Political Corrections

with Mungo MacCallum

Labor's hope for wannabe believers

It all seemed too good to be true, and in retrospect it probably was.

Mark Riley in The Sydney Morning Herald shot for the stars after the first day of Labor's national Conference by declaring that ALP no longer stood for Australian Losers Party; what had emerged was the Australian Latham Party.

Well, momentarily perhaps. The question cooler headed observers were asking was: is it still Australian Labor Party? If so, has anything really changed? And if not, just what the hell is it?

Mark Latham's great step forward is still more a leap of faith for the converted than a quantum jump in the wider political scene. He has done brilliantly among the true believers and almost as well in the media, many of whom are wannabe believers. This is partly a result of his novelty value, partly a result of the Howard mob's hopelessly ill-judged overreaction to it, and partly a result of the policy cup so long presented by Simon Crean as half empty now in Latham's hands, miraculously revealed as half full.

And, to be fair, it is also because Latham is a very talented politician: he is articulate, fast on his feet, seldom tempted by the sucker punch and exudes a rare combination of confidence and humility. His dismissal of Howard's accusation of being "sloppy with the facts" struck exactly the right balance between contempt and caution.

He won every fight that mattered on the conference floor and made sure that he was always in the ring. He didn't brag and he didn't smirk. He treated the media with respect tinged with just a hint of flattery, but in such a way as to make it clear that his wider vision was beyond any nitpicking about cost and delivery.

It was a triumphant three days, the kind of launching pad of which every aspirational opposition leader dreams. It is to be hoped, to pursue Latham's own somewhat strained imagery, that he understands that it was just one rung on the ladder, and one on which he cannot always rely in the future.

More importantly, and sadly, the priceless television image of Howard fiddling with his earpiece and complaining "It's not working - can't you make it work" (a crotchety old man having trouble with his hearing aid) is unlikely to be repeated, and nor is the Prime Minister's mistake in calling a panicky press conference at the Lodge (at which the first question was "Why have you bought us here?"). After a weekend in which the reaction of Howard and his deputy Peter Costello was described by the normally adulatory Miranda Devine as petty and mean, Howard seemed to have regained his composure by Monday, even to the extent of suggesting, preposterously, that he was now the underdog.

In the process he mentioned that Latham's predecessor, the hapless Simon Crean, had constituted no threat to him at all - something of a contradiction to all his previous rhetoric in the party room, in which he had insisted that Crean was a formidable opponent and that it was all looking a damned close run thing. His followers are unlikely to be too fussed about yet another lie or 15 from their well-practised leader, but they should be uncomfortably aware that he just may be telling the truth when he acknowledges, like most of the commentators, that Labor is at least back in the race.

Well, maybe; but the commentators are certainly wrong in declaring that the race has already begun. We are seeing a flurry of activity that bears a passing resemblance to the start of an election campaign, but in reality the acceptors are still just cantering around the training paddock; at this stage we don't even know when the meeting is to take place.

Assuming it is not until towards the end of the year none of the manoeuvring will become serious until the May budget; for the time being Latham can quite legitimately reply to the ritual cries of "Where's the money coming from?" by saying that he's waiting for Costello to tell him. And he can keep providing popular teasers like reductions in government advertising, reducing politicians' superannuation and selling Kirribilli House, which, while drops in the ocean financially, are neat pointers to the wasteful self-indulgence of the Howard regime which will undoubtedly be a feature of the campaign proper.

Meanwhile the government's nobblers will be out in force, but perhaps the real problems will come from inside Latham's own stable. While no one wants to disturb the momentum at present, there are still a lot of Labor traditionalists who are unhappy about Latham's hard line - not just on asylum seekers, but on welfare policies generally. The family-friendly stuff is all very fine, but there is real doubt about his commitment to those at the very bottom of the heap - a fear that his demands that the victims of economic change pull themselves up the ladder might be no less punitive than Howard's.

For all the euphoria, there are still as many potential rifts within the party as within the electorate at large, and Howard and his spoilers are ready with their wedges. To back Labor, I'd still want better than two to one. But then, three months ago I'd have wanted better than 10s. At least Latham has given the bookies some work to do.