 Book Reviews
with Robin Osborne
Latham's World - The New Politics of the Outsiders
By Margaret Simons
Quarterly Essay/Black Inc
 Byron-based Craig McGregor's Australian Son - Inside Mark Latham (Pluto Press $24.95) is a sympathetic portrait of the aspiring PM, authored by one who long recognised Latham's potential and received good access to his subject.
More critical is Michael Duffy's take on the Opposition leader and a major adversary (Latham and Abbott, Random House, $32.95), but the greatest interest lies in the shortest read, the Quarterly Essay by Margaret Simons who was denied a 'sit down, in depth' interview because the ALP saw no benefit in a journal read by the café latte set.
If Latham can be thanked for a rebirth of the political biography it is an ironic achievement given that the media has so ignored his own books, notably Civilising Global Capital, detailing his politics and policies.
'Latham's ideas have been remarkably consistent and clearly stated,' Simons writes. 'It is not true that his intellectual record is flighty or contradictory. The 'contradictions' are either non-existent, or else fully acknowledged developments in his thought. Latham's ideas may be radical, but they are hardly 'wacky'. His books show a penetrating, analytical mind.'
The working class Sydney 'westie' was a protégé of Gough Whitlam, whose former seat he now holds, whose name was given to one of his children and whose political memoir he helped edit.
As one source told Simons, if Latham becomes PM, the 'great man' (Latham's term for Whitlam) will be able to die happy.
Latham completed uni with the assistance of weekly contributions of $2 each from members of the local ALP branch, excelling in his economics studies whilst helping his widowed mother, to whom he remains very close.
His anti-elitist politics focus on the struggle between 'insiders' and 'outsiders': the former are able to access information and thus understand and even influence the broader debate (as well as appreciating the arts and café latte), while the latter, dwelling in the outer suburbs, are concerned mostly with the daily realities of getting by.
Yet it was a program on the elitist ABC that alerted him to the symptoms of testicular cancer, prompting an intervention that may well have saved his life. As a further sign of the Latham enigma, the man who preaches the benefits of reading to children has apparently never read a novel in his life.
October 9 will show whether he crashes or crashes through.
- Thanks to Book Warehouse, Keen Street, Lismore for supporting this column.
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