The Latham Diaries
If you actually bothered to read The Latham Diaries rather than gasp and tut at the excerpts and gossip, you'll find the man who, in his writings (Pluto Press) while on the backbench, proved himself to be one of the rare thinkers in either of the main parties.
It's bloody sad that he turned out to have a glass jaw as well as a mean streak, but that doesn't detract from the brain, which is a soaring cathedral of ideas and analysis compared to the vast majority of his former colleages and opponents.
But you won't read that anywhere. Nor will you read anywhere else of the undemocratic and totally vicious way Simon Crean was hounded out of the Labor leadership. So we deserve what we get, really. As Paul Keating said to Latham of Kim Beazley: "It's the revenge of the blancmange."
The Latham Diaries, Melbourne University Press, $39.95
