Joe Hildebrand: Latham’s only real contribution to public life has been to burn and betray everyone who has aided him

It appears gorging at the public trough has left Mark Latham with nothing but a bellyful of hate – or maybe he simply doesn’t care, writes Joe Hildebrand.

How do you solve a problem like Mark Latham? Or perhaps the question should be: What is Mark Latham’s problem?

This is a man who, despite countless potentially career-ending incidents, rose like a balloon through the ranks of the Labor Party to get within a whisker of the prime ministership.

And not just by his own blood, sweat and tears but through the bottomless goodwill of those around him – from his cricketing mates and those in the community who raised money so he could attend university, to allies such as Simon Crean, Julia Gillard and Paul Keating, who swung behind him to make him Labor leader in 2003.

Even the public overwhelmingly supported him. He was on stratospheric levels of approval in the opinion polls throughout almost all of his leadership.

And then he blew everything – a lifetime’s worth of achievement – just because he wanted to intimidate John Howard with that handshake.

Opposition Leader Mark Latham puts that handshake on Prime Minister John Howard during the 2004 federal election campaign. Picture: John Feder

So, there is the first lesson on Latham: Even when he has it all and is on the verge of realising his lifelong dream, he is prepared to throw it all away not for any matter of high principle but just because he feels pissed off.

And that’s a pretty odd revelation for a guy who was once hailed as the poster boy of a new generation of Labor intellectuals and proved his policy chops with a book called Civilising Global Capital that he co-authored with Lindsay Tanner.

Mark Latham descended into such a brooding sulk after election defeat in 2004.

It’s hard to imagine Latham civilising anything these days.

After Labor’s landslide 2004 election loss, Latham descended into such a brooding sulk that he couldn’t even be coaxed out to address the horrific Boxing Day tsunami – one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history that occurred right on our doorstep.

Again, it was his own petty personal feelings that mattered more than the party and more than the nation. And yet Latham was not among them. If John Howard was Lazarus with a triple bypass, then Latham was a triple Lazarus.

He released the best-selling Latham Diaries – a brutally honest and often brutally funny excoriation of his former colleagues. But then he blew up his relationship with his publisher by going on a bizarre, potty-mouthed rant during a public Q&A with her.

He was also recruited to be a star reporter on 60 Minutes, which he used to attack then-prime minister Julia Gillard – one of his key supporters in installing him to the Labor leadership.

But still Latham was remarkably undead. David Leyonhjelm’s Liberal Democrats gave him the chance for a political comeback but then he abandoned them for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation when he saw an opportunity to nab an upper house seat in the NSW Parliament.

Part of the unveiling of this bombshell move was to be a joint appearance of Latham and Hanson on my old Channel 10 morning show, Studio 10.

But after travelling together to the studio, Latham had another “f--k this” moment and decided to go next door to Radio 2GB instead.

An embarrassed Hanson ended up appearing next to an empty chair, while I was deployed with a cameraman and microphone to catch Latham outside.

And here’s where things got really surreal because I, too, was a Latham supporter.

National Pauline Hanson's One Nation party leader Pauline Hanson and One Nation candidate and state leader for NSW Mark Latham in 2018. Picture: AAP Image/Joel Carrett

Despite his rubbelised history, I agreed with his warnings about the toxicity of identity politics and his efforts to redirect Labor politics towards the poor and working class.

Indeed, it was I, as The Daily Telegraph’s Opinion Editor, who actively pursued him to be a columnist after – would you believe – he had an inexplicable falling out with The Australian Financial Review.

I hadn’t wanted to believe Latham had joined One Nation but I assumed he would at least be coming on the show, as his new party had promised. After all, we were kind-of sort-of something-like mates, weren’t we?

Turns out we weren’t. And then Latham attacked Hanson, too, after his disgraceful slurs against gay MP Alex Greenwich proved too much for even her to bear.

And so again: What exactly is Mark Latham’s problem?

He has had a meteoric and lifelong public career, all courtesy of the taxpayer, plus a fat parliamentary pension he once railed against, and yet his only real contribution to public life has been to burn and betray everyone who has aided him.

He has ridden the gravy train more than almost any other politician and with far less than most to show for it.

And yet it appears all this gorging at the public trough has left him with nothing but a bellyful of hate.

Or maybe not. Maybe Latham, despite all the broken relationships both public and private, and despite all the vitriol he both spouts and receives, simply doesn’t care.

I suspect this is much closer to the truth, which raises another very simple question:

Why is he there?