Part of Series
In the third Quarterly Essay of 2004, Margaret Simons takes a long hard look at Mark Latham, the self-proclaimed "club buster" and the man who would be prime minister. Few doubt Latham's intelligence and ambition, but what will this amount to in government? Simons argues that if Labor is elected, it will not be "business as usual". Rather we can expect a reformist government in the spirit - if not the letter - of Latham's political tutor, Gough Whitlam. It is also likely to be a government that has little time for the totemic issues of the Labor elites. This is an essay that takes the political pulse of the nation - it is clear-eyed, probing, anchored in observation and an original analysis of the political state of play. It ventures into the murky world of Liverpool Council, where Latham made enemies and ran the show. It reserves harsh words for those in the media who have ignored Latham's ideas and community campaigning in favour of rumour-mongering. Above all, it reveals Latham as a conviction politician and an acute thinker, with a prescient understanding of how the urban fringe now drives the politics of the nation. "Mark Latham's arrival on the political scene has brought to an end the fictions that have dominated politics for the last ten years." —Margaret Simons, Latham's World
Author
Margaret Simons (b 1960) is an Australian academic, freelance journalist and author. She is currently the media commentator for Crikey and has written ten books. She is currently Director of the Centre for Advanced Journalism at the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, the University of Melbourne. Simons was a finalist for a Walkley Award for journalism in 2007 for the story Buried in the Labyrinth, about the release of a pedophile into the community, published in Griffith Review and her book The Content Makers – Understanding the Future of the Australian Media was longlisted for the 2008 non-fiction book Walkley award. Simons also writes for The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Monthly. For many years, she wrote the "Earthmother" gardening column for The Australian. Simons has a doctorate from the University of Technology, Sydney and was co-founder, with Melissa Sweet, of the community-funded news site YouComm News. She lives in Melbourne. (from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margare...)
