Latham diary bile fired at former colleagues

Mark Latham

CANBERRA - Mark Latham, the pit bull politician who last year led Labor to one of its most crushing defeats and handed absolute parliamentary power to Prime Minister John Howard, is spraying all over his former colleagues.

Since quitting earlier this year Latham has been sharpening his poison pen in the editing of his political diaries which, excerpts published in major newspapers yesterday show, blame everyone but himself.

Even the infamous handshake delivered to Howard on the eve of the election, when the bone-breaking Latham towered over his much smaller rival in an image that sent even more voters running, was not his fault.

In fact, Latham wrote in The Latham Diaries - to be released next week - it was just a "regulation man's handshake".

And anyway, Howard deserved it.

Excerpts published in Melbourne's Herald Sun claim that Howard had consistently tried "the small man's thing" by trying to match big man Latham with a powerful shake of his own whenever they met.

"I wasn't too worried about it, thought it was funny, until the last Sunday of the campaign at the St George League's Club lunch, when Howard did the same to [Latham's wife] Janine," he wrote.

"She said to me, 'That man just tried to break my hand. It really hurt'.

"Enough was enough. Next time I saw him ... I put on the squeeze and got a bit closer to him, so he couldn't do the flapping thing.

"The weak animal looked startled."

But the worst of diarist Latham's bile is reserved for his Labor mates or "sewer rats".

He accused Kim Beazley, who preceded and then succeeded him as leader, of waging a six-year campaign of smear and innuendo, helping to destroy Labor as a viable political force.

"My commitment to the Labor cause was destroyed by the bastardry of others," he wrote in excerpts reported by the Australian, which will tomorrow print large slabs of the diary ahead of its public release.

Elsewhere, he wrote of Beazley: "Beazley's betrayal of [Simon Crean, who became leader after Beazley's second loss to Howard then fell to Latham] still leaves me breathless.

"How does the Bomber [Beazley's nickname] get away with it?

"People are still writing him up as a decent loser, yet again, but he's one of the most indecent politicians I have come across."

Other gems from his diary.

On the Labor Party: "I no longer regard Labor as a viable force for social justice in this country. Its massive cultural and structural problems are insoluble."

And: "Politics can be a dirty business, but our caucus is infested with the sewer rats of the [Labor] movement,"

On foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd: "A terrible piece of work. Addicted to the media and leaking. A junior minister in Government at best."

Nicknames for the nation's top political journalists: The Nine Network's Laurie Oakes, Jabba (after Jabba the Hutt, Star Wars' giant sluglike intergalactic gangster); Glenn Milne of the Sunday Telegraph, the Poisoned Dwarf; News Ltd columnists Andrew Bolt, Piers Ackerman and Janet Albrechtsen, the Dancing Bears.

Beazley said that Latham blamed everyone but himself for Labor's drubbing at the last election.

"If there were gold medals for biting the hand that feeds you, Mark Latham would be standing on top of the dais," he said.

Rudd added: "I just think it's pretty sad for everybody, Mark included, when a former leader of our party behaves in this way."

And an end note from Labor Senator Steve Hutchins: "I've always thought he was a sleaze and he's proven he is."