From great Labor hope to party embarrassment: the real Mark Latham

The Age

18-07-2025

For two decades, Labor voters have hidden their embarrassment over having vested their hopes in Mark Latham. Amid the latest Lathamisms – a term for a squalid little ooze of gall from the so-called 'upper house' – it is worth pausing to remember what he offered when he became federal opposition leader in 2003.
Presenting as articulate and intelligent, Mark Latham had worked, in his 20s, for John Kerin, Gough Whitlam and Bob Carr and had been mayor of Liverpool Council at age 30. He has a Sydney University economics degree and played footie for the Liverpool Bulls. His book Civilising Global Capital, published when he was 27, described a crisis for the industrial working class as one of structural and technological change that could be addressed through education, upskilling and the 'ladder of opportunity'.
By 2003, Latham argued that under the leadership of Kim Beazley the party had drifted from the reformist ambition of Whitlam, Hawke and Keating. Beazley, softened by years in government, had been too weak on the republic referendum and Tampa, too bipartisan over Australia's subservience to George W. Bush's fraudulent invasion of Iraq, too nice to take up the fight to John Howard and his 'conga line of suckholes' (another Lathamism).
When he became leader, Latham was also, appealingly, an outsider, criticising the factional system that brought down Beazley's successor Simon Crean. Latham offered plainspoken independent thinking and genuine opposition to the Howard government. One of his mentors, Senator Stephen Loosley, said he had a gift for speaking past Canberra and straight into Australia's lounge rooms. Mungo McCallum wrote that Latham had 'many qualities that were not only desirable and attractive but are in short supply in today's ALP'. One of Latham's key internal supporters was Julia Gillard. Under his leadership, Labor recruited Peter Garrett and, in his first year, Latham was easily outpolling Howard.
By the 2004 election, voters were looking past the ideals and the pedigree and sniffing the character. There were stories of a fistfight to settle a Liverpool council dispute, salacious rumours about his buck's night, then his first wife Gabrielle Gwyther 's claim that they broke up because he wanted an open marriage. Latham has variously denied these allegations.
Then there was the Howard handshake, which still gets replayed as if it shows us what we should have seen from the beginning. At a radio studio the day before the 2004 election, Latham took his opponent's hand as if to put him in a 'Cumberland throw'. Swing voters had seen all they needed, and Latham became the first new federal Labor leader in 87 years to lose seats. Having styled himself as the charismatic outsider, the lone wolf, Latham attributed the result to colleagues leaving him with too much to do on his own.
There were signs, beneath the Labor 'true belief', of a cruel streak. In his own words, Latham was 'a hater. Part of the tribalness of politics is to really dislike the other side with intensity. And the more I see of them the more I hate them … John Howard tries to appeal to suburban values when I know that he hasn't got any real answers to the problems and challenges we face. I hate the phoniness of that.'
This might have expressed a widespread grievance, but where did it cross into the tribalness of an 'A-grade arsehole' (not my words but Latham's, to describe Labor premiers Carr, Peter Beattie and Geoff Gallop)? An answer came after Christmas in 2004. Latham, recuperating from the election loss, was silent after the tsunami that killed 228,000 people in 14 countries. After Howard committed $1 billion in relief and declared a national day of mourning, Latham called the disaster, dismissively, 'the Asian flood'. He 'couldn't reverse the waves'. Three weeks later, citing life-threatening cancer, Latham quit.