Mark Latham has taken over the AFR lunch interview – that is where someone from the AFR takes a celebrity/personality to lunch and then writes up the experience. This week he took Andrew Bolt to lunch ($).
But throughout lunch, the food, while superb, is secondary to the intensity of the conversation. As with his writing, Bolt’s dialogue is crisp and punchy with barely a word wasted. He focuses relentlessly on argument and the use of supporting statistics and quotations. It is a long while since this man has lost a debate.
Although he describes himself as a conservative, Bolt’s views are better understood as libertarian. He has an instinctive, at times furious, distrust of collectivism, whether expressed through government, political parties or mob behaviour. He reaches out to me as a fellow traveller in this ideological crusade.
It is a good write up. But I was struck by two things. First I think I learned more about Latham than I did Bolt. Latham was a terrible politician – but he is a fantastic public intellectual and his columns are always well worth reading.
The second point is far more interesting and important. Andrew Bolt is not a libertarian and neither is Mark Latham; nonetheless they are fellow travellers. Both have a respect for civil society and western civilisation.* Both can see scope for improvement and imagine a better future and while they may not agree on that better future they do agree on the process for public discourse and debate.
Last year, the basket weavers struck back. Bolt lost a Federal Court case in September, brought against him by a group of Aborigines under the Racial Discrimination Act. In two Herald Sun columns in 2009 he suggested these activists, some of whom are fair-skinned, had identified themselves as Aboriginal for the purpose of obtaining government grants and career opportunities. Justice Mordy Bromberg found that “fair-skinned Aboriginal people were reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to have been offended, insulted, humiliated or intimidated by the imputations conveyed in the articles”.
I regard the case as an example of judicial over-reach. If every time people were offended by media comment they decided to initiate Federal Court action, the nation’s taxpayers would need scores of new courthouses – and that’s just for my matters.
At a time when government is trying to shut down that process we need more public intellectuals like Andrew Bolt and Mark Latham.
Anyway read the whole thing.
* Yes, I know – Latham broke a cabbies arm and paid out his former ALP friends.
Who hasn’t wanted to do that?
Infidel Tiger
4 Aug 12 at 10:14 am
Mark Latham is great fun on late night sky news. always informed.
Latham’s running-down of Rudd by describing his own experiences with him are insightful. Latham’s explanation for why Rudd was so popular in the general community was that they have never met him.
Latham’s explanation of the mechanics of challenging for leader was brilliant.
He needed half a dozen lieutenants (senior party figures who lend their brand capital to you) to work the phones for you, you keep ringing-up the more undecided yourself, you must remember to reach out and reassure long-time supporters that you still love them. Assign people to sit with the really undecided the night before the vote.
Rudd had no known supporters, much less a team of senior figures to stand behind him.
Jim Rose
4 Aug 12 at 10:16 am
This is pretty much how i see Latham, exactly why I have always had a bit of time for him.His time on the backbench prior to becoming opposition leader was great. He would say exactly what he thought, even in support of policies being implemented by the evil fascist Howard regime, and usually his views were worth considering. His time as Opposition leader always seemed to have compromised him.
Entropy
4 Aug 12 at 10:18 am
He put a lot of intellectual efort into a framework for designing policies to advance the “aspirationals” instead of providing passive welfare. The inspiration for that effort came from the time he spent as an assistant to Whitlam, who also wanted to work in an over-arching framework of ides so the whole goddam sweep of policies would fit.
He wrote several books and I think I reported to Catallaxy on the contents. The two fatal flaws were:
He could not get away from the idea of the government leading the way.
He had visceral hatred for people on the other side of town, especially Mosman. That came through in his atttidue when he played cricket for SU against northside teams and in a series of addresses to the party faithful which were so full of oldtime class warfare that you could hardly imagine they came from the same pen as the social and policy analyst.
Throw in a third problem, personal animosities as shown in his break with Whitlam.
Poor Old Rafe
4 Aug 12 at 10:28 am
I wonder what Mark Latham does for a living other than writing scathing articles about his former mates.
candy
4 Aug 12 at 10:32 am
In the interests of transparency he even itemizes what was consumed at the lunch with the total cost being a modest $190,but why no tip? Miserable pair of bastards!
Lew
4 Aug 12 at 10:33 am
Bolt and Latham – it’s like a gay marriage!
Chris M
4 Aug 12 at 10:35 am
whitlam said if you are too ill to lead, you are not fit enough to be a backbench MP.
I disagree. backbench MPs do not have as heavy a burden, and they are allowed sick leave. the top jobs in politics do not permit even one day’s sick leave.
Jim Rose
4 Aug 12 at 10:38 am
Like Bolt, Latham also has no time for illegal welfare seekers.
He made an extremely interesting and widely ignored (at the time) observation about the massive social problems our insane immigration policies were causing in his electorate.
Basically continued along the lines of: “The loudest proponents of mass immigration are the people who don’t have to live any where near the immigrants.”
Knowing Sydney as well as I do, I fully concur with his observations.
Rabz
4 Aug 12 at 10:38 am
Poor Old Rafe, Latham does have a consistent theme of aspiration.
I think it was that Stalinist collaborator Dalton Trumbo who said that the only good thing about the working class was you can get out of it.
The traditional ALP and the traditional labour voters were very strict on educational standards because they wanted their children to have better lives than them.
Too many professional politicians in the ALP and the Greens do not have this over-riding personal motive as their frame of reference.
the great mistake of Labor was letting teachers and public service unions affiliate.
p.s. years ago I read Fred Daly’s autobiography. He explained why he joined the Labor in one line. He thought Labor would offer a better deal to the working man.
Jim Rose
4 Aug 12 at 10:51 am
Latham is delivering much better value now than he ever did as a pollie. I’m liking him a lot more.
blogstrop
4 Aug 12 at 11:08 am
The great mistake of Labor was letting the private school socialists in …
Matt
4 Aug 12 at 11:21 am
Latham wrote this earlier this year:
He (rightly) thinks that people like Bolt (and the IPA) are “shockingly irresponsible” on the issue.
Yet his disdain for the old Left and former colleagues means he has to spend more time causing trouble for them (the stalking of Gillard during the last campaign for example) than doing anything effective on an issue he rightly considers extremely important and a victim of right wing ideology.
He’s a bit of a sad jumble that way.
steve from brisbane
4 Aug 12 at 11:34 am
Cabby’s arm.
Dandy Warhol
4 Aug 12 at 11:49 am
candy….Lath’s parliamentary stipend is about $70k / annum indexed.
Wonder if the Labor machine is still mentoring likely young fatherless boys to be shaped for future service.
Alfonso
4 Aug 12 at 12:03 pm
‘In the interests of transparency he even itemizes what was consumed at the lunch with the total cost being a modest $190,but why no tip? Miserable pair of bastards!’
Because this is Australia and we expect the shop to pay their staff?
Driftforge
4 Aug 12 at 12:20 pm
As an American-Australian born in the South, I’m offended – GRIEVOUSLY offended – at epithets like “redneck” or “seppo”, in addition to all the gratuitous and unfounded America/Southerner bashing from Aussie pollies and the lamestream media.
MOOOOORRRRDY!
Heh.
sdog
4 Aug 12 at 12:30 pm
You’d never be called a ‘redneck’ Spot. You’re a gentleman.
Gab
4 Aug 12 at 12:32 pm
=D
sdog
4 Aug 12 at 12:36 pm
latham would make good living from talking head appearances on TV, op-eds and, I assume, from speech making.
Jim Rose
4 Aug 12 at 12:37 pm
LOL. The old lefty switcheroo. Why, conservatives should love ‘climate change’ because it’s a real conservative issue and stuff.
Uh-huh.
No.
C.L.
4 Aug 12 at 12:37 pm
Dog
You could mordy one or two of the fuckers that use who use those expressions , you know.
It would be fun. Are you form jersey or any connection?
Jc
4 Aug 12 at 12:41 pm
The “cautionary instinct” involves being sceptical of the apocalyptic nightmares of alarmist scientists, just as we were conservative about the “apocalyptic nightmares” of eugenicists in the 20s and 30s, and the unilateral disarmament gaggle peddled in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
dover_beach
4 Aug 12 at 12:48 pm
They use it for gay marriage too.
I’m sure there’s also a gun control version.
Eddystone
4 Aug 12 at 1:14 pm
I know he’s good value for his bagging out of the current miserable lot, but you all seen to have forgotten just how mad as a cut snake he was in 2004.
He rivals Dougie Cameron for hate the rich socialism too.
Papachango
4 Aug 12 at 1:21 pm
true. But when he forgets his childish hate, and concentrates on policy, he isn’t too bad. It was just the 2004 period where he junked all that as opposition leader that makes me wary. He obviously owed too much to the latte set and socialist left that allowed him to be opposition leader.
entropy
4 Aug 12 at 1:44 pm
Since Hawke was deposed as PM I have only voted Labor ahead of the Liberals once. And that was when Latham had a tilt for PM. There is a lot about him I don’t like but taken as a package he was a very worthy contender. In particular he is one of the few politicians in the federal sphere that is both radical in his thinking but also intelligent. Even though they so quickly disowned him Latham as PM would have been much, much better for the ALP than Rudd or Gillard has been. I doubt he would have lurched to the left in the same way. Even though it was him flirting with the Greens that allowed Howard to snooker him.
TerjeP
4 Aug 12 at 2:06 pm
No but one senses it wouldn’t take a lot to swing him on many of the core issues. He certainly isn’t picking any big fights with libertarians.
TerjeP
4 Aug 12 at 2:10 pm
Andrew Bolt is Australia’s Glenn Beck.
The Prince
4 Aug 12 at 2:23 pm
Andrew Bolt is Australia’s Glenn Beck.
The Prince
4 Aug 12 at 2:23 pm
Kevin Rudd does not seem to have been beholden to a union or the Greens, but the party doesn’t want him, poor fellow.
candy
4 Aug 12 at 2:28 pm
Beck’s a nutcase in my view, but they do operate in a similar space.
Infidel Tiger
4 Aug 12 at 2:30 pm
I think Bolt is much more respectable than Beck. Beck strikes me as prone to chasing all manner of conspiracy theory. Bolt is down to earth and sensible.
TerjeP
4 Aug 12 at 2:38 pm
Appropos (is that how you spell that) of Rudd’s party not wanting him Tim Blair had this post a few days ago
val majkus
4 Aug 12 at 2:39 pm
Latham thinks Bolt’s views are “better understood as libertarian”.
Bolt’s response:
“There are collectivists at one extreme, individualists in the middle and at the other extreme, anarchists – that’s the continuum. So I’m in the centre. Support for the rights of the individual is actually the political mainstream.”
Is there sometimes a fairly fine line separating purist libertarianism from anarchic thinking? Sometimes here I seem to recall I have thought so.
Is he equating libertarianism
Viva
4 Aug 12 at 3:00 pm
Is he equating libertarianismViva
4 Aug 12 at 3:01 pm
Oh Bullshit. Beck’s a nutcase prone to conspiracy theories.
JC
4 Aug 12 at 3:06 pm
Self interest is all that separates most political ideology.
Splatacrobat
4 Aug 12 at 3:07 pm
Surely Latham should be dining at the A La Bouffe-Head Bar & Bistro?
H B Bear
4 Aug 12 at 3:35 pm
There’s a streak of wowserism in Bolta that makes advanced libertarianism unlikely.
Alfonso
4 Aug 12 at 3:37 pm
I dislike the term ‘public intellectual’. It is used to describe people such as Robert Manne and is an imprecise form of post-modernism claptrap. One can be intellectual, but “public” intellectual – is there a private intellectual?
Better to describe Bolt and Latham as intelligent, reasoning men who ascribe to the enlightenment.
Leave the term ‘public intellectual’ to the anti-enlightenment individuals such as Manne because I think that a public intellectual is less than an intellectual (otherwise why qualify the noun ‘intellectual’ with the adjectival noun ‘public’)?
Samuel J
4 Aug 12 at 4:12 pm
Actually I dislike intensely the term ‘public intellectual’.
Samuel J
4 Aug 12 at 4:12 pm
Whatever you think of the term Samuel, I think that it is very desirable for academics to communicate in terms that people in the streets outside the ivory towers can understand. Sadly most intellectuals have been on the left which means that most public intellectuals are not people who we agree with.
Actually I should be careful talking about the ivory towers, which is usually used in disparaging terms. Jacques Barzun (104 not out) once wondered why we should think badly of a building material that combines a number of desirable qualities, in appearance and durability, and a structure which gives a good view over the surrounding country.
Maybe I should have referred to oak-lined studies where scholars (savants?) like Steve and Sinc spend their days before repairing to the senior common room (also oak lined) for port and cigars after dinner at the high table.
Poor Old Rafe
4 Aug 12 at 4:23 pm
samuel j, for Schumpeter, in the public intellectual’s main chance of asserting himself lies in his actual or potential nuisance value.
Posner observed that
Richard Posner had little time for those that speak truth to power in his book ‘Public Intellectuals’:
- academics, far from being marginalized outsiders are consummate insiders – they are the very ones with the power—and the security of having well-paid jobs from which they can be fired only with the greatest difficulty.
- They flatter themselves that they are lonely Socrates-types, independent seekers of truth, living at the edge.
- Most academic intellectuals take no risks whatsoever in expressing conventional left-leaning (or politically correct) views in the public arena, which is undoubtedly part of the reason their pronunciamentos are not regarded with much seriousness by the public.
Jim Rose
4 Aug 12 at 4:30 pm
Indeed, Rafe, I agree that academics and others should seek to communicate clearly. Unfortunately, following Derrida, many obfuscate and write in a manner that (deliberately) obscures the message (if there is one). This is consistent with the post-modern interpretation that there is no absolute truth.
Hence I prefer the enlightenment and I accept that there is absolute truth. Also, I accept that some cultures are superior than others, etc. I also do not accept that everyone’s view is equally valid. They all have a right to put their views, but I will judge for myself the relative merits of the respective arguments.
To me ‘public intellectual’ is universally used among the left; those who hold to relativity rather than absolute truth and who generally wish to deny free speech.
Let it rest there, then, among those inferior people who do not deserve to be described as intellectuals.
Samuel J
4 Aug 12 at 4:35 pm
.
Indeed. Witness his support for Doing Something about poker machines, and his appalling support for Conroy’s Internet Censorship. He’s even quite sympathetic to Bob Katter’s protectionism, and seemed to agree with Douggie Cameron about da Foreign Workers when he was on MTR.
There’s lots I agree with Bolt on but definitely not the above. If he’s a libertarian, I’m Mao Zedong and Hugo Chavez’s love child.
papachango
4 Aug 12 at 4:39 pm
Samuel J, most public intellectuals are academics and academics tend Left
The left-wing bias of universities is no surprise in light of Hayek’s analysis of intellectuals in light of opportunities available to people of varying talents:
• exceptionally intelligent people who favour the market tend to find opportunities for professional and financial success outside the Academy in the business or professional world; and
• Those who are highly intelligent but ill-disposed toward the market are more likely to choose an academic career.
This also leads to the phenomenon that academics don’t know much about how markets work, since they have so little experience with them.
Schumpeter explained that it is “the absence of direct responsibility for practical affairs” that distinguishes the academic intellectual from others “who wield the power of the spoken and the written word.”
Schumpeter and Nozick argued that intellectuals were bitter that the skills rewarded at university with top grades were less rewarded in the market.
Intellectuals feel they are the people with the highest merit, and society should reward people in accordance with this type of merit. In the market, the greatest rewards did not go to the verbally brightest. The market rewards those who satisfy the market-expressed demands of others, and how much it so distributes in income depends on how much is demanded and how great the alternative supply.
Unsuccessful businessmen and workers do not have the same animus against the capitalist system as the intellectuals. Only the sense of unrecognized superiority, of entitlement betrayed, produces such animus.
Jim Rose
4 Aug 12 at 5:01 pm
Positions on foreign workers and protectionism have nothing to do with wowserism…..
But Bolta’s long ago defence of the bouncer who killed David Hookes 80 metres down the street from the entrance to his employer’s establishment does.
Bolta was offended that a national sporting figure was drunk and disorderly. That he was killed outside any possible area of interest of the establishment bouncers seemed to not interest Bolta at all.
The drinking was the main crime. QED.
Alfonso
4 Aug 12 at 5:20 pm
Make that “defence”.
Alfonso
4 Aug 12 at 5:27 pm
I highlighted his positions on foreign workers and protectionism to debunk any claims that Bolt is a libertarian.
the wowserism is demonstrated by his support for poker machine ‘reform’ and internet censorship, the latter being profundly un-libertarian as well.
papachango
4 Aug 12 at 5:31 pm
Fair point. If you were really smart and understood how the market works, you’d be making squillions as a business leader rather than bothering with academia.
papachango
4 Aug 12 at 5:34 pm
I like this presentation of the continuum. There are people who demand that the contribution of the community be solely considered (‘You didn’t build that’); there are people (even here!) who demand that the contribution of the individual be sacrosanct; whereas in reality it is only when the contribution of society is recognised (alt. recompensed) by the individual, and the contribution of the individual is recognised by society that society is just.
Driftforge
4 Aug 12 at 5:37 pm
Ah yes, the legion of market poor but uni. paid market incompetent Keynesian economic academics teaching the way the world works…… is legendary.
My first massive trading profits came from deciding they MUST be wrong or they’d be rich….which they aren’t.
Alfonso
4 Aug 12 at 6:01 pm
alfonso, on 12 September 2005, Mićević was acquitted on the charge of Hookes’s manslaughter. Mićević maintained that Hookes had without provocation punched him twice, and he felt obliged to defend himself against a further attack.
A civil suit against Mićević and the Beaconsfield Hotel’s owners by Hookes’s wife was withdrawn on 20 February 2007.
After the Hookes trial, boxing promoters began pressuring Mićević to fight professionally, but it took Mićević 18 months to agree to make his professional boxing debut. he had boxed as an amatuer.
Jim Rose
4 Aug 12 at 11:01 pm
Nothing wrong with any of that Jim…however…
Hookes “was killed outside any possible area of interest of the establishment bouncers.”
There’s my problem.
Alfonso
5 Aug 12 at 8:10 am
On the scholarship of the man twice voted Australia’s leading public intellectual, this is old news but BoltA has reminded people at the appropriate moment with Manne headlined in The Monthly.
Poor Old Rafe
5 Aug 12 at 8:38 am
Driftforge – balancing the individual and society is fine. But who does the balancing. Is it the role of government to decide the balance? That is what is missing from the Bolt spectrum. He has made the classic mistake of confusing government and society. They are not the same thing. We can have less government and stronger society.
TerjeP
5 Aug 12 at 10:40 am
I think it is necessary for government to establish the mechanisms by which balancing occurs.
The best mechanism for recognising the contribution of the community to the individual is land value capture. (My preference is to package this as a form of land title rather thsn a tax).
The recognition of private contribution to the community is more complex, but can be based off the same data. Much to the annoyance of some Georgists I maintain that where private infrastructure results in an increase in land value, a proportion of that increase should be returned to the private interest.
But yes, the difference between community and government is significant, as is the difference between the government and the state.
The same valuation process provides the information required to manage
I’ve come across so far is Land Va
Driftforge
5 Aug 12 at 4:21 pm
That distinction is noted even more infrequently.
TerjeP
5 Aug 12 at 4:52 pm
True.
Thought: there is less difference between the state and the community than there is between the government and the state.
Driftforge
5 Aug 12 at 7:13 pm
Because they had dinner in Australia, and we don’t tip here. We pay wages instead. That’s why you consider $190 on a meal for two to be “modest”.
Yobbo
6 Aug 12 at 1:11 am
Latham’s penchant for oh-so-contrived displays of machismo when he’s in the public eye are his worst character flaw post-politics, as far as I’m concerned. Like when he got that gig with Channel 10 as a political commentator at the last election, and he “dared” Tony Abbott to shake his hand at a presser. Grow up, son. Seriously, how old are you, Mark? Isn’t the schoolboy tough guy routine a bit beneath a gent of your years?
Oh come on
6 Aug 12 at 3:04 am
Oh come on
hit the nail on the head there
His first two chapters in the latham diaries are a must read to really understand the alp and what it really stands for
hes a smart nutcase sadly
selen234
7 Aug 12 at 2:52 am
that should read
a bitter twisted weird loser as well
re:latham
selen234
7 Aug 12 at 3:23 am