Obligatory apologies for another Latham post. I agree with Tim Dunlop that the story is trivial against other national and world events. I also understand why others would wish to highlight the deficiencies of the mainsteam left of centre party that Latham shows up, or just enjoy the disturbance. That said, the Latham story is exceptional for folks interested in labour history, and the blogosphere tempts speculative thought. For all the colour and adventure and struggles of organised labour in this country, has there been another case of someone awarded the party’s highest trust to so completely betray that trust so quickly? A narrative discontinuity beckons. What are the lessons to be learned from the Latham debacle? What does it mean? Imagining that the blogosphere can walk and chew gum at the same time, below I’m just thinkin’ …
First I want to again allow for the possibility that this book is largely a confection of defeat. To be blunt, John Brogden made physically suicidal gestures after his party recently pulled him down, I allow for the possibility that Mark Latham has committed a form of political suicide on the same poisonous impulse. Both of the boys from NSW were about the same age, both were touted as likely leaders, both have followed their losses with acts of self-destruction, in their own ways. Perhaps we should put both episodes aside as trauma induced, and conclude that Generation X just can’t cut it at the leadership level.
That said, two more points. First, short and sweet, there is a disconcerting continuity betweeen the Latham who comes across in the diaries and the Keating who comes across in Don Watson’s memoir. If Keating’s nickname in ’96 was ‘Captain Whacky’, what would be Latham’s? Captain Bugger-Me?
Second, OK, the Latham decision followed from a breakdown in factional discipline. But what’s behind this? Yes, the whole question dear friends, of Labor and labour and social democracy and the big turn to the right and the backward times we ended up living in and how to cope and how to fight and therefore what do factions mean and all the rest. That caucus collapsed to Latham was perhaps some measure of the strength of the guy’s own self-belief in his destiny to be leader, but it was also a measure of the weakness of alternative organising principles and personalities.
And a third smuggled personal comment. Regardless of the earlier question of the book’s status as a diary, the work is an ethical black hole. The thing amounts to an ambush. Former leaders have a privileged status from which to speak. Natural justice says the many people named, and ok in my view many very good people, should have had an opportunity to see and reply to these charges prior to their publication. I don’t suggest an author must bow to replies by the acccused, for the best approximation of the truth is the object, but to this a fair process is integral. I will read and possibly review the book, but on the excerpts, at this level, I cannot but see it as a comprehensive exercise of political bastardry.
Every child imagines a world where every Noddy spoke sincerely to every Big Ears, which is what makes the ‘piss off Noddy’ joke funny. That someone with Noddy’s naive self-centered view of the world, turned an aggressive, spiteful Noddy, could become Labor’s leader, speaks not of the anointed’s positive qualites, but the alternative’s negatives. Ask not for whom Latham’s bell tolls …
As to “has there been another case of someone awarded the partyÄôs highest trust to so completely betray that trust so quickly?” — Doc Evatt comes to mind. It’s a very different story in lots of ways, but the Labor intellectual with working class sensibility, who (almost) seizes the party’s imagination then crashes and burns is the thread here. Curtin might be the counter example of where it worked…
And, as Paul Strangio points out – a tradition of frustration and dummy spitting from once-inspiring leaders going back to William Lane. Bugger youse, Im going to Paraguay!
Interestingly, he calls the Howards “snobs” in the book; which, on many accounts, is precisely what they are. Im sure there’s more in ther than has yet been focussed on by Limited News.
media and democracy
I interpret this image by Cathy Wilcox as an interesting attempt to connect the public image of Mark Latham the politician to the person:–a homedad in a Sydney suburb who is doing a bit of writing that reflects on his experiences as leader of the fede…
Ex-leaders are often difficult for parties to deal with, perhaps especially in Australia. Hawkie bristled against Gough. Hayden was prickly towards Hawke. Hewson went close to doing a Latham. The tendency of the ex-leader toward know-all wrecker is always there, but I don’t think that Evatt qualifies. His longevity alone as minister and leader defies the idea of betrayal, as Ken implies. OK, on one view the ALP’s troubles during Evatt’s period were due to his personality and eventually his deterioration. In another view, the troubles were due to the Cold War and all the bastardry that created the DLP, and in this version Evatt is merely the scapegoat for the Groupers. Incidentally, I think tomorrow is the anniversary of the Doc’s election as President of the UN.
I’m also wondering if anyone happens to know when Alfred Deakin’s diaries were released? Not during his lifetime, I assume.
Shorter cs: The very idea of a tell-all autobiography is shocking and unprecedented.
Not quite so short cs: The very idea of someone breaking implicit trust with so many people without fair warning in a tell-all-from-one-side-only political diary is shocking, and perhaps unprecedented.
Predictably, Hendo makes the Evatt analogy.
Yeah, I saw that Mark. Wrong, and tortured.
cs, all this personality stuff is important to the players and good fun for fans of blood sport. But this gets closer to the real issue:
I hedge not having read the thing apart from the newspaper extracts, but as someone who served governments of both colours (two Coalition, four Labor) at cabinet level for many years, I can assure you that similar stories could be told of any party, based on gossip and privileging your own and others impressions and so on. Sometimes the rumour mill travels at such speed it becomes oppressive, and folks were known to so resent being buffeted by gossip they would just make up some counter-gossip to send back into the mill. In particular, someone who works in a politician’s office has to be robust enough to withstand all sorts of constant fair and unfair pressures.
Generally, the gossip and impressions and so on are largely ignored by most experienced folks … except in the pub, unwinding, when they often make for fun conversation. Yet the substance of this stuff is rarely taken as disinterested accounts of the truth, only possible or provisional truth, as likely to reflect the predispositions and biases of the teller as the told on. I’m not saying Nurse Kate is necessarily to be disbelieved, only that I wish I had a dollar for every gripe I’ve heard from ex-staffers …
I think one thing that’s significant about the Latho diaries – and the proliferation of rumours and interchanges between pollies, journos and staffers – and socialising together – is the particularly isolated nature of Canberra. People are thrown together in an artificial milieu where they have little social contact outside their workplace and its spillover in parties at Parliament House and bars.
By contrast, in most State parliaments, the majority of (urban) pollies, staffers and journos have normal lives outside work, go home every night (rather than living in rented accomodation in Canberra with other pollies etc) and have other social outlets. Additionally, state press galleries are far smaller.
So Canberra’s isolation magnifies the rumour/leaking/bonking/knifing culture.
Yes, I agree Mark – plus, Latham himself has not worked outside politics as far as I know, making him even more immersed in a rarefied world.
Another point I’ve been mulling on is Latham’s acceptance of gossip. It is intriguing that he seems to be so accepting. From my experience, this is characteristic of people who come to Australia from totalitarian regimes, or at least it was of some Romanians I once knew: they never believed a thing told to them officially, but accepted gossip without question.
This whole episode is a godsend. Catharsis on a stick. The ALP has been given a golden opportunity to take a good long look at themselves here. The bell tolleth in-bloody-deed.
Sure Latham is bitter and uncouth but that doesn’t lessen the residual message and opportunity for reflection that this book offers. The party needs to open itself up and reform.
They can look, for a start, to the Greens for a party built on contemporary lines and employing concepts of consensus and gender balance etc etc.
btw Latham was always a hot head and maverick – he went to the backbench that time in high dudgeon – this is just more of the same. They put him in his leader anyway. I know it was a factional stuff-up but I reckon deep down they needed this to happen. The Latham episode is the ALP’s cry for help/faked suicide.
And despite some of his boorish unreconstructed manners, Latham’s frankness – while admittedly alloyed with self-deception – should not be spurned. This book sounds a bit special.
And from the bits I’ve seen quoted the only person to have emerged unscathed is Bobby Brown! And quite so.
Couldn’t disagree more, wbb, as Chris has said, he’s said nothing that hasn’t been said before – better – and in fact he offers no solutions, as he’s said. He should be spurned, and his attack will make it less not more likely that the ALP will take any heed of concerns that are legitimate.
The ALP should not be more like the Greens. The ALP already has procedures in place for affirmative action. It’s most unlikely that such a complex party with so many interests to juggle could ever operate on consensus, and nor should it – that would produce the stifling of ideas and dissent that Latham complains of.
And the Greens are hardly without their own factional issues – witness the Qld Greens a few years ago.
As I’ve argued repeatedly, this fantasy of a pure politics is self-defeating – because it destroys what’s inherent to politics – vigorous argument.
Whoever wrote that Latho just used the party reform/factionalism thing as a pretext to go on a vitriolic spray is probably right.
Ps – I’m not knocking the Greens by the way.
Any reform of the Labor Party has to take into account its history, culture and traditions, and also its status as a major party.
And I’m resolutely opposed to the one thing Latho did seemingly propose – severing the links of the party with the Unions. It’s always mooted by figures on the extreme Right of the party (as Latho in effect was… if you look at his policy stuff over the years) and it’s only a chimerical sop to some sort of notion of middle class individualism.
Latham certainly does not offer solutions. As he said to Denton, in the couple of minutes I copped during Brownlow ad-breaks, he chucked it in because he could see no way forward for himself. OK that’s him. But what he’s done is offer a shit heap of criticism. This is nutritional stuff, that while reeking like blood and bone, can be worked in to the soil. Let a new spring arrive.
Something about consensus I like is that it makes it much harder to stitch up deals behind the scenes by purely working the numbers. In consensus you need to work upfront and in real-time to win the day. Consensus does not stifle argument at all. In fact it provides the forum for just that. Playing the numbers means that people are often wasting their breath because it’s already been decided the day before.
But yes the ALP cannot be the Greens. Nor should it. It’s a mainstream party rather than a ginger group. But nevertheless Labor is clapped out and needs a lot of attention. Button may have said that two years ago etc etc. But Latham has now said it in a way – even if self-serving – that nobody can ignore. He has got our attention.
Elections are lost not won, obviously. But parties still need to regenerate and stay current over the long-term if they want to win the close ones. If you are going to do some team building a book like Lathams could not be a better starting point.
He’s put everybody’s cards on the table.
Consensus? I know that game. It’s called ‘Who Speaks Longest, And Most, Wins’. In some places they call it ‘herding cats’.
I’m quite fond of 50% +1 as a rule, myself.
I don’t see it, wbb, since most of his criticisms are either so generalised (factions and the machine are terrible) or irrelevant.
Julia Gillard’s initial, very considered reaction, was that it was unfortunate but the quantities of spleen would prevent the real issues from being considered. I think that’s right. But there could be some shock effect on the whole mob by seeing all this garbage brought to light. They keep saying Beazley is a decent bloke and I’m sure that’s true. I don’t see him as the one to lead organisational and cultural change, however. Maybe Gillard when she gets there.
The problem with 50 + 1 is that you often have 49 trying to wreck the show, or at least not fully committed. But true consensus is very hard work. In our culture we don’t value it enough to put the work in.
Finally, I did hear Latham say more or less as an aside that unions were redundant in the modern world. I can tell you that if he’d said that before the election I would have had great difficulty voting for him. I may still have done so because he’s not Howard, but how can you vote for a traitor who has disqualified himself from being part of the Left?
Back to normal btw – Ruddock on Lateline instead of the nightly Latho drip.
On Brian’s point about unions – you’d have thought that the current conjuncture shows that unions are now more than every necessary. But Latho says he doesn’t watch the news – he’s too busy being a home dad. One of those privatised disconnected individualised selfish citizens he’s so critical of in his book.
Mark – I can’t say I really see it myself. In fact the only stuff I’ve seen of his book is the stuff quoted hereabouts. Nonetheless, as Brian says, a nice sharp shock to the system is sometimes the best remedy. ALPers needn’t wory about trying to pull the blinds back down here. The election is aeons away. None of this matters electorally. It’s an opportunity to get into some real soul searching.
All the dirt. It’s out now. Where it should be. Healthy mind, healthy body.
Consensus is certainly long-winded – but there’s always plenty of time for most of the important stuff. The low level stuff gets thru quick enough. Consensus achieves a result qualitatively better than 51-49, because the majority position needs to be amended until it gets to about 80-20. (True consensus is never actually achieved. But at 80-20 most people shut up at already.)
But as Mark says, consensus ain’t possible for the ALP because it represents too many widely differing groups. Consensus requires a degree of participation that is unrealistic for a mass party.
Whether or not unions are still relevant is still being decided. They have put on a good showing lately but they’ve been written off by very many people in the last few years. Perhaps Latham meant that they are anachronistic. I don’t know if this is right, but don’t think that such a judgement is reprehensible if all it is, is just the recognition of an historical change.
Capital is global now – traditional unions find it almost impossible to adapt to this. It is usually divided and conquered – eg distracted by futile protests about the off-shoring of jobs while at the same time never giving a flying f**k about the welfare of their international brethren.
eg distracted by futile protests about the off-shoring of jobs while at the same time never giving a flying f**k about the welfare of their international brethren.
Unions by and large, and particularly Australian unions, have a very active and very long tradition of international solidarity. What the hell are you talking about?
Indeed, Chris, and unions are getting smarter at it too – look at the recent actions coordinated between the MUA and Californian Dockworkers.
wbb, I really don’t think from your comments you know much about what unions actually do.
It’s also a very inaccurate statement to say that “capital is global” from the point of view of applying pressure in the employment relationship, but anyway…
Unions are organised to protect and advance the interests of their members. Hence they are easily picked off when an industry relocates to a cheaper labour market. Then the union will try to impede the employer from using the offshore workers. But they haven’t been able to do this. Hence my statement that they can’t adapt to capital’s ability to move.
The international solidarity thing breaks down at that point. (I know that they will support each other when their own direct interest isn’t threatened.) For example the relevant union vigorously protested the offshoring of Telstra jobs to India a couple of years ago. I marched with them. The offshoring went ahead. Indian workers are not complaining. This is not such a special case.
I’m not sure Mark why you question the global nature of capital/production and its consequent increased bargaining power over labour.
I don’t think a union has an answer to this. It requires political legislation and hence the majority sentiment to say that local jobs should be preserved at the cost of higher prices in certain cases.
Of course unions can proselytise beyond their membership for this cause, but being self-interested entities at core, they may not be as well-suited nor as weel received at the credibility level as a mainstream ALP acting at arms length and in the rhetorical best interests of all Australians.
In many instances, wbb, employers use the threat of closure or offshoring as a bargaining counter – particularly in manufacturing, sunk costs and capital investment in plant negates any cost advantage of offshoring. There’s also the issue of the relative level of skill as between first world and other nations to consider.
I’m not suggesting that unions always win these fights, or that capital doesn’t enjoy advantages from globalisation, just that it’s not a universal link and unions can win some of these fights.
Unions can also look at convincing organisations that the costs of offshoring back office and customer service work are often significant – in terms of contractual management, customer dissatisfaction, and loss of synergies organisationally.
Over the longer term, wages are rising in many of the countries where capital flies – around 5% a year in urban China for instance (from a very low base). At some point in time, it’s logical to assume that this becomes a global phenomenon, at which time some of the limits to capital accumulation in its current mode will have been reached.
I think we have a tendency to be too pessimistic in these matters, and to take too short a view.
Simplistic wbb, but suffice to say that, if the ALP disconnected with unions, I believe it really would disappear into fantasyland. In any event, one thing’s for sure, the union movement is miles from being anywhere near the causes of the ALP’s present problems. On the contrary, if the ALP paid a little more attention to the industrial wing, it might begin to find some answers.
Greg Combet for PM! As a friend of mine commented in an email, as well as his smarts, his Clark Kent looks will attract her vote!
Can’t afford to lose him into the circus Mark. There’s real work to be done!
Unions can attempt to do the figures for the employer if they want, but the employer will usually trust their own reckonings. The move will be decided on the bottom line.
I am not pessimistic about off-shoring because I intellectually support it in many cases, despite marching against it from time to time (I do this to support unionism overall if not in that specific cause every time.) I am fine with off-shoring out of real solidarity with overseas workers. We in Oz have done very well off the sweat of others and I see no reason they shouldn’t share in the world’s wealth when they can.
This is my beef with some unionists – they are very parochial. And that’s today – let’s not even talk about the WAP.
There are lots of other considerations such as the environment which may mean being against off-shoring in some cases. But if it merely comes down to jobs here or in India then I don’t have a problem.
Nevertheless I don’t blame the union for having a go at keeping the jobs here however so I shouldn’t have made my acrimonious remark up above.
I’d also legislate for meaningful and substantial retraining/compensation etc for workers affected.
Off-shoring is a complex issue, best understood through research rather than by resort to simplistic economic axioms. Research to date, as the trade union movement well understands through its internationalism, suggests that the benefits for host countries are problematic, as often as not yielding few spillover effects in terms of employment, technology and skills, and meanwhile crowding out local firms with the capacity of the large corporations to dominate markets.
Well the rise and rise of Indian firms and the inroads they are making into Western markets is also true. Each time an Australian company prefers an Infosys or a Satyam tender, Australian jobs are exported to Bangalore and Mysore. Those jobs are very beneficial to the workers holding them in whichever country they live. Those same companies are now setting up shop locally in Australia with the skills and personnel to burn. They are competing directly against the USA companies that have already owned the IT services business here for a few years now.
Ironically Infosys itself seems to be already at the stage of off-shoring jobs from India to China.
Some textile jobs went from Oz to Fiji and are now being ripped out of there and landing in China. The distress of Fijians at the latter development is a pointer to the fact that the benefits they reaped getting the Australian work in the first place was real. But that’s not research, that’s my simplistic impression.
Basically, for mine, you’re just mimicking the globalist orthodoxy (hello Thomas Friedman), in conjunction with Tory prejudice against unions, wbb. My point is that this issue is complex, and the labour movment is more than well aware of these complexities via international research. India’s boom is not due to the so-called ‘globalisation of capital’. Jay Mandle, merely for instance, comments in a recent paper published by the labour movement:
These [India's] reforms did not create free market economies, and in general Asian economic growth did not occur in a laissez-faire environment. Rather the successful countries of the region adopted what Charles Gore calls the “Southern Consensus,” a strategy that “rejects the idea that growth with late industrialization can be animated using a general blueprint,” such as The Washington Consensus and its market fundamentalism. The policy measures included in this new approach included, in Dani Rodrik’s words, “export subsidies, domestic-content requirements, import-export linkages, patent and copyright infringements, restrictions on capital flows (including direct foreign investment), directed credit and so on….”.
Hmm, Dani Rodrik sounds somewhat like Doug Cameron, which, if you follow my international drift, is not surprising.
If I was advocating free for all market globalisation then yes. But I’m not. I’m merely saying it may be that union power to protect worker’s interests is challenged by the mobility of capital. Which is obvious to all. I would often be against that happening if I could see a way to be against it. The union has the same problem I have. I am not against unions, once and for all. I am merely wondering at their future under certain conditions. (Admittedly I did have a go at them for preferring to keep Oz jobs in Oz. Which was stupid. I was trying to say that they are caught in a moral bind in this situation. They never protest when Euro/US jobs get offshored to here. It’d be a political impossibility to even try.)
India has undoubtedly provided the institutional settings eg education – in the IT sector for example to enable it to then go on and succesfully bid for overseas jobs. Why assume I say like Friedman that it happened because they abolished tariffs etc?
Tory prejudice? omg-wtf?
Ok wbb, I’m happy to call the jam off, although I can’t resist pointing out in passing that the even the ‘globalisation’ and ‘mobility’ of capital is also in large part Freidmanish-like myth. Practically no developing country now has a truely free-floating currency, and today even official economists question the benefits of open capital markets.
OK, agreed, but that’s just down to my inept use of the lingo – I mean mobility of industry and corporations.
Call centers/textile factories/IT functions are mobile. Too mobile, for many. I myself do work that used to be done by yanks. Eventually the work might be done in India. May sound Friedmanish but it’s also my reality.
Naomi – that may be true in some cases – but the news is that Indians are now doing Aussie jobs for money that is very, very good, altho obviously still less than here. I find it very hard to begrudge them that.
As it happens, the ACTU’s Union Aid Abroad’s (as in undertaking projects like this one in India) annual dinner is on tonight. I’d be going, except I’m going to John Langmore’s talk on reforming the UN. Damned labour movement – too goddamned international on the one night!