Back-handed endorsement

And it’s entirely mutual. Latham had a public go at Adams on Lateline in 2002:

In response to a question about asylum-seeker policy from Tony Jones, Latham responded:

“Well, I think it’s really a 3-sided debate and this needs to be carefully understood.

That you’ve got the Government that’s trying to provoke politics, rather than solutions, they’ve run these debates through a federal election campaign, they’re now running through the South Australian election campaign.

So that’s at one extreme.

At the other extreme, they’ve sort of got a gentrified left-wing group, led by the likes of Philip Adams and Anne Summers, who are really soft touch.

They want a full abolition of mandatory detention.

Much more an open-door policy.

And really they’re insatiable.

They won’t rest until that extreme goal has been reached.”

“the ultimate argument in Latham’s favour is that Phillip Adams doesn’t like him”

The ultimate argument? I hope not. That means there won’t be an another one.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone,” it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

Guess I wouldn’t mind Latham as PM if he led the Coalition. Any chance of him doing a Kernot?

Anyone listening to Radio National would know that Adams (and most of RN listeners) do not like Latham because it does not reflect their ideas of what are the values of the left. You just have to hear the program ‘Australia talks back’ and listen to the litany from callers that the ALP under Latham is just like the Howard government etc etc.

Adams has had programs about Latham before and most recently commented to Laura Tingle of the Fin Review how depressing it was that the ALP was ‘mimicking’ the Coalition on refugee policy.

Latham of course can’t stand Adams. In a celebrated letter to ‘Labor for Refugees’ a couple of years ago he had this to say:

“In my experience, the strongest supporters of the rights agenda are those who do not have to face the daily consequences of irresponsible behaviour. They have the resources to buy themselves away from social problems, to purchase private security, private education, private health insurance and private transport. This gives them the luxury of being able to talk about human rights without the need for social responsibility.

The best example of this abstract process is Phillip Adams. In his public life he opposes border protection, safe in the knowledge that asylum seekers are unlikely to settle near his Paddington terrace. In his private life, however, he is a strong supporter of laneway protection, even to the point of preventing a 90-year-old woman in a wheelchair from accessing his property so that she might have Christmas lunch with her son.” Meeaowww!

I’ve got no problem with Mark Latham per se – it’s all the others that come in behind him. As a leader he has a worse potential cabinet than Howard’s (which is really saying something); and there is no clear line of succession.

Furthermore, when Costello pushes for important things like workplace reform and debt reduction, there isn’t an entire institutional wing of the party doing its darndest to sabotage him. Latham may get elected, and he may be right wing. But he won’t be able to get his way all, or even most of the time once he is in government. Necessary workplace reforms will grind to a halt and ultimately, once Mark has finished his trivial tinkertoy experiments (a kind of Whitlam Lite), we will find ourselves in economically stagnant waters.

Mark’s a tyro, but as a long-term proposition he is a sucker’s punt.