Labor to put disclaimer under Mark Latham’s caucus room picture

Written by: Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

The picture of Mark Latham on the caucus room gallery of Labor leaders will have an annotation under it saying he was expelled for life and his actions do not accord with Labor values.

The first meeting of the new caucus agreed unanimously to this compromise, after pressure from some in Labor to remove the photo of Latham, who led the party in 2003–05.

Latham’s former partner recently accused him of a “sustained pattern” of domestic abuse, in a civil court application for an apprehended violence order. It will be heard next week.

In other condemned behaviour – the latest of a string of controversial incidents over the years – Latham, now an independent in the NSW upper house, also photographed women members without their consent.

The wording under the picture will read:

In 2017, Mark Latham was expelled from the Australian Labor Party and banned for life. His actions do not accord with Labor values and fail to meet the standards we expect and demand.

Opinion in the party about what to do about the picture has been divided. The matter was discussed by both the right and left factions at their meetings.

The Minister for Women, Katy Gallagher, told the ABC, “I think there’s a recognition, on balance, that you can’t erase history”. But acknowledging that Latham was expelled and his actions “don’t align with modern Australian Labor Party values or standards” was important, she said.

“I wasn’t there at the time but I think it was a style of leadership that didn’t sit well with the values of the Australian Labor Party and it’s a type of leadership people wouldn’t want to return to.”

Ahead of the new parliament’s opening on Tuesday, both Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Sussan Ley addressed their respective party rooms.

Albanese told his huge caucus, which includes 94 members of the House of Representatives, that if Labor maintained its sense of discipline and purpose there was no reason why they could not all be returned at the next election – and their numbers added to as well.

He said Labor was embarking on “our year of delivery. That is our focus. We’ve just been through an election, we had clear commitments and we want to deliver them.”

Ley told the Coalition party room Albanese was giving interviews “suggesting that we should just get out of the way. Well we won’t be getting out of the way.”

The opposition would cooperate with constructive government policies, as it was doing on child care safety reforms.

But if the government brought forward legislation that was not in the national interest “we will fight them every step of the way”, she said, flagging the Coalition’s opposition to potential tax increases.

The first parliamentary week comes against a background of further depressing news for the Coalition, after its election rout.

The latest Newspoll shows Labor improving ^[1] its position since the election, to lead 57–43 on a two-party basis. Labor has a primary vote of 36%, while the Coalition is down to 29%, which is the lowest in the history of Newspoll, that goes back to the mid-1980s.