October 2005

Latham’s accidental insight…

Chris Kenny

Most of the hundreds of thousands of words written about the Latham Diaries have missed the point. They have focused on the narcissism, the vitriol and the profane while overlooking the insight Latham unwittingly provides.

In reality the former Leader’s troubled thoughts provide us with an invaluable education on the reasons Labor has failed to connect with the Australian community. It is a failure that has become endemic in the broader Left since the Keating ascendancy.

Labor’s Federal failings are many but I will concentrate on its communication dilemma. To fail to communicate in politics is to fail at politics. Latham’s diary provides a penetrating examination of Labor’s disconnect with the public. Engaging with the community is a two-way process, so the more Labor has failed to communicate, the more it has failed to listen. This has influenced its poor policy decisions and compounded its isolation from the very people it seeks to represent.

Latham’s accidental insight provides a timely reminder to those of us on the conservative side of politics about some of the reasons for our success and the need to guard against complacency and isolation in the future. Effective communication is not an easy task and it requires constant attention.

Put simply, the failure of Latham and the Left is that they play to the gallery – the Canberra Press Gallery and the broader commentariat. The Left have too often fallen into the trap of seeking to communicate with the elites at the expense of the public. They talk to the gallery instead of through them. They seek to win the hearts and minds of the writers and reporters, rather than win over the readers and the viewers.

This is not a failing they would admit to or recognise. It is never overtly conceded in the Latham scribblings. But look closely and it is a persistent thread as he complains about his difficulties and seeks to pass the buck for his lack of success. His pre-occupation is with journalists and their alleged agendas, not with the public and their reaction to his messages.

“Our Machinery of Government policy proposed a radical opening up of government but the journalists weren’t interested.”(p376) It was the journalists who were at fault, not Latham. It was journalists he targeted, not the public.

“Hey, I can’t event get the insiders of the press gallery to understand the insiders/outsiders concept. I’ve written books and made speeches about it, but none of it registers.”(p376) A political “insider” all his life, Latham doesn’t even understand that to attack the political class he would have to communicate directly with the public. Instead he expects the political class to turn on itself.

“The Canberra Press Gallery: too cynical for its own good.”(p368) This observation is remarkable in that a major party leader should think it is worth making. You would expect it would be a fundamental part of the reality any Federal politician operates within, in much the same way a sailor understands the weather is changeable.

Let me be clear, I do not seek to unnecessarily denigrate the gallery. We all know it includes many talented, experienced and dedicated journalists. But it is always a mistake to place too much importance on its opinions. It is an insulated cabal, far removed from the Australian public it services. Therefore its opinions are often not in tune with those of the electorate. And, importantly, we must always remember that the public forms its own opinions from its own impressions of the comments it sees and hears from politicians – not from the commentary of journalists.

Latham and Labor don’t seem to understand that you speak to the voters, not the media. They don’t seem to understand that you have relationships with the media and you engage in media debate only in order to present your views to the public. It matters little what the commentators say, so long as you effectively communicate your message and your arguments. Apart from being intelligent enough to make up their own minds, the public will resent political instruction or condescension from the commentariat. Witness the Republic referendum.

If the commentariat could sway public opinion, the Howard Government would no longer be in office. It has endured a hostile Canberra Press Gallery for its entire life. It has weathered unrelenting campaigns from the ABC and the Fairfax press, day in and day out. Howard has been written off repeatedly. The commentariat has tried to hound him from office for years.

In fact, Mark Latham was a significant beneficiary of this when the gallery hailed his arrival in messianic terms, and then sought to fulfil its own prophecy. The gallery was full of long (and red) faces last October. Perhaps the early gallery boosterism was, in the end, part of Latham’s downfall. He began to believe the publicity and it encouraged his tendency to play to the wrong audience.

“Easy media coverage for re-announcing policies in January…When Simon first announced this stuff, nobody noticed. I put them out during a quiet time and they led the news. Money for Jam.”(p264) Nobody would reject prominent coverage on positive stories. But the pre-occupation with media success shows a lack of focus on what he was trying to achieve beyond media coverage. What was the message to the public? What was the public’s response?

Even at the end, Latham didn’t understand public expectations for political leaders. ”Only one nuisance: the media have been looking for me to comment on the Asian flood….It’s not really about the Asian flood. What I’ve done is offend their hunger to know all my business.”(pp406-408) No sense of a political leader needing to offer public reassurance on a major issue. No sense of any interest in the natural disaster itself. Just an insider’s paranoid focus on the media.

It is perhaps understandable that this insight about media perspective has been ignored so far because most of the commentary on the Latham Diaries has come from the Left and the commentariat. For them to make these observations would require the very self-analysis that could help solve their dilemma.

The fact that the Left still doesn’t “get” this is something about which the conservative side of politics should be grateful. But we must also constantly re-educate ourselves about these matters lest we ever fall victim to the hubris and aloofness that can bedevil long-serving administrations. Communicating through and around the political media is not easy – especially from Opposition, as the State Liberal parties would attest. I won’t discuss in detail the methods involved, except to say it requires extra effort and it requires a level of engagement that keeps politicians in touch with the mood of the electorate.

This is doubly important when you look at where the fascination with the gallery and the commentariat can take you. This privileged audience sees itself as elite. It tends to view public opinion as a commodity – to be measured, sampled and manipulated through pollsters, marketers and the media. In fact, public opinion is organic and the only way to understand it, or to shape it at all, is to be part of it - to be engaged with the public in a continuous dialogue about dilemmas, options and decisions.

When Latham and Labor became pre-occupied by their dialogue with the elites, they became trapped in the elites’ aloofness from the public. Soon, it was not Labor’s policies or messages that were wrong, but it was the public. And Latham’s disdain for the public became obvious.

“I suppose that’s part of the game: being dobbed in and then photographed for some pathetic gossip column – the haven of the lost and lonely media consumers, just like talkback radio itself.”(p270) Latham wants acceptance and support from popular newspapers and radio programs but dismisses their audiences as lost and lonely. That is an aloofness that the public will, and did, sense.

“I’m glad the arsewipe who was worried about his grandmother getting a hospital bed voted Liberal and not for me.”(p348) Latham has a low opinion of most voters. It is a common failing of the elites, often characterising the Australian public as self-interested, xenophobic and gullible. Every time they say Tampa won Howard the 2001 election they repeat this slur. I suppose this makes the commentariat feel superior to the masses. Apart from being wrong, it is a huge political mistake. The Left have developed a sneering attitude to the populace. Latham’s description of what he says is half the population is withering: “…the disengaged, self-interested middle class, who tend to delegate economic management to the Coalition in Federal elections, but trust State Labor with the health and education services. Apathy Rules.”(p375) This is a far cry from Bob Hawke’s constant (and successful) flattering of the electorate.

Latham’s musings revealed even stronger feelings about other voters. “I detest war and the meatheads who volunteer to kill other human beings.”(p393) If this is where his disengagement took him, is there any wonder the public might have seen through him? Think of the hypocrisy as he attempted to win votes in places like Townsville where defence force personnel are a sizeable chunk of the community.

This is a slippery slide - from not engaging with the public, to siding with the elites against an apparently unenlightened public. Eventually there is distrust and even disdain for the very people you are relying on for support.

In the end, of course, Latham and some on the Left have taken this so far that there is a sense of loathing about their own country. Latham’s true feelings about Australia and the American Alliance (rather than the lies he told before the election) expose this. “It’s just another form of neo-colonialism: a timid, insular nation at the bottom of the world, too frightened to embrace an independent foreign policy.”(p393) Latham couldn’t share that assessment with the public, presumably because he thought they were too timid, insular and frightened to agree with him. But unfortunately for him, the public he scorns can spot a fraud.

Latham’s bitterness and failure is not his alone. There is a broader disengagement of Labor and the Left from honest public dialogue - just look at its contortions and deceptions over Iraq. This disengagement has contributed to their isolation from mainstream Australia. The party that once prided itself on being a people’s party has forsaken the people for the commentariat. Unless Labor understands that, it will never recover. Instead, as evidenced by Senator John Faulkner’s Henry Parkes Oration, Labor condemns the public for not being sufficiently smart or engaged.

It is the Howard Government and the conservative parties that work hard at engaging with the community, respecting the public’s views and communicating with them on an equal footing. This is a process that must always continue, for to disregard it is to flirt with political irrelevance.