Book Review:

From the Suburbs —
Building a Nation from our Neighbourhoods

by Mark Latham

Pluto Press, 2003        Reviewed by Bob Briton

Is it worth reading any of the books written by
Mark Latham in recent times? Would the exercise help us
anticipate what a future Federal Labor government might do?
Only time will tell and, no doubt, certain things must be
kept in mind when examining offerings like From the Suburbs.

The first is that not all of the bright ideas and "new 
directions" hit upon by Labor thinkers while the Party is in 
opposition actually make their way into legislation. Before his 
election to the Federal Parliament, then to the post of Leader of 
the Opposition and finally to the Prime Ministership, Bob Hawke 
had all sorts of brave ideas. He thought that the unemployed 
could work on kibbutzim if they could not be absorbed into the 
mainstream of the capitalist economy, for example. This idea was 
quietly dropped when Labor romped into office in 1983.

The ideas contained in Latham's manifesto might suffer the same 
fate. Latham, himself, points out that extended periods in 
opposition tend to spark all sorts of efforts at reinvention 
within the ALP. Some are successful and strike a chord with the 
electorate. Curtin and Whitlam did it and now Latham is doing it 
— at least according to Latham.

In fact, political "realism" has already seen Latham backtrack on 
a number of previously held positions. One of his first acts as 
opposition leader was to stand beside the Stars and Stripes in a 
gesture of public apology for his comments about the incompetence 
of US President George Bush.

Latham has boundless enthusiasm for globalisation and "free" 
trade. He says that barriers to trade like tariffs are a type of 
racism. However, a belated recognition that the immediate 
dropping of the tariffs protecting the local car industry would 
de-industrialise much of our economy has tempered his language 
considerably on this issue.

Nevertheless, From the Suburbs does give the reader 
insights into the thought processes of figures like Latham in 
parties like the ALP all over the world. In the book Latham lines 
up with other "Third Way" advocates like Tony Blair, Bill Clinton 
and writers such as Amitai Ezioni with their ideas on "Social 
Entrepreneurialism". (More on this later)

In explaining the development of his thinking, Latham several 
times attaches great importance to the collapse of the Berlin 
Wall. He links the loss of faith in governments as agents of 
change on his side of politics to that event. In truth Latham's 
side of politics, i.e. the politics of the right wing of the ALP, 
had always been hostile to socialism and socialist countries. I 
would be surprised if the Lathams of this world did not break out 
the bubbly when the Wall came down.

Indeed, those events were of the upmost importance for those 
trying to resist the attacks and increased demands of capitalism 
worldwide. It sapped people's confidence that an alternative to 
capitalism could be sustained during a period when trade union 
membership was falling. For some time, social activism waned. 
Some resisted this devastating trend. Others saw "opportunities" 
to carve out a "new" politics of capitulation for the labour 
movement. This is where Latham steps in.

New Labor values

Consistent with the utterings of every other "reformer" of social 
democracy, Latham claims to be true to his roots. He has always 
been anti-establishment, he says. The basic Labor values are 
"democratic fairness, economic aspiration and social 
responsibility" according to Latham. This slogan is vague enough 
for anyone, Labor supporter or not, to subscribe to. These words 
could have wonderful adventures in their application and avoid 
the meddlesome precision of the old (pigeonholed) slogan 
involving the "socialisation of the means of production, 
distribution and exchange".

Concepts like those are anathema to Latham. To disguise his 
hostility to working class ideology he takes up the now customary 
pose of being opposed to all ideology. This is code for taking up 
the ruling capitalist class' ideology. He lays it out in its most 
modern form on page 57:

We need to acknowledge the things that are self-evident in 
Australian politics:

* Market forces work better than planned economies;

* Free trade works better than tariffs and industry welfare;

* Competition policy works better than monopolies, either public 
or private;

* Governments need to be fiscally responsible, delivering surplus 
budgets and low interest rates;

* The strongest form of job security lies in a good education and 
lifelong learning; and

* Increasingly, people see themselves as economic owners and 
consumers, not just as workers.



Remember; this is not ideology or dogma! From beginning to end, 
From the Suburbs is an exercise in concealing the main 
divisions in society. There is no class struggle or classes for 
that matter. There are only "insiders" and "outsiders". There are 
Left insiders (with a capital "L") and Right insiders (with a 
capital "R"). Phillip Adams and Piers Akerman, respectively, 
exemplify these poles.

People like these occupy powerful posts in the media, the arts, 
the bureaucracy or the boards of corporations. They belong to the 
intellectual elites and live in suburbs like Paddington, drink 
lattes and have a detached "tourist's" view of politics.

It is not entirely clear from reading the book whether the 
"outsiders" are simply the rest of the population or, 
specifically, the impoverished inhabitants of the outer suburbs 
of Australia's larger cities.

Whatever the case, the challenge for "left-of-centre" politics 
(note the use of lower case indicating the absence of ideology — 
these are the good guys) is to go out into the suburbs to get a 
"resident's" view of politics. People living in the suburbs, 
people like us, have little interest in the controversies 
discussed by Adams or Akerman. Latham is ahead of the wave — he 
lives in the Western suburbs of Sydney and represents some of the 
most isolated "outsiders" you can get.

For Latham there are no class issues, just "social" and 
"cultural" ones. Only the Left, for its own perverse self-
justifying ends, perpetuates the myths of class. One needs to be 
careful with definitions here. Latham uses the term "Left" and 
"Leftist" in the same way that Bob Santamaria used to when he 
referred to the growth of a "New Class" in Australian society.

These "Leftists" are well-paid, over-privileged products of 
middle class backgrounds and tertiary educations. They thrive in 
the upper echelons of government bureaucracy and sponge off big 
grants in the arts. Mark Latham, like John Howard, prefers to 
define the "Left" in these terms. The rest of us recognised long 
ago that the individuals they are referring to are the phoney 
"left" that, for career purposes, jettisoned any loyalty to 
socialism long ago.

New unionism

The various protest movements and the trade unions scarcely rate 
a mention. The decline in union membership is due to the same 
failure of mass collectivism that afflicts big government 
departments. In Mark Latham's world, most workers are the sort of 
extreme individualists you would expect to find in an Ayn Rand 
novel. Many high skill workers in this post-material world have 
the whip hand in the global labour market, he says.

They want assets and quite a few of them are already racking them 
up. Fifty-four per cent of Aussies now own shares. Many are 
sitting on considerable amounts of superannuation. This "can do" 
set does not aspire to live in Paddington but, rather, in their 
comfortable two story homes in the outer suburbs from where many 
of them telecommute to work.

If unions want to remain relevant in this brave new world where 
they are neither wanted nor needed, they should look at things 
like Employee Share Ownership Programs. They could even get the 
employers to support their borrowing to get bigger slabs of 
shares in the companies their members work for. With this comes 
power, we are told — like the power unions have by having 
representatives on boards in the $216 billion superannuation 
industry.

But there is something not right in this information age of super 
capitalism that Latham clearly loves. He says that people have 
never felt more disconnected and powerless. In the same book 
Latham recognises that people are much more likely to experience 
"sudden sharp declines in living standards" (unemployment) than 
before. That is okay if they have assets and engage in Life Long 
Learning and can overcome it. This phenomenon is inevitable in 
this age of change. We will all have to learn to live and breath 
risk.

But he also recognises that if the "jam tomorrow" superannuation 
payout is taken out of the average Aussie household asset 
portfolio — the combination of their dwelling, their consumer 
durables and financial assets — wealth inequality has worsened 
sharply over the past 15 years. The situation with housing 
affordability is worsening. The under 35s are mostly locked out 
of home ownership. In order to promote some of his pet projects, 
he also has to own up to the fact that in parts of his electorate 
there is a 50 percent unemployment rate and 80 percent welfare 
dependency.

"Responsibility agenda"

Undaunted and still convinced that globalisation is lifting tens 
of millions of people out of poverty, Latham uses the realities 
of these areas to attack his other great hate. Now that the 
ruling class is refusing to fund the "welfare state" component of 
modern capitalist society — a component originally put there to 
head off demands for real working class power — Latham despises 
it, too.

In fact, except for a momentary lapse on page 30 where he called 
the creation of the welfare state "the great civilising 
achievement of Western government", for the remainder of the book 
he attacks it with a passion he might have borrowed from the US 
Right, which has a similar loathing of the New Deal and Franklin 
Roosevelt.

"The welfare state is good at mythology but not so good at ending 
the problems of poverty", he says. "As a result, welfare has 
become an exercise in political mythology. It gives people on the 
extreme Left a warm inner glow, even though they have little 
understanding of how the system works in practice."

You could be forgiven for thinking that in Latham's parallel 
universe, people's annoyance with Centrelink and other government 
instrumentalities is so strong that they do not bother applying 
for unemployment and other payments. People in the suburbs 
mentioned in the book are only interested in a "responsibility 
agenda". No more "rights" for them! Of course, it would be silly 
to insist on the non-existent "right" to a job. Only the vagaries 
of the market can deliver those.

Latham quotes a US experiment for welfare recipients whereby a 
condition of the lease on their dwelling is that they remain 
engaged in education or training. No training — no roof over 
your head. For all his professed admiration, the "poor" in 
Latham's world are like children — they want limits and 
discipline and he intends to provide it. The only reason he 
distances himself from the Work for the Dole scheme, I believe, 
is that he didn't think of it first.

In the final analysis, it appears that the Member for Werriwa 
expects the Outer Arc of our major cities to be poor for quite 
some time and, given that government can no longer splash money 
around, somebody has to tend to the needs of these communities. 
Latham insists that Social Entrepeneurs will do this more 
efficiently. These are the salt-of-the-earth individuals we all 
know that organise clean-ups, street barbeques, car pools and the 
like.

Borrowing from the Blair guidebook, Latham wants to help these 
people to access Social Entrepreneur Venture Capital Funds to be 
drawn from charities (the "third sector"), corporations and 
governments to complete various projects in disadvantaged 
communities. This is the type of "cross-sectoral" approach he 
likes. After chapters worth of hype about this new wave of social 
democratic reform, we are given only a few examples of real life 
success stories.

The first is Brian Murnane who, in his role of coordinator for 
the Argyle Community Housing Association, organised clean-ups, 
barbeques, community gardens and was even looking to buy out the 
rundown shopping street in Claymore and establish cooperative 
ventures there. Police callouts to the area dropped dramatically 
as a result of these community-building efforts.

Latham is right to praise people such as Brian Murnane but he is 
either deluded or cynical if he believes that virtually all the 
functions of the welfare state can be taken over by their 
activities.

Latham's refers to "Third Way" solutions to other spending 
problems of the decaying welfare state. An example would be in 
the field of education. Rather than spend more and more on public 
or private schools, parents should be encouraged to establish and 
run their own "charter" or community schools. The parents of this 
post-material age are set to get even busier, by the look of it.

To be fair, I should mention that the book's central theme of 
responsibility extends from the impoverished outer suburbs to the 
boardrooms of the corporate headquarters in the CBDs of our big 
cities. However, while there is a lot of detail on how 
responsibility among the poor is to be enforced, there is very 
little about what is to be expected of the corporations. Even 
though we now, apparently, demand greater transparency, ethical 
standards and social responsibility from business, these are the 
days of deregulation, after all.

In fact, I only found one page that dealt at any length with the 
big end of town and even there it only threatens other parts of 
the private sector — like the petrol industry — with something 
like the "social charter" Labor unveiled before the last election 
for the banking industry. No legislation, just "a wishin' and a 
hopin'" that transnationals do the right thing. This is Latham's 
recipe for a new social democracy.