe to fill three political careers, but this just serves to obscure the real message about the ALP, the Liberal Party and Australian politics as a whole.

Latham's diary takes us on an interesting, if unreliable, journey through one of the most depressing era's of Australian politics, that of the Howard Coalition Government, our current era, the one that makes me too sad to give national politics a real go. A genuinely good read (certainly better than his other efforts), it exposes failures in policy development, leadership, parliamentary representation and Australian democracy as a whole.

I could quote from it all day but that would be as useless as the Telegraph's exclusive extracts - it would merely highlight my priorities in the book (which are almost all concerned with the rorting by the NSW Head Office) rather than the book as a whole.

I might do that later this week!

The diaries look like they might have benefited from some serious editing with 20/20 hindsight. Obviously only entries that he thought relevant in March of 2005 are included and even then we cannot believe that they are included verbatim. The selective extracts make Latham appear knowledgable before his time (for example in 1996 he 'accurately' predicted the leadership of Crean after two failed Beazley elections), and also as a martyr for the cause of good policy in a caucus of incompetents.

The Liberals (Tories) get a good working over but the most venomous attacks are saved for his former colleagues, the people to whom Latham feels a particular hatred, as they are the ones who have let him down (in his victim mentality).

The greatest weakness of the book, and the most effective defence for everyone smeared inside its pages, is its glaring failure to attribute any blame to Latham for the events it recounts.

• How can Latham criticise smear attacks after his blasting of Abbott, et al?

• How can Latham attack those who destabilised his leadership given his own behaviour on Labor's backbench?

• How can Latham bemoan the control of machine men in the Labor Party when he accepted the benefits of cronyism and the factional system his entire career?

These questions cannot be answered in reading the Latham Diaries, and it is this failure that will see the baby thrown out with the bathwater as Labor continues on a nepotistic and insular journey away from its roots.