The 'The Latham Diaries' Diaries: 1994

Here's a story the media missed, then and now:

Thursday, 24 March
Graham Richardson's private secretary Marion assures me he was all set to swap places with Bob Carr - Carr for Senate, Richo for the NSW Labor leadership. Something change Richardson's mind the weekend before his resignation from Parliament. A nice little mystery, ass everyone smiles and gives Richo and happy send-off. - Page 25


If these any truth at all to this story, it's quite incredible. Given the success that Carr went on to enjoy for a decade, this would have had a remarkable effect of contemporary Australian politics. Has anyone done any digging on this story?

Wednesday, 4 May
It also dragged all the major journalists into Canberra, who then kicked on to the pub in Manuka. Ran into an old mate of minte (now working as a researcher in ABC current affairs) who said that his boss (a prominent TV presenter) was keen for everyone to piss on back at his place in Kingston. Sounded great until we jumped into the boss man's van and he started driving the wrong way down Canberra Avenue, blind as a bat. What a madman, a real nut. In a rare display of good sense, I jumped out and caught a cab home.

I'm told the party ended with one of the ABC journalists collapsed in the middle of the floor, her knickers dangling around her ankles. What a great woman. That, I am told, is the cream of Australia's current affairs media. - Page 26


Not Kerry and Maxine, surely?

And a sign that Keating (and by extention) Latham had the right idea about the merits of governments staying away from corporate welfare:

Monday, 5 December
Keating reckons he was never able to centrally plan five ALP brances in his electorate in Bankstown, let alone complex industries. He describes industry protection as a mug's game: 'We were the bunnies defending the tariff walls but come elction time the industrialists supported the other mob'. - Page 29

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thanks for all the fish

After 13 years with Blogspot, I've shifted blogging platform. So (drumroll, please), you can find my new blog here . Ari on the Web will stay online, so you can scroll through the archives for all sorts of embarrassing tidbits. To make it easier to find some of my writing on particular themes, I've grouped some pieces together under a few labels: Cancer Fatherhood Indonesia travels North Korea travels United States travels Undergraduate days   So as they say here in my new home of Japan, so long, and thanks for the all the fish.
Read more

Can conspicuous consumption save the news business?

Image
It’s a dire time for the news industry. Readers are flooding to social media for content, advertisers are moving with them and costs are being cut at a brutal rate in a desperate bid to meet falling revenue. It is increasingly clear that business models that depend on amassing large audiences in order to provide a forum for advertising will always struggle against the “niche of one” audience that social media platforms can provide for advertisers. There’s been lots of talk lately about ways to fund public interest journalism. One idea is to tax the online aggregators – Facebook and Google, primarily – that sell advertising against the news content of others to support news organisations. Another is to make news subscriptions or donations to its producers tax deductible.  Both ideas are worth considering, but they do not abrogate the need for news organisations to seek better ways to draw revenue from consumers.  (It is alarming that discussion of efforts to...
Read more

A place to rest my head

Image
I dream one day of visiting Pyongyang and staying in the wonderfully pyramidic Ryugyong Hotel. The outer shell of this hotel which dominates the Pyongyang skyline was built in the 1980s, and the interior was, well, never built. It seems possible that the project was commenced in a pique of optimism as North Korea put in a claim to share the 1988 Olympic Games with its southern brothers, but just as the offer was rejected - just like the bid to share the 2002 Soccer World Cup failed on the basis of North Korea's request to host the Opening Ceremony, Semi Finals and Final - the hotel was never completed. Nowadays, in stands pointing to the sky much the way that Kim Il Sung's statue does, both perhaps as a symbol of the excesses of North Korean enthusiasm. Instead of the Ryugyong, like most foriegn visitors to Pyongyang I found myself staying at the Yanggakdo Hotel. The Yanggakdo Hotel is a slice of Cold War Bondesque paranoia writ large. The hotel is located on an isla...
Read more