There appears to be no middle ground with Mark Latham. You either love him or you hate him. The former ALP leader has never been a stranger to controversy after a number of incidents that occurred during his federal parliamentary career. His unconventional approach won him a lot of support particularly as Opposition Leader, but there was always a niggling doubt that bugged the electorate as to whether this bloke was a suitable alternative Prime Minister. Although the electorate was tiring of John Howard’s government, the 2004 federal election proved that he was seen as a safer pair of hands than Mr Latham to guide the wheels of government.
To his credit, Mark Latham was not a political clone and he remained his own man. Following the 1998 federal election, he butted heads with leader Kim Beazley over policy and resigned from the shadow cabinet, leaving a political enmity that continues to this day. Add to that some widely publicised comments referring to then Prime Minister John Howard as an “arselicker”, the Liberal Party front bench as “a conga line of suckholes”, and US President George W. Bush as incompetent and dangerous. To top it all off, there was an accusation by a taxi driver that Mark Latham had broken his arm in a dispute over a fare.
Since his departure from public office, Mark Latham has popped up periodically to create some news headlines and some major headaches for his former party. During the 2010 federal election campaign, he emerged from the press pack as a guest reporter for Channel 9’s Sixty Minutes program and confronted Julia Gillard over a complaint she had allegedly made about his current assignment. He went on to demonstrate the power of one by urging people to leave their ballots blank on election day, a move that may have contributed to a slightly higher than usual informal vote count, and a pivotal point in the outcome of the election.
Last week, Mr Latham stuck his head up again as the media picked up on an opinion piece he had written for The Spectator Australia. In the article, Mark Latham observed of Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s performance during the flood crisis: “She is not a naturally empathetic person - displaying, for instance, noticeable discomfort around infant children.” He was not the only person to remark upon her cold, distant, clinical interaction with flood victims, a demeanour that was magnified by the outpouring of compassion and emotion from Queensland Premier Anna Bligh.
Mr Latham went on to stick the boot into Ms Gillard by stating: “the femocrats will not like this statement, but I believe it to be true: anyone who chooses a life without children, as Gillard has, cannot have much love in them.” Current and former politicians from both sides of the political divide rightly condemned the remarks, with the office of the Prime Minister refusing to comment.
Like it or not, Mark Latham does raise an interesting aspect of Ms Gillard that has largely been ignored, that of her childlessness. In 2007, Senator Bill Heffernan was forced to apologise when he questioned Ms Gillard’s leadership credentials because she was “deliberately barren.” He said a politician needed to understand “family and the relationship between mums, dads and a bucket of nappies.” In 2010, following Tony Abbott’s “virginity is a gift” interview with the Australian Women’s Weekly, Senator George Brandis hit out at Ms Gillard’s understanding of parenting by saying: “I think that although Julia Gillard is a very clever politician, she is very much a one-dimensional person and I do think her reaction, her over-reaction to the, in my view, quite unexceptionable remarks Tony Abbott made as the father of daughters, is not something she would have said if she were herself the mother of teenage daughters.”
So, is Mark Latham right? Does Julia Gillard have no capacity to love because she has no children? Interestingly, it was Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce, who made the best defence case. He said, “It is absurd and cruel in the extreme to think that a person who doesn't have kids is a less deserving human being or has less of a capacity to love. I can assure you there are an abundance of people in this world without children - and for that matter with - who are caring and loving.” Think Mother Theresa. Think Florence Nightingale. Minister for Human Services, Tanya Plibersek added, “Julia Gillard is a fine leader and she demonstrates that every day, both as Prime Minister and when she was minister of education when she worked tirelessly for the benefit of millions of Australian children.”
The Prime Minister has been forthright throughout her political career about her decision to not have children. On the ABC’s Australian Story program in 2006, Ms Gillard recalled: “And so in my head when I was, when I thought about these things I guess I thought either-or. You're working at this intense high level or you're having kids.” She went on to say, “I've certainly watched some of my Labor colleagues in Parliament who have had children, and you just, you know you've got to be full of admiration. …You just look at that and say "I mean how does anybody ever make that add up" …but the pressure of that is obviously very, very acute …a lot of emotional pressure, a lot of juggling and it's very tough. So when you watch the women around you, there are a number who are just putting together looking after kids and having great Parliamentary careers. I'm in awe of it, but for me I don't think I could have done it like that. I can understand it all at an intellectual level and I do admire it but I think I just emotionally would have found that all very tough.”
Despite the reasons for her decision, Ms Gillard has been criticised as being selfish to seek the trappings of high office over having children. For some, it was felt that she was unelectable because she could not identify with the issues of working families. Her response was quite dignified, “No one person can encapsulate everyone's life experience. A man doesn't know what it's like to be a woman, a person with children doesn't know what it's like to be a person without children, a person from a wealthy background doesn't know what it's like to grow up on a housing estate.” She also pointed out that no-one seemed to question the leadership credentials of former US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, who is also unwed and childless.
Ultimately, our parliament is meant to be representative of the people. We need talented people from all walks of life and from all sorts of backgrounds to participate in our democracy. Julia Gillard has made the sacrifice of family to devote her energies completely to the causes that are important to her. She recognises the toll that public office takes on those MP’s with children and appears to understand the commitment that having children requires. There is plenty of issues that I don’t agree with the Prime Minister on, but I accept her decision in this instance. There are many children in our society who are neglected because their parents are pursuing their own interests. It is a responsible choice to not have children if one knows that you are unable to devote your resources to properly raising that child. Which brings us back to Mark Latham. When Mr Latham resigned as Opposition Leader and as MP for Werriwa, he cited a desire to devote himself to his family. One can’t help but draw the conclusion from his words that balancing the demands of being Labor leader with the demands of raising young children was too hard.
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