Captain Wacky or 'The Latham Lessons'

Reading Latham's entry of July 23, 1997, I gained a better understanding of his attitude to the NPC in 2003:

I've just finished a long meeting with the ALP National Platform Committee in Melbourne to consider my draft document on education policy for next year's National Conference. It was surreal. The Committee hears all the submission from Party members, yet I do all the draft as Shadow … and then the factional hacks and union operatives on the Committee get to pick at it. So, effectively the Party consultation process was sidelined. … I was quickly jack of it and basically told them to nick off. Not exactly a productive day of ALP policy-making (p. 65.).

So Latham's "up yours" to the NPC in 2003 was a repeat performance. It was a petulant move but not without its grounds. Even taking into consideration the time constraints, the NPC was a farce in consultative policy making. Even worse, we missed the opportunity to put into place a genuine process for broad consultation that set up the next NPC with a clear structure, mandate and sense of direction.

I still think that Latham could have gone through the process regardless, but still provided us with a critique of the NPC's processes with suggested ideas for reform. Maybe it was just another blue in a series of endless battles he didn't really want to have.

The previous year to my appointment to the NPC, I bumped into Latham at the Holy Grail. He was drinking with a staffer and introduced me to her as a part of Albo's (Anthony Albanese's) new generation of Labor activists. He said to me, "I don't think it is my generation that will change things - it's really up to you and people younger than you". He sounded despondent.

In fact the most disappointing aspect of The Diaries is the complete and utter lack of hope that the system can be any different. Because he failed, we are all doomed to fail. This itself sets the cause for reform - which is still alive in party circles - back. It gives strength to the very people Latham hates so much, allowing them to dismiss him and his views as equally crazy.

I don't believe a system that was made by people can't be changed by people. But that's the key - and where I differ from the Latham approach. The emphasis is on people, a broad coalition of more than just the leader and a few of his confidants. He admits he was a loner in politics, not good at playing with others. The problems of Labor are too big for one man, even a big one.

A coalition determined to chip away at the insular and poisonous culture of the ALP would be very hard, but not impossible, to create. It would include people at all levels of the Party and, more importantly, people outside the Party - community activists, academics and sympathetic business leaders who don't put interest rates before social justice.

If The Diaries didn't burn so many bridges, Latham could have been a part of it.