DEAD MAN WALKING

I know I have used the movie expression about Federal Opposition leader Mark Latham. Have called him “dead man walking”. But how far off the pace am I?

The new kid on the block took the Labor Party to one of its worst primary vote defeats in about eighty years. He did far worse than The Bomber, Kim Beazley, in the last federal election.

And, come July, they will lose control, lose any influence, in The Senate, for the first time in more than two decades. Labor is stuffed. The Democrats are stuffed. The Greens are irrelevant. And “ Little Johnny Howard” -- as we derided him several decades ago -- strides the world stage.

The man who said it would take Lazarus with a triple by-pass to even win him back his party’s leadership in Opposition has just won his fourth consecutive election. The man, with about as much charisma as a tube of toothpaste – and actually looks like he has halitosis -- is about to become, next month, the second longest serving Prime Minister in Australian history.

Bovver Boy Latham has admitted that he knew before polling day last month that he had lost. He would not get the keys to The Lodge. I asked him yesterday on 3AW when he knew he was cactus and he took so long to answer that I thought the line had dropped out.

He eventually claimed that it was the night before election day. I remember saying on air several days earlier -- after he addressed the National Press Club for the final time -- that it was “ all over red rover”. He had the dead fish eyes of a loser and was, in my opinion, just going through the paces.

He went into foetus mode after the debacle. And this week’s Newspoll shows that Australians now prefer Howard to Latham as Prime Minister by a figure of 57% to 27%.

In a searing day of justifiable self recrimination by the Labor Party yesterday Latham reportedly blamed Victorian Premier Steve Bracks for the disaster. That was the over the Freeway saga. And Tasmanian Premier Paul Lennon. That was the forestry brouhaha. Everybody except himself.

The most telling quote about Latham’s leadership is on Page One of the national daily, The Australian, today. A senior Labor pollie is quoted as saying: “Latham’s f..king mad. He's in complete denial.”

I really am starting to believe that this is a brave (or reckless) experiment that has not only failed but turned into a national train wreck. He is a dead man walking. Give it twelve months. Tops.

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2004