Campbelltown, health and fitness, family, education and health Mark Latham - Leader of the Opposition

TV Interview with Charles Wooley

Transcript - 60 Minutes, Channel Nine - 14 March 2004

INTRO — CHARLES WOOLEY: It is just over 100 days since Labor took the punt on a self-confessed boofy bloke from Campbelltown … a bet that paid off this week when the opinion polls suggested that if an election had been held, Mark Latham would be Prime Minister of Australia. The bad boy of the Labor Party has reinvented himself and is banging on the door of the Lodge. So where's he from, what sort of bloke is he? For a man who's generated so much publicity, he's been strangely shy about having cameras behind the scenes, but this week, he let us into his life.

STORY — CHARLES WOOLEY: Mark Latham bowled them over in the opinion polls this week, scoring a record approval rating for an Opposition Leader. Labor's mad maverick's makeover had Liberals in marginal seats everywhere shaking at the crease.

Well, the polls show that people find you a bit touchy-feely now. You're Mr 62 Percent.

MARK LATHAM: Well, that's flattering, but for me the great things to get out ...

CHARLES WOOLEY: And this was before you showed them your man boobs, too.

MARK LATHAM: (Laughs)

CHARLES WOOLEY: It wasn't polls or politics that became the talking point, it was a much more weighty issue.

So we're going to have a game of cricket and you hit a few balls, I thought quite well, and suddenly, there's a national debate about our fitness levels.

MARK LATHAM: Oh well.

CHARLES WOOLEY: You didn't expect that, did you?

MARK LATHAM: I suppose I didn't present as well in the T-shirt as I would have in the past when I was in my prime.

CHARLES WOOLEY: There's no respect any more, is there? I mean, they're talking about man boobs the next day.

MARK LATHAM: You sort of become a bit of public property, but that's all right.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Is that healthy?

MARK LATHAM: Well, hopefully I can get a bit healthier and strip a bit of weight off.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Survival of the fittest is in fact the Mark Latham story. It's a tale of adversity and struggle and achievement, a life experience that lies at the heart of Latham's ideology.

Could we call you a working-class man?

MARK LATHAM: Well, I hope so. That's my background and how I think of myself and … working class, what does that mean? It means you work hard. A, you work and B, you believe in it and get stuck in. So I wear "working class" as a badge of honour.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Where are we?

MARK LATHAM: This is Harrison Street, Ashcroft, the old public housing estate of Green Valley.

CHARLES WOOLEY: And that's number 25.

MARK LATHAM: Twenty-five is where I lived from 1965 to 1983. So basically where I grew up.

CHARLES WOOLEY: This is the beginning of the legend.

MARK LATHAM: (Laughs) Well, um...

CHARLES WOOLEY: If Mark Latham makes it from Green Valley to the Lodge, his own story will certainly help him get there.

MARK LATHAM: Yeah, it wasn't real big, just three pretty tiny bedrooms. That was mine in that first set of windows there and my three sisters were in the back bedroom and there was one for my parents on the other side of the house. So it's your basic fibro Housing Department model there from the '60s.

CHARLES WOOLEY: It's the stuff of Labor legend. He tells it as an object lesson in the stoic virtues of hard work and application.

MARK LATHAM: You get the chance. It says something good of Australia to come out of a housing public estate. It also says something pretty good about the government school system. Because for me, it just wouldn't have been possible except for that little government school, Ashcroft Primary, and the teachers and that whole ethos that public education is a boyhood passport out of poverty, you know, that it's a poor boy's arsenal to get on in life.

CHARLES WOOLEY: You were a prodigious doer of homework, weren't you?

MARK LATHAM: Yeah, I was a swat...

CHARLES WOOLEY: Yeah (laughs)

MARK LATHAM: ... as you'd say, you know, I was right into it and, um, glad that I did, glad that I did. I think any young person who invests in study at that age is going to make a pretty sound investment for the future and that's how I found it and don't regret a minute of it.

CHARLES WOOLEY: What did your mates think of that?

MARK LATHAM: That I was a swat. (Laughs) On the weekend, I'd play a bit of sport and all that, but I was certainly a diligent student and in their eyes, I suppose, a bit over the top, but that's the way it was. Mum's always looked after me and the family and I think a lot about the chance she gave us, working hard to give us a good education and I really want to thank her tonight. I love you, Mum. (Applause)

CHARLES WOOLEY: Your mum Lorraine you describe as "my one true hero".

MARK LATHAM: Yeah, I think that's right. She was there as the great driving force for having a better life and, you know, Dad was a loving, caring, devoted parent, but Mum was the driver in terms of work hard, save hard, follow the law, do the right thing. If anyone ever called me a mummy's boy I'd wear it as a badge of honour, because love of my mum and what she did for me is something that's been, you know, up there as the most important thing in my life.

CHARLES WOOLEY: The self-confessed swat and mummy's boy wasted no opportunity. He was dux of his school, a University Medal winner and an honours economics graduate from Sydney University. But having done it tough, does he expect too much from everyone else?

Not everyone goes from the suburbs to Sydney Uni and gets, wins a medal, and gets an honours degree in economics.

MARK LATHAM: Well, that's true, but hard work's not an IQ test. Hard work is hard work.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Did you just make that up?

MARK LATHAM: No, no, I ... that's … I suppose, I did in terms of saying it.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Sounded like a slogan.

MARK LATHAM: No, well, it's not a slogan, I think it's just the truth.

CHARLES WOOLEY: His critics claim he makes policy on the run. Certainly he does make slogans. Another I heard many times this past week was:

MARK LATHAM: Either they're earning or they're learning. It's got to be earning or learning.

CHARLES WOOLEY: It's becoming clear that Latham's Australia would be no bludger's paradise. He offers no soft option for people who won't participate.

If people don't want to seize the advantages, what do you do about them?

MARK LATHAM: Well, I think mutual responsibility where, you know, government takes a tougher attitude is appropriate, that, you know, for young people, they've got to be learning or earning. There's no third option of just getting out there and goofing off. You've either got to be in education or work.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Is it too easy at the moment just to get the dole?

MARK LATHAM: I think there's a lot of problems in the administration of Centrelink and we'll have some policies to fix those up. But in other areas, I think we could go further with mutual responsibility and that's something we're working on as well.

CHARLES WOOLEY: If Mark Latham sounds hard, indeed conservative, on this issue, it might be because he has come so far from such difficult beginnings. His family poverty was compounded by the fact that his father Don was a compulsive gambler.

Tell me about Don, your father, his gambling problem.

MARK LATHAM: Well, Dad was a great dad in that love, devotion, care, he was a bright guy, a lot of general knowledge, but he had an issue there. It's like a health issue. It's like any other addiction.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Did it make it hard for your mum?

MARK LATHAM: It didn't change the way in which the house was operated. It was just a paucity of money, basically that ended up, you know, in a bookmaker's bag instead of where it should have been, on the kitchen table.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Gambling remains a huge social problem in Australia, doesn't it? Money goes out of the suburbs that can least afford it, in many cases.

MARK LATHAM: Yeah, it is and it's got bigger as a problem. Responsible gambling is fine, but irresponsible gambling, problem gambling, gambling addictions, can hurt other people, families, in a way that's just horrible. So I think that's the point where government steps in.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Are you careful with a quid?

MARK LATHAM: Well, at the races, there's no point having anything more than an interest.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Not that Mark Latham's a wowser on this matter. He enjoys a punt and he enjoys the surroundings of what he considers a working-class institution.

MARK LATHAM: G'day, just wanted $5 on number eight.

CHARLES WOOLEY: On the other hand, he is no spendthrift at the TAB.

I'm a big spender, I'll have $10 on what he had. He only put on $5, didn't he?

Mr Latham is careful with a quid. Would he be as careful with our quids and, what many Australians are worrying, would he want more of them?

You blokes have castigated the Howard Government for this, but it's very hard to drag out of you that you won't become the highest-taxing regime.

MARK LATHAM: No, we've given that commitment. We've got no ambition to worsen their record.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Yeah, but each time you give it somebody else comes on and says something else.

MARK LATHAM: You know, in the area of tax and other areas, we're able to give a commitment on where we stand, but in terms of detail, you've got to also appreciate that there's a May Budget that's going to have all the Government's financial details and in terms of economic responsibility, we can't give our detailed plans until they get their Budget out of the way. That's just the way the system works.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Do Australians pay too much tax, though? That's a rhetorical question.

MARK LATHAM: I think PAYE taxpayers have been paying too much tax. That's why they need relief. They need some genuine relief. They've been the real workhorses of the Australian tax system and this bracket creep where people earn more, they go into higher tax brackets, it's crippling.

CHARLES WOOLEY: In a week where it was starting to look like Labor might have picked a winner with Mark Latham, he picked a winner of his own.

The opinion polls this week, what do they tell us?

LAURIE OAKES: There is a temptation to vote Labor, there's a movement towards the party on the part of the swingers, but they haven't yet committed themselves. The people who've changed fundamentally so far are the old Labor voters who had deserted the fold. Latham's got them back.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Veteran Canberra commentator Laurie Oakes senses a change in the political air, but warns that Latham has much to live down.

LAURIE OAKES: Well, the obvious downside is the past, the violent language and the breaking a taxidriver's arm, all that thuggish stuff, he's got to live down. But he's doing that pretty well. And the comparison's been made before, but I think it's valid, the comparison with Bob Hawke, who was a drunken yahoo and a womaniser, but the moment he became prime minister, he adopted the model in his mind of what a prime minister should be and he didn't deviate from that until the day he lost the prime ministership, when he went back to being the yahoo he always was.

MARK LATHAM: Well, I can give the Government and Treasurer this guarantee: the pensioners of Australia are saying you're a really big C. I shared the emotion and language of my electorate in describing the Prime Minister as an arse licker. There they are, a conga line of suck holes on the conservative side of Australian politics.

CHARLES WOOLEY: There's no conga line of suck holes, none of those colourful phrases any more.

I've been with you for a week and you've been so careful, or you have reinvented yourself.

MARK LATHAM: Well, I'm still using Australian vernacular and talking the Australian way and getting straight at the issue. I take a straight-talking approach, so nothing's changed there. I just said on day one no more crudity and I want all Australians to be able to relate to the Labor Party and my leadership of it, so I think that's a fair standard on day one, but it doesn't make you a different person, not at all.

CHARLES WOOLEY: No more a candidate for the sin bin, you're seeing the new Mark, the devoted dad to Oliver, aged three, and to his younger brother Isaac and a considerate husband to Janine, his second wife.

What sort of bloke is he?

JANINE LATHAM: He's fantastic. (Laughs) I love him. I think he's great.

CHARLES WOOLEY: What are his qualities?

JANINE LATHAM: His qualities are he's got a great sense of humour, he's very caring, both after his kids and the rest of his family.

CHARLES WOOLEY: What sort of prime minister would he make … and I'm not expecting an unbiased answer.

JANINE LATHAM: You might get one. He'd be fantastic.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Opposition is 90 per cent cold and lonely work. There aren't many times like these when real power becomes tantalisingly almost within grasp.

Day one of a Latham government, what's the first thing you'd do, what would be your first declaration?

MARK LATHAM: Well, there's so much to be done, but our priorities are health and education, so we'd be stuck in to implement our plan to save bulk-billing. And education … we'd be ensuring that higher education opportunity is improved, implementing our reading program, our needs-based school funding system. Health and education will be the two piles of material that I've got on my desk on day one. We need to have more face-to-face interaction in politics.

CHARLES WOOLEY: John Howard still has a year to decide the election date, but already Mark Latham is on the campaign trail. And wherever that may lead, he promises he will never forget where he came from.

Some members of parliament and their wives eventually leave their electorate for leafier parts closer to the water. Will that happen here?

JANINE LATHAM: I don't think so, no. This is a nice, pleasant, leafy place itself, so why would we want to move?

MARK LATHAM: No, no, we've got alternative plans for the nice, leafy place by the sea called Kirribilli House. So we think you only need one piece of public housing support as prime minister and that will be the Lodge in Canberra.

Ends. E & OE