PETER VAN ONSELEN: Virtue-signalling Labor slaps a 'plaque of shame' under Mark Latham - but what about Gough, Bob, Billy and Arthur?

Daily Mail​

22-07-2025

Labor's decision to put a plaque beneath Mark Latham's portrait in the federal caucus room, declaring that his 'actions do not accord with Labor values', isn't brave. It also isn't principled. It's purely performative. A belated, sanitised act of virtue signalling that seeks to retroactively exile someone whom the party actually expelled back in 2017.
Let's be clear: Latham's descent into reactionary populism, his inflammatory rhetoric and now the serious allegations against him (which he denies) mark him as a deeply divisive political figure. Repugnant even. He has taken public swipes at former colleagues, journalists, and, yes, even me. No tears are being shed here in defence of Latham the politician.
But this is precisely why Labor's move reeks of cowardice, not courage. The party already expelled him eight years ago for joining a rival party, not for anything he said or did in the years since.
Latham's portrait remained hanging all of that time. Now, suddenly, as vile allegations surface (yet remain untested, don't forget) the party moves to editorialise history. It isn't leadership, it's opportunism with a halo.
Worse, the moral consistency of the gesture collapses under the weight of its own hypocrisy. If Labor is now in the business of annotating history, where's the plaque under Arthur Calwell's portrait: the former Labor leader who infamously said 'two Wongs don't make a White' while enforcing the White Australia Policy as Immigration Minister?
Calwell was a Labor leader too. Are we to believe that racist policy, proudly defended at the time, is more tolerable on the walls of the caucus room than Latham's political apostasy? No plaque to clarify that modern Labor doesn't agree with Calwell's actions all those years ago?
And why stop there? Gough Whitlam approved Indonesia's bloody invasion of East Timor. Should a plaque beneath his portrait acknowledge the thousands killed under tacit Australian approval? Bob Hawke's well-documented womanising and personal indiscretions: do they not 'fail to meet the standards we expect and demand '? Or is selective morality acceptable so long as the subjects remained loyal to the party - in contrast to Latham?
If that's the logic, what about Billy Hughes? A Labor leader and PM in 1915 who was expelled from the party, formed a breakaway party with a group of defecting Labor MPs before switching sides and becoming a conservative Prime Minister. He was the ultimate political rat, yet Hughes doesn't get the Latham plaque treatment under his photo noting his expulsion.
Do I even need to move into the state political sphere to outline the many former Labor leaders there who have disgraced themselves over the years in all manner of ways, yet their pictures continue to hang without disclaimers?
Labor's decision to editorialise one leader's image while ignoring the moral failings or controversies of others isn't a statement of values; It's a signal to the culture warriors that Labor, too, can take part in the great historical sanitisation effort of our times.
In this case, literally framing the past with a modern disclaimer.
The Stalin reference made by Latham when responding to the move on social media might have been flippant, but it's not without merit.
On X he wrote: 'Can't the Labor caucus go the full Stalin and white me with a trace around my head? Or replace that boring head shot with what (the media) says is my harem?'
Stalin famously had political enemies erased from photos, a crude tinkering of history dressed up as loyalty to the party line. Labor isn't going that far, but the instinct is eerily similar. Rewrite the past. Cleanse the wall. Send a message.
Gallagher says 'you can't erase history', but the plaque does exactly that. It reframes Latham's time as leader not for what it was (a failed but electorally serious 2004 tilt at government) but for what he became long afterwards. It renders the wall not a record of history, but a curated moral museum where every subject must pass a retrospective purity test. Except they target only Latham, because other ex-leaders with failings have stayed loyal to the Labor brand.
This is the same slippery logic (unevenly distributed) that animates the statue-toppling fervour seen across the activist left in recent years. Tear down monuments to flawed figures, rename buildings, revise curricula. Not to better understand history, but to morally dominate it.
Anthony Albanese still proudly displays a 2005 parliamentary speech delivered after Latham's retirement. He calls Latham 'a great political figure', also praising his commentary, even reflecting fondly on their time together
It's less about acknowledging the complexities of those who came before, and more about projecting the righteousness of those who came after.
It also raises an obvious question: if these values really mattered so deeply, why did it take until 2025 to finally act? Latham was expelled in 2017 for defecting to the Liberal Democrats. His political memoir that came out shortly after he resigned from the leadership in 2005 was utterly scathing. The plaque makes no mention of any of that, instead implying that his 'actions' - undefined but clearly referencing recent untested allegations - were the reason. If so, that's even worse: Labor has effectively pre-judged a matter that remains before the legal system, choosing to morally condemn someone before the process of justice has run its course.
But are we surprised?
And what of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's own history with Latham? On his personal website, Albanese still proudly displays a 2005 parliamentary speech delivered after Latham's retirement. He calls Latham 'a great political figure', also praising his commentary, even reflecting fondly on their time together. If the caucus room now requires plaques of moral distancing, should the PM's own website also come with a trigger warning? If not, why not?
The contradictions pile up, and it's not just Labor. Look no further than the Greens, who are in the process of expelling their co-founder, Tony Harris, over controversial comments about trans issues. The current leader supports the move, while former Greens leaders Bob Brown and Christine Milne oppose it.
A minor party that once prided itself on diversity of opinion has found itself unable to tolerate one of its own foundational thinkers, because his views no longer align with modern orthodoxy. Again, no defence of the comments, but it's worth noting how quickly today's progressive movements exile yesterday's heroes.
This is the deeper problem: a political culture so fixated on moral branding that it can't distinguish between disagreement and heresy, between history and endorsement, between symbolism and substance.
No one is arguing that Latham deserves celebration. I'm certainly not. But nor does he need to be ritually disavowed with a plaque designed to placate those whose only political muscle comes from policing the past. Certainly not as a knee-jerk reaction to allegations yet to be formally tested. If he no longer represents Labor values, let that be evident in the record, in how the party governs, not how it curates its party room.
Labor's latest move is not leadership, it's theatrics masquerading as virtue.