Mark Latham has become a feature of the federal election and his presence carries a message

OPINION: Mark Latham is now a regular feature of this federal election, with deliberately inflammatory commentary and gratuitous personal attacks. But his presence carries a message of much greater significance.

IT appears Mark Latham has become a regular feature of federal elections offering deliberately inflammatory commentary and gratuitous personal attacks.

This week he’s claimed Bill Shorten’s trapped by a Green/Left agenda, causing him to forsake traditional Labor values, and claimed Anthony Albanese branded the whole of western Sydney as racist.

The first was Latham settling a score from a post-election ALP federal executive meeting in 2004 when Shorten ripped into the man who had taken Labor to defeat.

Latham apparently gave as good as he got, demeaning Shorten as “little Billy”. His newspaper column this week was regarded as a long-time-coming get square.

Latham has never liked Albanese, regarding him as a “trendy” inner-city Left-winger and deliberately appointing the Sydney MP as shadow environment minister in 2004 in a short-sighted bid to squeeze his colleague with the green movement.

Albanese brushed off the silly tactic, taking a toy chain saw into his first shadow cabinet meeting.

To add some spice, Latham was spotted yesterday afternoon wandering through the businesses in the northern Brisbane suburb of Nundah asking people what they thought of the local member, Wayne Swan.

Latham, who had a TV crew in tow, once called Swan a “rooster” for white anting the leadership of Simon Crean. They have never been close.

This sparring is good entertainment but Latham’s presence carries a message of much greater significance.

Just as Labor did in 2004, Shorten and his team this time are ignoring, at their peril, the wider economic debate and business as an essential constituency.

In 2004, the Coalition famously put an L-plate on Latham, pointing to the fact the only thing the western Sydney MP had ever done was serve as Mayor of Liverpool and you can feel the Liberals are working towards something similar with Shorten.

Shorten’s dismissal of the business sector through his blanket opposition to the Coalition’s corporate tax cuts is starting to look like something deeper than just policy differentiation and a more class-based assault.

Originally published as Mark Latham has become a feature of the federal election and his presence carries a message