For Labor It's Once More Unto The Breach

by Steve Lewis - The Australian

It was an intimate dinner with a high price tag. A half-dozen business chiefs had gathered at the Sydney home of investment banker Paul Binstead to meet the Labor wunderkind Mark Latham. The entry price was $10,000 a plate and, along with Latham, NSW Premier Bob Carr had ventured out to Binstead's home on Sydney's leafy north shore.

It was mid-July last year and the ALP fundraising machine was in full swing, trying to shore up the party's bank accounts ahead of the federal poll. But if Binstead expected Latham to be gracious over his generosity, he was to be disappointed.
Jumping out of his commonwealth car, Latham looked over the up-market residence before saying to Binstead: "Who did you have to rip-off to pay for this?" The incident left a sour taste, but for many in the ALP it was typical of Latham's dismissive treatment of business.

Latham was sullen at best, rude at worst when he was guest of honour at party fundraisers. He turned on chief executives with alarming regularity and would often speak for just a few minutes before heading for the door, leaving embarrassed party officials to try to explain away his ungracious behaviour. While this churlish attitude was effectively hushed up by party minders before the October 9 poll, there has been a steady release of anecdotes and vignettes over the past few months. And there is much more to come.

The Latham political sideshow is set to erupt once more into full public glare. Senior Labor figures are bracing themselves for the release by Allen & Unwin of an intimate account of Latham's roller-coaster leadership. Bernard Lagan, the author of The Loner: Inside a Labor Tragedy, managed to get up-close and personal with Latham during his 14-month tenure as the alternative prime minister.

The book is to be released in July and Allen & Unwin is doing its best to puff up what promises to be one of the most salacious political reads of the past decade. "Full of human drama and political intrigue, this is the inside story of the meteoric rise and the tragic fall of the man who was to be Labor's saviour," the publicity says.

Lagan, a former writer with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Bulletin, reached agreement with Latham on writing an insider's account shortly after the latter became Labor leader in December 2003. It's a safe bet Latham will use the Lagan book to air a raft of grievances about his treatment by the party and about aspects of the way the six-week election campaign was handled by the Labor machine.

Insiders who have been co-operating with Lagan expect Latham to jump all over the ALP's national secretariat. And he'll blame his staff, the media, the premiers and others -- much as he did post-election before he so ingloriously exited the political scene.

"He's going to do a big blame-shifting exercise," says one insider who worked intimately with Latham. "[But] it's all fantasy -- Latham lives in his own world," says another senior ALP figure.

According to Labor sources, one of Latham's big complaints in the last weeks of the election campaign was that not enough money was being spent on advertising to combat the Government's interest rate scare campaign. But when he confronted ALP national secretary Tim Gartrell, he was bluntly told that his own poor attitude towards the business community had contributed to a lack of funding.

Heather Ridout, one of the country's most experienced business lobbyists, argues that Latham's unwillingness to develop solid relations with business contributed to his downfall. "He contributed to his own demise by not building a broad enough constituency," says Ridout, chief executive of the Australian Industry Group.

It's a view shared by many who came into close contact with the now reclusive Latham during his time as a senior Labor figure. Latham pretended to wear his working-class roots on his sleeve, but he failed to appreciate the damage he was doing to Labor's broader standing by appearing so anti-business.

"He had a massive chip on his shoulder ... he just didn't like business," says one party figure who's been forced to mend fences with the big end of town. By comparison, Labor's new leadership team -- including shadow treasurer Wayne Swan and industry spokesman Stephen Smith -- are regular visitors to corporate boardrooms. And they are not prone to juvenile abuse.

Lagan's book promises to be an explosive account of the Latham era. The Sydney writer will have provided a valuable service if he can help explain some of the reasons behind Latham's implosion. While the former leader blamed his pancreatitis for his decision to leave politics, his poor health does not excuse or explain his bizarre behaviour from the moment he lost the election to the moment, on January 18, when he so nonchalantly signed off from the political arena.

It will reopen a few wounds - because, after all, there are few political parties more able at turning on their own than the ALP.

Ultimately, though, it will likely be little more than nuisance value for a Labor Party that is gradually rebuilding under Kim Beazley's leadership.