We’re way past making excuses for one-time Labor wunderkind Mark Latham, self-styled as the ultimate outsider in Australian politics. He’s not even remotely a lovable rogue. Channelling Monty Python, he’s far beyond just being a very naughty boy. He’s not misunderstood, and nor does he “make some good points”. Rather, he’s bad to the political bone.
Calculatingly exploiting the “coward’s castle” tool of parliamentary privilege. Grossly offending people and whole communities on a deliberate mission to shock. That is, in cynical reality, what you have to do these days to win attention on the political extremes, when the shock-factor benchmark is ratcheted up almost daily by US president and global loony-in-chief Donald Trump.
Latham operates in constant danger of censure, but evicting him is another matter. Barring extreme parliamentary intervention, bankruptcy or death, the country’s stuck with the ultra-discordant NSW politician until 2031 at least. That’s democratically sick-making, obviously, given his prodigious offending. But that’s a downside of eight-year terms for NSW upper house members, with a base salary of nearly $220,000 a year plus more than $45,000 in allowances.
Hot under the collar
Elected in 2023 as part of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party, he’s since split with it, apparently too hot to handle even for the Queensland conservative firebrand. He’d earlier abandoned a flirtation with the fringe Liberal Democrats. He’s been expelled from Labor for life.
Now an independent, his own man, Latham is unlikely to be going anywhere any time soon. Especially when he’s earning that kind of coin while facing court-imposed legal bills totalling nearly $1 million, potentially more, after losing a defamation action brought by NSW independent Alex Greenwich over alleged homophobic vilification on social media.
With further legal action still underway, including a Latham appeal, it’s been a torrid time and arguably one of the biggest slip-ups ever for a political veteran who has waxed lyrical about how “parliamentary privilege is a beautiful thing”. Usually he reserves his worst for inside the legally protective confines of parliamentary sittings, but this time his canny discipline failed him, and that ill-discipline could cost him dearly.
If he can’t pay up, bankruptcy would mean expulsion from parliament. Yet for now he remains richly remunerated for being an opinionated and frequently vulgar libertarian loudmouth. So can we at least make him vaguely useful?
His own worst enemy
How about adopting him as a contrarian political anti-hero? A living cautionary tale, with political and personal chapters still being written, who role-models the collective perils of ego, hubris and excessive ideological fervour. With an illiberal dash of narcissism, sheer bloody-mindedness and showman mad-bugger thrown in (speaking iin the colloquial sense, of course).
Great and even merely good politicians grow in the job, serving, answering the call to leadership, and evolving to statesperson status in the afterglow. Latham, however, has been politically rotting from the head down for more than two decades.
A celebrated quote from the mid-20th century, attributed to the German-French polymath philosopher Albert Schweitzer, comes to mind: “The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.” What about what dies inside a living, walking and constantly talking politician? Paraphrased for politics and fitted to Latham, much has withered on his career vine, casting him as a self-destructive tragic figure for our times. One that others can perhaps learn from?
Smart mouth
It’s never been a case of being stupid for this rough-and-ready boyo from Green Hills in the battlers’ territory of Sydney’s south-west. He’s written several books, and had several written about him. Rising from socio-economic disadvantage, his bio says he was dux of his selective school, Hurlestone Agricultural High, in 1978, and gained an economics degree with honours from Sydney University in 1982, winning the J.K. Galbraith Prize for political economy in 1980.
His card was marked Labor future star early on. His intellect was abundantly clear, and his ideology stayed close enough to the party line, though he distanced himself from its trade union roots and attached himself to more neoliberal economics, with echoes still three decades later:
“The debate should not be about public versus private ownership but about the huge differences in productivity between competitive and monopoly markets.”
Latham, ambitious but maverick too from early on, was mentored for politics by no less a figure than Labor great Gough Whitlam, whose political biography he helped research and write. He was elected in 1994 to represent the former PM’s federal seat of Werriwa, succeeding another Labor luminary, John Kerin. He was a reforming Labor mayor of Liverpool at age 30, in 1990; federal Labor parliamentary leader at 42, in 2003. Such promise.
Ironically, it can be argued that Latham isn’t even the most scandalous political player of his era. Sure there are unpleasant “sexism” and inappropriate conduct allegations, and some messy former marriage and other relationships stuff. But he hasn’t been convicted of rape, like fellow independent NSW state politician and former Liberal Party rising star Gareth Ward, the newly jailed MP for Kiama, who was forced from the parliament last Friday. Nor has Latham murdered any political rivals. Former western Sydney Labor fellow traveller Phuong Ngo, was imprisoned for life without parole in 2001 over masterminding the contract killing of state MP for Cabramatta John Newman in 1994.
Mark his words
Latham’s offending, in the broad sense of the word, is overwhelmingly against sense and sensibility, common decency, political loyalty, and many notions of a socially progressive and culturally tolerant society. Although he did singlehandedly assassinate an opportunity for Labor to win back power in 2004 when, as a larrikin leader of the then opposition, blew up its chances by bully-boy shaking incumbent Liberal PM John Howard’s hand. A vibe of violence has always been a part of his complex make-up.
Things spiralled downhill from there and he left federal parliament in 2005. These days he’s mainly just a vile perennial pest who resolutely finds new ways to draw attention to himself, propping up his angry fringe electoral base, and self-massaging a world-class case of relevance deprivation syndrome.
It’s all about character ( or lack of.)
Was the famous hand shake the instigated response of Howard?I always believe it was as Howard said, he was prepared.
So sad to see such a wasted life that was gifted in so many ways with brain power and opportunities. Unfortunately his emotional IQ was and is very low, maybe stemming from a rough childhood, and completely unacceptable attitudes towards women and other human beings. Violence and power abuse is not the mark of a great man. The sad part of this is that he could have been a great man.
“Although he did singlehandedly assassinate an opportunity for Labor to win back power in 2004” … how did we get it so wrong?
Plenty of people – including those with a leftish bent – will now declare they saw the writing on the wall before the ‘handshake’ but in 2003 a good many of us believed him to be a breath of fresh air – highly intellectual and progressive.
Something must have really gone wrong with the wiring post 2004 election.
I know I didn’t help but my god we dodged a bullet.
Indeed we did, Comrade.
….and don’t forget the attack on the taxi driver resulting in driver’s broken arm
Maybe mine will be the only comment as this man is not worth commenting on. Please read my comment below…
Latham is a wasted talent in the NSW Parliament,he’d get more continuous exposure as a member of the barking mad team of Sky in the Dark.He’d readily slime into that zoo,with an already receptive audience ( all 137 of them).
Anyone got Lachie’s number? There’s bound to be a commission in it.
Failing that, we could always crowd fund him as a permanent ‘envoy’ to Easter Island.
What have the statues on Easter Island ever done to deserve such a fate?
Some people might say he bears a remarkable resemblance to the Aku Aku.
What have Easter Islanders done to deserve Latham?
Wasn’t he judged to far out in the nut job galaxy to be a “star” at Sky no News?
There was an interview Latham did shortly after his election loss to Howard, with Matthew Abraham on ABC Local Radio in Adelaide, ostensibly to promote a book Latham had authored.
To call it an interview actually, would be overly kind. It was more like a sewer wrestle, dripping with malice and spite. Latham had no interest in talking up the book or making any comment on relevant political issues. He just went all out to sledge Abraham (and in all fairness, Abraham was happy to dive into the cesspit with him). If the audience felt anything like I did afterwards, thousands of people across South Australia would have been taking showers at the same time!
I knew he was gone then. The only surprise though was seeing how far Latham has fallen since then. What a waste. What a farce!
Korsakoffs Syndrome is never pretty.
So sad. so bad. How and why do we need to tolerate the likes of Latham
and Ward as our representatives.. Latham and his like scare me (I’m female). Decent men and women please speak up; while we do nothing the likes of Latham and Trump thrive.
Thank you for an excellent, truthful, balanced article. I wonder if Latham will read it and reflect. Forlorn hope.
Good evening.
Where are the comments? I liked them almost as much as the articles.
Latham story from nearly 50 years ago: I turned down a job with Whitlam in 1978 as his research assistant. Personal reasons. Another bloke took the job on, then Latham arrived few years two later. I had a phone call from Latham around that time asking me about a detail in Labor records in the National Library (which I had ploughed through as part of my PhD research). He needed the detail to finish off his Hons thesis. ‘The bastards (someone in the party) have restricted access to the records since you saw them. Whitlam said to call you.’ I helped Latham to the best of my recollection and the call ended. He sounded angry even down that old-fashioned steam phone line. Never met him face to face but admired his books From the Suburbs (2003) and (less so) Civilising Global Capital (1998, jargon-ridden). Great shame that he lost his way.
It’s rather glib, not all the helpful and certainly no excuse, but you’ve honestly got to worry about some kind of genuine and serious mental illness.
I don’t think its sad or a waste or a great shame or shocking or particularly perplexing. Regardless of the biological and environmental factors at play, most individuals have the capacity for free will and moral decision-making. Exceptions are rare. So Latham most likely just chooses to be an obnoxious bully boy – he certainly seems to enjoy it. There is a possibility that his is a case of antisocial personality disorder, in which case it is probably untreatable since treatment would require the patient’s consent.
I am a bit disappointed by the usage of the term loser, I can’t possibly find it appropriate, not because of the person it refers to in this article (I am certainly not a fan) but by the implications behind that usage now so over used. Do all the people using it, regardless of how interesting they are, consider themselves / are supposed to be considered by “us” as winners ? If yes, can anyone explain clearly but simply what the whole thing really means ?
Mark Latham cannot forgive Australia for not making him Prime Minister. This is funny because it was his character flaws which prevented that occurring. He is just another malignant narcissist.