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Mark Latham is stupid or he’s brave. I’m not sure which at this time but I think perhaps he’s a bit of both. Oh, and he has a very healthy ego. What I find interesting in the whole ‘Latham spits the dummy’ hurrah is that rather than critically examining what he has to say, regardless of how it’s said, the “key stakeholders” in all this have chosen to play the man. So in the interests of fair and balanced reporting, I want to have a crack at asking some of the questions most of the press gallery and almost all of the Labor party refuse to admit.
I mean, what if the guy is right and the Labor party is terminally ill and needs to be put down? What would that mean for Australian democracy? Well for it start it would halve the number of suckholes on the conga line parading outside the door of the US embassy. It would also mean that no longer would we have to choose between tweedle dumb and tweedle dumber. We might actually see a bit of choice between the candidates. I mean, we have one ruling party divided among two houses so to speak.
As far as democracy goes, well I for one would rather be a wage slave in Venezuela at the moment. At least there the leader of the ruling party is putting the bottom line and corporate interests lower down the scale and elevating social needs to their proper place.
What if Mark Latham is right and the media do know what is going on but refuse to print it for fear of their jobs? What if he is right that the machine men at the top disregard the wishes of the rank and file Labor member?
About ten years ago I spent some time with a journalist who used to work in parliament house. During our discussion he ranged far and wide over the workings of the media / government relationship. Some things he said were almost unbelievable but then again we were still be governed by Keating. In a nutshell what he described was a relationship not built on trust and loyalty or even a commitment to truth. In his opinion Canberra was just another town where everyone knew everyone else and everyone else’s business. Journalists would never print the truth, was the bottom line, if the choice was between the public interest and their career. Ten years on I ask you, when was the last time one of the Canberra media “heavy hitters” got fired?
Just like the party machine the media knows its place. That place is at the banquet table paid for and stocked by way of the tax system. The machine men of both parties know this and they are complicit in making sure the stories that get out are only the ones they approve of. Should a leak spring from the dyke holding back this truth it can quickly be plugged with denials, spin or even more effectively an invite to dinner for the editors and journalists involved.
Having bought off the media with largess funded by the toil of our brows, the machine men have one thing less to worry about. This gives them more time to spend ignoring the pleas of their party’s (ever dwindling) rank and file. What’s the old saying, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely? Well power is not only to be found at the top of the pile but all the way down. If the party men were not planning something, how come Latham was appointed in the first place? I find it hard to believe that he made it all the way to the top and then somehow self immolated just short of the prize. If George Bush, the supposed leader of the free world, is tucked up in bed by 9:00pm each night surely the leader of a third rate Asiatic nation could do the same if he was feeling a little off colour? Did the machine men know that he could never win the election anyway and that if he did do the dummy spit good old Beasley could rise, confident, resolute and seemingly strong from the ashes and lead the party ever higher and brighter? Well that plan doesn’t seem to be working does it!
“Self implosion by ex polly burns Labor” has made great media fodder, but it’s also provided a diversion from important issues like the sale of the rest of Telstra, changes to media ownership laws, the failure of Her Tentness, Mandy Vanstone to know what the hell is going on in her department and, perhaps the most important issue, changes to our supposed terrorism laws.
Latham’s vitriol may or may not be justified but he can afford to be bitter on his fully tax payer funded lifetime superannuation payments. He can afford to be a house hubby while the missus goes out to work. He can afford to relax with the kiddies and play dad but many of us cannot afford the luxuries of the rich and even former powerful.
Media practitioners have worked hard in the past week or so to try and convince us this is something we should be interested in and to some extent we should be interested. But not for the reasons being propounded. The questions I asked at the beginning are worth revisiting. They were, is the Labor party terminally ill and needing to be put down and what would that mean for Australian democracy?
The battle being fought out among the privileged and seemingly powerful is not meant to involve us. Our role is solely as spectators as they carry on in the arena of the public sphere. So what if the Labor party dies? It’s a bit like one of those rich wives who has nothing to do with her time but get another nip and tuck. She spends endlessly on rearranging her face and body, always happy but never satisfied. She is certainly not the women her husband married all those years ago but he’s too lazy to argue and as long as his dalliances on the side are not discussed he gets on with his life and her with hers.
The Labor party’s sense of morality and connectedness to the working class was cut out, excised and sucked up the tube of liposuction many years ago. The party remains a flabby, washed up shell of what it was. A travesty that nature, like the silicone filled, surgically enhanced once radiant bride, seems destined to kill off anyway. As to democracy?
To argue that what we have is government for the people by the people is to remain locked in a make believe world inhabited by Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. We are ruled by a plutocracy that barely suffers the inconvenience we cause by voting every three years or so. The farce that we call ‘federal politics’ is an anachronism, a vestige and remnant of an ideal that once did have some currency but was never fully translated into a workable system. Latham had a role to play and has now stepped out of character. That is his sin.
We may never know the truth behind Latham’s dummy spit. We can rest assured though that if his book was not part of a much wider plan it would never have been allowed to see the light of day. That’s not conspiracy theory speaking but rather a statement based on reflection on the evidence. Latham provides a timely distraction, a smoke screen to a much wider issue. That issue is our collective complacency. A complacency that has been carefully nurtured and tended to by those who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. It seems to me that despite all his weaknesses and human foibles, Latham may have provided a model for others to follow. The question for him and us is, will we work together to make a better future than the one we currently seem hell bent on creating.