Thoughts on Lathams Diaries

One of the depressing things about the Latham diaries is the picture it paints of the Labor Party in Australia. Throughout the book Latham continually mentions the need for the Labor party to “re invent itself”. I always thought that a party was formed around a core of ideological principles which it aimed to put into practice once in government.  Bereft of an ideology, what exactly does Federal Labor stand for? Reading the diaries it becomes apparent that Labor would put any principle into practice provided it could re elected. Latham talks about the party being a party of “fairness, compassion, equality” without exactly stating how these ideals would be put into practice. The more I read of his book the more I came away with the feeling that it was the party of “nice feelings”.