The Latham Diaries

Mark Latham

• Publisher: Melbourne University Press Digital
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN:
  9780522860641
• Print ISBN:
  9780522852691

Here are the political diaries of one of Australia's most promising national leaders—published within twelve months of his resignation from office—an historic first. The Latham Diaries are searingly honest bulletins from the front line of Labor politics. They provide a unique view into the life of a man, the Party and the nation at a crucial time in Australian history.
Mark Latham resigned from parliament in January 2005, after only fourteen months as Leader of the Opposition, amid bitter post-election recrimination and his own ill health. From the beginning of his career he was viewed by many observers as the ALP's resident intellectual and larrikin, the great hope of a new generation with the drive and talent to become prime minister.
So why did his career end so abruptly? As The Latham Diaries reveal, the rising tide of public cynicism about politics, the cult of celebrity, the dangerous liaison between politics and the media, and the sickness at the heart of the Labor machine all played their part. As did Latham's own errors, as he candidly records in these diaries.
This is a riveting chronicle of life inside politics: the backroom deals, the frontroom conniving, the bitter defeat of idealism and the triumph of opportunism. The Latham Diaries is not just the story of the Labor Party in the last years of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century, but a sobering account of the state of Australian democracy 100 years after Federation.

Appendix 1
Who’s Who in the
Factional Zoo (mid-2003)

There are three main factions within the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party: the National Right, the Centre/Independents and the National Left. Within each faction there are various subgroupings based on geography, personalities and union affiliation/sponsorship.

National Right

New South Wales Right
Brereton Group		McLeay Group
Laurie Brereton	Mark Latham	Michael Forshaw	Leo McLeay
Janice Crosio	Robert McClelland	Michael Hatton	Roger Price
Annette Ellis	Frank Mossfield	Stephen Hutchins	Ursula Stephens
Joel Fitzgibbon	John Murphy	Julia Irwin

Victorian Right
Crean Group	Ray/Conroy Grou...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Foreword
• Author’s Note
• Acronyms & Abbreviations
• Introduction to the third edition
• Introduction
• 1994
• 1995
• 1996
• 1997
• 1998
• 1999
• 2000
• 2001
• 2002
• 2003
• 2004 Pre-election
• 2004 Post-election
• 2005
• Epilogue
• Appendix 1 Who’s Who in the Factional Zoo (mid-2003)
• Appendix 2 Mark Latham’s Notes on Labor’s Political Position, 31 July 2004*
• References
• Notes