‘King rat’ Mark Latham faces big field of rivals

Mark Latham stands tall in a rogues gallery of Labor “rats’’ but there is a lot of competition.

Mark Latham led Labor to defeat in 2004.

Mark Latham stands tall in a rogues’ gallery of Labor “rats” but there is a lot of competition to beat before he is awarded the trophy for being “greatest rat in Labor history,” as his former colleagues said yesterday.

Latham was among the most promising next-generation MPs when the Hawke-Keating era ended in 1996. But Latham turned on Labor and trashed his colleagues after leading the party to defeat in 2004 and his brief stint as leader ended months later.

He was only ever a shadow minister and leader in opposition rather than a senior minister or prime minister in government. So his treachery in spruiking for a far-right populist party like Pauline Hanson’s One Nation — which he once condemned — might be beyond the pale but there have been greater betrayals.

GRAPHIC: Labor’s outcasts

A “rat” — a term enveloped in Labor mythology — is somebody who joins or supports Labor’s opponents, breaking solidarity.

PM Billy Hughes split Labor over conscription during World War One and joined with another “rat”, Joseph Cook, to form a Nationalist government in 1916. There were many casualties over conscription, including Labor’s first leader, Chris Watson, who was expelled for backing Hughes.

Joe Lyons, a former Tasmanian Labor premier (1923-28), was elected as a federal Labor MP in 1929. He served as a minister in Jim Scullin’s Labor government but resigned over economic policy in 1931. Lyons left Labor and went on to lead the United Australia Party.

Jack Lang was NSW Labor premier over two terms in the 1920s and 30s and was dismissed by the governor in 1932. His Century newspaper was highly critical of Labor and he was expelled from the party in 1943. Lang set up the Lang Labor Party and served one term in federal parliament, 1946-49, where he remained a critic of Ben Chifley’s government.

Those renegade Labor MPs who joined the Democratic Labour Party in the mid-1950s, causing the party to convulse with its third great split, were never forgiven because they helped keep Labor out of office until 1972.

Labor's outcasts: (from left) Billy Hughes, Mal Colston, Jack Lang and Joe Lyons.

Then there were the turncoats who took their “30 pieces of silver” rather than being guided by higher principle. Mal Colston, whom Robert Ray dubbed the “Quisling Quasimodo from Queensland”, became Senate deputy president with the support of the Coalition in 1996. Colston became a poster boy for political greed.

Labor can be forgiving. The nonagenarian Lang was welcomed back into the fold in 1971. Paul Keating sponsored Lang’s readmission and prevailed over still significant opposition. But Lang had been an achiever, with a score of economic and social laws written into the statute books, and was martyred by his dismissal.

It is hard to imagine Labor extending an olive branch to the newly crowned “king rat”, Latham. He has long been a political sideshow. He once had much promise but he has achieved nothing of lasting value in public life. He offers nothing other than bile, bitterness and bastardry.