Latham backs NZ's approach to US relations

CANBERRA - Australia should follow the example of New Zealand, which had made itself the safest country on earth through distancing itself from the United States, former opposition leader Mark Latham said today.

Speaking ahead of the long-awaited launch of his diary today, Mr Latham said he reached the conclusion that Australia needed to renegotiate the alliance with the US after dining with then US Ambassador Thomas Schieffer, who he referred to in his diary as Brains ("Schieffer brains").

"We should have a look at how New Zealand has made itself the safest country in the world," he told ABC radio.

"There is no terrorist threat to New Zealand that has been identified but (there is) one here. If you go supporting bad American policy you make yourself a bigger target and you stir dissent in your own country," he said.

"If the Americans continues with Bush's policies they will never win the war against terror. They are bogged down in this for the rest of our lifetime.

"If Iraq is an example of how they are going about their work, they are never going to win that. They are just going to maximise dissent and aggression against them and nations that join in bad foreign policy as a neo-colonial partner of the US are obviously going to run into a lot of strife.

"That's the Australian dilemma led by John Howard."

Mr Latham said it was towards the end of 2004 that he reached the conclusion that Australia needed to rethink the usefulness of the US alliance and have an internal Labour Party debate about the policy.

He said Australian politics was a little American club where journalists like Paul Kelly and Greg Sheridan and and American barrackers like Kevin Rudd and Kim Beazley took junkets to the US.

"This is a dialogue thing they have and other forms of largesse and they start the policy debate by saying no matter the issue, no matter the circumstances, what they need to do is work out how do you support the United States of America," he said.

"When you look at party political research, political people don't say this openly, because the electorate thinks we need the US because they are worried about an invasion from Indonesia.

"This the last bastion of the white Australia mentality, we need a big brother to protect us from the Asian threat from the north."

Asked if he lied during the election in telling the electorate that Labour valued the US alliance as a partnership between equal sovereign nations, Mr Latham said that was Labour policy and his job was to articulate Labour policy.

He said his diary entry was made after the election.

"Of course you live and learn in politics and that is the conclusion I reached," he said.

- AAP